Karen's Blogs

Blogs are brief, to-the-point, conversational, and packed with information, strategies, and tips to turn troubled eaters into “normal” eaters and to help you enjoy a happier, healthier life. Sign up by clicking "Subscribe" below and they’ll arrive in your inbox. 

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Karen's Blogs

Eating

Eating

Please Stop Calling It Comfort Food

Karen R. Koenig
SAD GIRL WITH BUBBLE
 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...
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Can What You Eat Make You Happier?

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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Book Review – Getting Over Overeating for Teens

Karen R. Koenig
I wish I’d had a book like Getting Over Overeating for Teens by Andrea Wachter, LMFT, as a teenager when my dysregulated eating began. Maybe I’d never have become a chronic dieter or a binge-eater. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to struggle for decades to become a “normal” eater. Without talking down to them, the book is written in a language that teens will understand and is divided into four easy-to-focus-on sections.Section 1, Healing What You’re Feeling, explains how teens (adults, too!) may think that they need to make uncomfortable feelings go away because they’re wrong to have or because they believe they can’t handle them. Wachter explains how to ride out waves of distress and encourages readers to recognize and accept emotions rather than to eat over them. She includes workbook exercises to promote understanding, tolerating, and dealing with emotions.Section 2, Pay No Mind to Your Unkind Mind, describes how...
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How to Make Better Eating Choices

Karen R. Koenig
Many dysregulated eaters choose and eat foods impulsively. They see food and grab it. Or they wait until they’re too hungry to think straight and go for what’s quickest to prepare or easiest to swallow. To turn around these behaviors, researchers explain how planning ahead helps to make wiser food choices. “Try planning your meal before you get hungry” by Roni Caryn Rabin (Sarasota Herald Tribune, 8/23/16, E24) describes why thinking about food ahead of time improves our ability to choose better foods for ourselves. Carnegie Mellon University experiments “found that when there was a significant delay between the time people ordered their food and the time they planned on eating it, they chose lower-calorie meals. What was interesting, researchers said, was that the participants were not making a conscious choice to order less. Most didn’t even realize they were choosing lower-calorie options.” Eric M. VanEpps, a postdoctoral student who led...
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“Normal” Eating Means Following All Four Rules

Karen R. Koenig
A complaint I often hear when dysregulated eaters embark on “normal” eating is that, once they give themselves permission to eat whatever they want, they eat without restraint and gain weight. I turns out that they’re following rule #2, choosing foods they think they’ll enjoy, but not rules #1, 2, and 4. So, here’s a mini-refresher course. You can read or reread The Rules of “Normal” Eating for a more comprehensive review. When you begin trying to eat intuitively or what I’d call in a normal, regulated manner, do you attend to the rule that says to eat mostly when you’re moderately hungry? This means not seeking food until and unless your body craves it enough to maximally enjoy it. It does not mean to jump at a chance to eat because you had one measly hunger pain. Nor does it mean to wait to eat until you think you may...
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I’m Not a Foodie, So Sue Me

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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How to Think Like a “Normal” Eater

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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Stop Comparing – Our Idiosyncratic Bodies and Food Needs

Karen R. Koenig
I’ve heard many people of higher weight say that they really don’t think they eat more or more unhealthfully than thinner folks—and now science has proven them right. “Not all dieters are created equal” by Tina Hesman Saey (Science News, 1/9/16, p. 8) explains how we have differing metabolic responses to food, particularly to sugar, and provides one more reason to stop comparing our eating and our bodies. “People’s blood sugar rises or falls differently even when they eat the same fruit, bread, desserts, pizza and many other foods, researchers reported in the November 19 Cell. The discovery came after fitting 800 people with blood glucose monitors for a week. The people ate standard breakfasts supplied by the researchers. Although the volunteers all ate the same food, their blood glucose levels after eating varied dramatically.” The researchers’ conclusion: “blood sugar spikes after eating depend ‘not only on what you eat, but...
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What Is Eating in Moderation?

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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What Is Food to You?

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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Putting Food Into Perspective

Karen R. Koenig
For people who’ve spent a long time engaged in dysregulated eating and are trying to become “normal” eaters, it takes a while to put food into a comfortable perspective. These questions must be asked and answered: Do you see food as a source of pleasure or only nourishment? How much focus and what kind of focus will you put on eating to be physically and mentally healthy? What place do you want food to have in your life?Of course, the answer to all of these questions can be given only by you. How other dysregulated eaters respond will be what they think will work for them. Eating is, indeed, a very idiosyncratic activity. I was reminded of this process of figuring out how food fits into one’s life while talking with a client recently. She is a mostly “normal” eater at home or eating out by herself and is joyfully re-discovering...
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Using Successive Approximation to Become a “Normal” Eater

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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How Social Factors Influence Eating

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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If You’re Looking to Eat Smaller Portions...

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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How to Replace Mindless Eating with New Habits

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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Make Yourself an Eating Awareness Recording

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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To Eat Mindfully, Sit Down and Eat

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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How to Reduce Food Cravings

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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How a Client Became a “Normal” Eater

Karen R. Koenig
 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...
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Yes, Men Have Eating Disorders Too

Karen R. Koenig
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...
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