Karen's Blogs

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....
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 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...
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...