I’m sure that it will come as no surprise that “normal” eaters think differently about food than you do. Research from Cornell University’s online Global Healthy Weight Registry, designed to “find out how thin people are able to maintain a healthy weight for their entire lives,” lays out their commonalities. (“Skinny folks share their secrets in a study” by Marilynn Preston, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 3/15/16, E16) It’s important to note that the study’s conclusions were drawn from a very small sample, 147 adult volunteers, and that they were both thin and healthy. Please note that I’m not promoting thinness here, only health, because thin does not equate to health. Here are some statistics from the study’s “healthy and thin responders”: 96% report eating a healthy breakfast90% exercise, with 42% doing it five or more times a weekThe majority make sure to eat vegetables at dinner and salads at lunch92% say they’re mindful...

I still vividly recall a heavenly, exotic chicken-peanut dish I ate when I was bumped up to first class on a Portuguese airline in my early twenties, a mouth-watering Napoleon that was nearly the highlight of a cruise in my fifties, and I practically purr when I sink my teeth into raw sweet corn on the cob or pop some juicy grapes into my mouth. Yet, no one ever would mistake me for a foodie. Food does the trick when I’m hungry, I prefer that it tastes good, is nutritious and nourishes me, and I love to eat dinner out (aka be cooked for), but beyond that, eating is not an activity that lights up my life. Because of this, quite frankly, at times I feel totally out of step with our culture. My maternal grandmother had a part-time cook and, while my mother was never at her most confident or...

When you think of “eating in moderation,” what does the term mean to you—just enough to satisfy, until you’re full, only one portion, or leaving food on your plate? According to “‘Everything in moderation’ advice is unlikely to be effective: Study” by Niamh Michail (Appetite Journal, Dellen, Isherwood and Delose, appet.2016.03.10), the term is too vague to be meaningful or helpful for judging what’s enough food for you. Researchers from the University of Georgia ran a series of experiments concluding that “people tend to define the concept [of moderation] to justify how much they actually eat, or want to eat.” This result is not surprising considering that the term has never been defined as a certain amount of food. Moderation for one person is too much or too little for the next. In fact, “The researchers found that around two-thirds of the [study’s] participants believed a moderate amount of cookies was...

To resolve your eating problems, it helps to understand what food means to you, that is, what you really use it for. If you’re looking for it to have magical powers to do something other than nourish your body and give you occasional pleasure, it will fail every time. And you’ll miss an important opportunity for appropriate self-care. What does food mean to you? If you respond with words such as nourishment, fuel, pleasure, survival, or nutrients, you will need to dig deeper because you’ve also been using it to address other needs or you wouldn’t be reading this blog. Here are some needs that dysregulated eaters mistakenly use food for which it will never meet. Comfort: Food is not comfort except in the moment. In fact, when used for comfort, food brings you its opposite, distress, and it actually becomes a substantial source of it. You know the discomfort from...

After a client used the term “successive approximation,” I asked her what it meant. She explained it, and I thought how well it could be applied to becoming a “normal” eater. According to blogger Darcie Nolan in “Successive Approximation: Steps Toward Behavioral Change (5/22/14, https://blog.udemy.com/successive-approximation/), “successive approximation is a series of rewards that provide positive reinforcement for behavior changes that are successive steps towards the final desired behavior. In successive approximation” which we’ll call SA, “each successive step towards the desired behavior is identified and rewarded. The series of rewards for different steps of the behavior increases the likelihood that the steps will be taken again and that they will lead to the desired end result being fulfilled.”Here’s an example from Nolan’s blog using SA to train a puppy to play fetch. “The first step would be reinforcing the positive behavior of the normally uninterested puppy of turning towards the ball...

If you think that who you eat with and what they eat may affect your choice of food and the quantity you consume, you’d be spot on. Or so says the upcoming article, “Social influences on eating” in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences (vol. 9, 6/16, pp. 1-6) by Suzanne Higgs and Jason Thomas. The authors say that “Our dietary choices…tend to converge with those of our close social connections. One reason for this is that conforming to the behaviour of others is adaptive and we find it rewarding.” If we eat with someone who is downing a large amount of food, then we are likely to follow what they eat and consume more than we would eat if we were dining alone. We’re also likely to eat a large amount if we eat in a group rather than by ourselves. Such ‘social-facilitation’ of eating has been well documented with evidence...

Brainstorming with a client about how to have a better eating experience, we first talked about apps for troubled eaters—including APPetite, my free Facebook app. Then we discussed how she could put signs on the table she eats on (folded file cards work well) to remind herself to relax and think about hunger, taste, chewing and satiation. She said she’d tried them, but they only helped her sometimes. Ditto listening to music. Finally we hit upon the idea of devising her own recording to encourage her to attune to eating. Listening to how to eat more mindfully is beneficial in two ways. First, it blocks out other thoughts—ruminations about the past, distractions in the present, and worries about the future. If you’re listening to your own soothing voice and instructive words about eating, there’s less chance you’ll be thinking about other things. Second, it provides the exact thoughts you want to...

While reading an article on research about anorexia nervosa being rooted in habit—not extreme self-discipline—I ran across the comment that for treatment to be successful, “Habits have to be replaced with another behavior.” It was made by Dr. Timothy Walsh, psychiatry professor at the psychiatric institute at Columbia University (“Anorexia may be habit, not willpower, study finds” by Erica Goode, NY Times, 10/12/15) How true. Too often therapists ask dysregulated eaters to give up mindless, compulsive, or emotional eating and that is the end of the story. We don’t advise them on how to do that and what to do instead of eating. Unless you have a substitute, you're going to have a harder job not acting on impulse when a craving comes along. Why haven’t you given up impulsive eating even when you feel determined to do so? It makes sense that you won’t stop it unless and until you...

Assuming you generally overeat, becoming a “normal” eater will be easier if you reduce portion sizes. After eating smaller portions for a while, they will seem like just the right amount of food for you. Over time, less will become the new normal. According to “Portion size key in tackling obesity, says study” by James Gallagher (BBC News, 9/1515), a “review of 61 studies provides ‘the most conclusive evidence to date’ that portion size affects how much we unwittingly eat.” The study makes the point that portion size has risen over the decades, be it bagels or chicken pot pies. One way to reduce consumption is to use smaller plates and glasses and to buy smaller packets of our favorite foods. The article says—in a lovely British understated way, I might add— that “People seem to be reluctant to leave or waste food and so consume what they are served or...

Worried about overeating? Eat while sitting down. If you’re putting effort into becoming a “normal” eater, what could be more important than taking your seat and paying attention to the food in front of you? Science says that’s how to eat less. A small study conducted at the University of Surrey and published in the Journal of Health Psychology tested women’s eating habits (“If you want to lose weight, eat sitting down” by Leigh Weingus, Huffington Post, 8/24/15). The study involved both participants who were focused on weight loss and those who weren’t. It divided the women, who were each given a granola bar to eat, into three groups: one watched a short clip of the TV show “Friends,” a second was told to eat while walking down a hallway, and a third was instructed to sit and eat while having a conversation with another person. All participants then filled out...

Most people who engage in mindless eating would love to have more ways to reduce food cravings. In “A role for mental imagery in the experience and reduction of food cravings,” Eva Kemps and Marika Tiggemann tell us how our visualizations can help (frontiers in PSYCHIATRY, 10/30/14, http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/124542/full). They define food cravings as “an intense desire or urge to eat a specific food” and state that “It is this specificity that distinguishes a craving from ordinary food choices and hunger.” What they’re saying is that when you’re sufficiently hungry and know you’re seeking nourishment, that is a different internal state than simply desiring a particular food and no other for no discernible reason. The article goes on to explain that when people crave food, “they have vivid images of the desired food, including how delicious it looks and how good it tastes and smells” and that “craving-related food images are predominantly...

Are you afraid that you will never be able to train your brain to want healthier foods? Well, take heart. The evidence of a new study says you most certainly can. “Training Your Brain to Prefer Healthy Foods (TuftsNow, 11/6/14, http://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/training-your-brain-prefer-healthy-foods) describes the study’s conclusions, but is focused, unfortunately, on weight loss rather than on participants getting healthy. However, that doesn’t change its heartening conclusions. The study explored whether it is “possible to train the brain to prefer healthy low-calorie foods over unhealthy higher-calorie foods.” Brain scans “suggest that it is possible to reverse the addictive power of unhealthy food while also increasing preference for healthy food.” Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted to happen? Note that I’m not making a case here to always eat nutritious food and never eat non-nutritious food. That’s not “normal” eating. The point is that your brain can be retrained to move in a new,...

When I write, I confess I usually have a “she” in mind as a reader, but I, of course, recognize that many men have eating disorders because I have known them personally and treated them as clients. Read on and learn about how these disorders affect males. Leigh Cohn, MAT, CEDS and Stuart Murray, DCLINPSYCH, PhD write about men with eating problems in the October 2014 newsletter (Gurze-Salucore Eating Disorders Resource Catalogue). First they give the facts, challenging the assumption that males make up a miniscule portion of troubled eaters—5 to 10%--when the actual number is about five times that many. According to the a Harvard University household study of over 9000 people, “25% of individuals with anorexia nervosa and bulimia and 36% with binge eating disorder were male.” They go on to say, “The gap is even closer when it comes to subclinical eating disordered behaviors, according to a review...

 Every once in a while, I give over my blog space to a client who has something important to say that I just have to pass on to you—some bits of wisdom on recovery or even a letter written to a parent but never sent. Here’s an account I received from a client I worked with for several years. I hope it helps you in your recovery. I want to share how the work I did with Karen has set me free. I’m happy, healthy, active and enjoying my life every day, yup, even on the crummy days. You’ll be wanting the basics on what brought me to seek out coaching: decades of chaotic eating from too little and then too much, multiple types of abuse and neglect growing up, a mother with narcissistic personality disorder, an emotionally absent father and an abusive brother, not to mention over 200 pounds of...

In an article I was reading about Starbucks, mention was made of how eating has morphed from being a survival activity to a knock-my-socks-off event. “Buy the latte . . . and be sure to be happy about it,” by Anya Kamenetz (Sarasota Herald Tribune, 10/11/14, 1D) explains how the “latte factor” influences us—the enjoyment we derive from pleasurable routines. Okay, I’ll drink to that. I love my morning java while reading the paper, my daily swim if the water is warm enough, and watching the news (horrific as it too often is) before heading off to bed. Kamanetz describes research that says we “get more satisfaction out of experiences than objects,” including a recent study showing that “especially as we get older, ordinary, every day experiences offer a big boost.” She explains that “A cup of coffee is technically an object, but if you build a ritual around it –...

If you were convinced that certain foods could increase your happiness, would you eat them? Science tells us that there’s a link between the foods we eat and how good we feel (HealthNews, “Want to Feel Good? Eat More Fruits and Vegetables,”10/16, p. 3). It might surprise you to find out what those foods are.Dysregulated eaters might assume that foods that are high in sugar and fat would raise our spirits. The fact is that a “new study (from the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health) reveals that eating up to eight daily servings of fruits and vegetables provides a ‘happiness’ factor that kicks in within 24 months.” Wait two years, you may think, to feel happy? No way. Fortunately, that’s not what the study is saying. It states that, “Happiness, or well-being increased incrementally for each extra daily serving of fruit and vegetables, up to eight servings...

Sometimes we can’t help overhearing conversations, especially when someone is talking really loudly on their cell phone, as if they’re alone in the room. That happened to me recently, and I was dumbstruck over what I was hearing. A man was telling someone about an upcoming doctor’s appointment and this is what I heard: “My doctor is going to be really mad at me because I’ve been really bad. I’m eating all the wrong things when I promised him I’d be good. Man, have I been bad.” If I hadn’t seen that this speaker was a middle-age guy, I would have sworn I was listening to a child between 6 and 12. That’s the age when we’re often preoccupied with wishing to be good and fearing being bad. That’s the age when we don’t have a huge vocabulary and use words like “good” and “bad” because we don’t have better, more appropriate...

It seems as if almost everyone these days has food sensitivities—or thinks they have them. Then, again, I bet there are lots of folks who never thought about the possibility who actually suffer from them. Whichever the case, most of us lump together allergies, intolerances, and sensitivities and don’t really understand the difference among them. “Getting to the bottom of food sensitivities” (Environmental Nutrition, 10/16. p.7) provides a comprehensive explanation that will help you recognize if you’re on the sensitivity continuum. “Allergies can cause an immediate measurable immune response and intolerances are delayed, reproducible symptoms often caused by the lack of an enzyme or other factor necessary to digest a food.” For example, people who lack the lactase enzyme have difficulty digesting dairy products. Others become symptomatic when they ingest chemicals like caffeine, salicylates or histamine which are naturally found in foods. Allergies and intolerances are at one end of the continuum...

I’ve heard the term “junk food” so often that I’ve never thought much about it, except to feel antipathy toward its pejorative slant. Therefore, I was interested to read an article in ConscienHealth entitled “Junk Food, Junk Diets, and Junk Policy for Obesity” (http://conscienhealth.org/2017/01/junk-food-junk-diets-junk-policy-obesity/) based on some reviews in the International Journal of Obesity about the term. The Journal article (as described in ConscienHealth) asks, ”Is smoked salmon junk food? Its fat and salt content might meet the WHO [World Health Organization] definition. Is a rich meal at an expensive restaurant junk food? Or are we more comfortable calling a cheap meal at McDonald’s junk food?” Gregorio Milani, author of the Journal article, says: “Each food can be just a player in the field of unhealthy nutrition. No single category of food can be identified as the main guilty factor. Consequently, in addressing obesity and obesity-related diseases, we think that the term “junk food” is...

Image by Debbie Digioia If you’re a picky eater and would like not to be, there is hope for you! According to “Picky eating is in our genes” by Casey Seidenberg (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Health + Fitness, 12/20/16, p. E18), our taste buds may be more adaptable than we think, which was a surprise to me and good news for people who want to expand their palates. David Katz, a Yale nutritionist, told U.S. News and World Report that “when taste buds can’t be with the foods they love, they learn to love the foods they’re with.” This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because, as Seidenberg writes, “The original job of taste buds was to help us stay alive. Familiar foods were usually recognized as delicious because they were safe; our subconscious logic told us that if they didn’t kill us the last time we ate them, they wouldn’t kills us this time....

by Paige O’Mahoney, MD At my most comfortable, natural weight, I knew what I was having for lunch every day. It was my third year in medical school, commonly believed to be the most stressful, but I tend to gain weight when I am stressed, so that was not the reason. And it was also not what I was eating that brought me to this comfortable, sane place with food and my body. It was how. You see, I had just started my clinical rotations. My husband and I got married over the 4th of July long weekend, he went back to school 90 minutes away, and I started my third-year clinical rotations the following Tuesday. I packed my lunch nearly every day for the next two years. During my pediatrics rotation, lunch was a turkey, lettuce and cucumber or red bell pepper roll-up on a wheat wrap with Boursin cheese, mustard and a...

Image by Debbie Digioia What can the way a computer learns and applies knowledge teach us about healing dysregulated eating? While reading a column entitled “Cyberwars: we must prepare ourselves for the wars of the future”, (Time, 12/26/16-1/2/17, p.25), it occurred to me that what the authors were saying about computer learning could well apply to dysregulated eaters. Hear me out and see what you think. According to authors Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, “Machine learning, or computers able to learn from data, will be essential to decoding the battlefields of the 21st century. The more attacks we endure, the more training data we will have. This means for every attempted hack of an electrical grid or intrusion on a banking system, we will better understand how these attacks work and improve our defenses.” This got me thinking about how, rather than view each troubling eating episode as a problem, you could better understand...

Image by Debbie Digioia We generally think of snacks as small amounts of food eaten between meals. But some people (like me) eat many small “meals” a day (like, six or seven), in which case the meaning of the word starts to blur. What makes some people snack and others not? “Snacking now or later? Individual differences in following intentions or habits explained by time perspective” (now that’s a mouthful) explores into the subject based on studies whose conclusions make a great deal of sense (Appetite, by MC Onwezen, J. Van ‘t Riet, H.  vol. 107 12/1/16, pp 144-151, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2016.07.031). Basically, the authors studied people who are now-oriented from those who are future-oriented. Here’s part of the thinking: “Even when individuals are aware of long-term health effects of their diet, and form healthy intentions, they often engage in relatively unhealthy snacking habits. Some individuals fall back on unhealthy habits more easily than others.”...

 Image by Debbie Digioia As an eating disorders therapist, I am so done with hearing the term “comfort food.” I’m not only sick and tired of it, but I’m frustrated and angry that we’re still using this misnomer, if there ever was one, and about how it’s affecting our mental and physical health. As a therapist—mostly on the binge and mindless eating end of things—I can say without qualification that the troubled eaters who come to my office and read my books, do not get much genuine comfort from eating these foods. The Merriam-Webster online definition of “comfort” includes: “strengthening aid, support, consolation in time of trouble or worry, solace, a feeling of relief or encouragement, contented well-being, a satisfying or enjoyable experience.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comfort) Let’s take a look at these definitions one at a time. Does eating non-nutritious food when you’re not hungry but have a case of the blahs or the blues...

Image by Debbie Digioia  Rather than blame and be hard on yourself for having difficulty eradicating bad habits, start by accepting that everyone has trouble changing them. Stop berating yourself for returning to the same old patterns again and again and enjoy some self-compassion for a change. If nothing else, the self-compassion will change your life for the better. And follow tips from the experts, like those below, to make behavior modification easier. “Why Is It So Hard to Break a Bad Habit” by Brandon Ambrosino (Johns Hopkins Health Review, Fall Winter 2016, pp 7-8) first talks about the purpose of habits, then moves on to explain the best, proven ways to break them. Quoting Charles Duhigg writing in The Power of Habits, he says, “Without habits, our brains would shut down, overwhelmed by the minutiae of every day life.” Understanding this concept is crucial. It’s a great deal easier to change...