To break old, ingrained habits you must remain aware. Using a few words to click on that light bulb can go a long way toward helping you make conscious decisions around food. How many times have you said to yourself, If only I’d realized what I was doing when I grabbed for that Dove bar? or I snarfed down three rolls before I even knew I was eating! Conjuring up a few magic words can stop you dead in your tracks and give you pause to think. When you have the urge to eat, think: Hunger or Feelings? Let the words run through your head to see which registers. When you start or continue to eat when you’re not hungry, ask yourself, “What’s going on?” or “What do I want more than the food?” Maybe it’s to lower your Cholesterol, wear a different Clothing style, or feel more Sexual or comfortable...

I start my “Quit Fighting with Food” workshops by asking each group member tosay one thing they like about themselves. Often, members are stumped or mumble something like, “I’m nice,” or “I’m good to others.” The reasons for beginning the workshop this way are three-fold: to help break the ice, to establish a mindset that members are more than just people with eating problems, and to get a sense of members’ ability to assess themselves accurately. In all my 30 years of teaching, it’s rare for a workshop member to come up with something really unique about themselves, and I can’t remember when I last heard a positive assessment strongly asserted. Usually group members look pained and embarrassed and appear to feel they need to come up with something that won’t make them sound as if they’re boasting. What, you may wonder, does asserting something positive about yourself have to do...

Thanks, readers, for your comments which often give me ideas to blog about. In fact, a question came up recently about how to identify beliefs and prompted me to write this blog, so keep those comments coming! I also get ideas from two message boards I hope you’ll check out (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dietsurvivors and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings). Beliefs, also called cognitions, are your assumptions, theories, ideas, values, attitudes, hypotheses about life and how you fit into it. They’re your operating instructions, just as your computer’s program is what guides it and makes it function. Beliefs are subjective, not objective, neither fact nor truth. Unlike the latter, beliefs can change. In fact, one of the unhealthiest beliefs you can have is that you’re stuck with your beliefs and that you can’t change them. That kind of thinking leads to rigid behavior which keeps you mentally and emotionally stunted and perceiving yourself as a victim of cruel...

An issue that crops up occasionally on two eating-related message boards I post on (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/group/dietsurvivors) is confusion between fatigue and hunger or desire for food. Maybe you too abuse food when you should be putting up your feet or counting Zs. If you regularly wonder if you’re tired or hungry, you may be missing out on their physical/mental signals or mistaking one signal for another; in fact, you may also have difficulty discerning other physical cues. Perhaps your parents were confused about their physical needs and couldn’t teach you how to identify, distinguish among, and respond to physical needs. Maybe you distance yourself from your body because trying to meet its needs overwhelms you. Or you respond to your body’s desire to shut off consciousness (fatigue) by abusing food until you’re zoned out. You may also mix up fatigue and hunger or food obsession because you don’t want to rest...

Every time a client alters how they think about and behave around food, I realize all over again what a difference therapy can make in the life of someone with eating problems. Of course, as a therapist for nearly 30 years, I’m naturally biased. Yet, I don’t believe I’d keep on meeting with clients day after day, year after year, if I didn’t see people transform their lives before my eyes. I know that the idea of going to therapy scares people—it’s a frightening process to open up to a stranger, hope that life could be better, and work hard to make it happen—but it’s essential if you’ve never been to therapy (or haven’t stayed long enough to benefit) to understand how it helps. On a concrete level, a therapist offers a new view of yourself through eyes which are compassionate and hopeful. Her job is to listen non-judgmentally and empathize...

Some of you might be fairly close to eating “normally,” and wonder why you still have bouts of bingeing or rigid restrictive eating when most of the time you do pretty well around food. You might recognize that you’re sabotaging your success, but can’t imagine why. This phenomenon is not as unusual as it sounds. After all, there is a price to pay when you give up an eating disorder and become a “normal” eater.The price is subtle: recovery means giving up suffering and struggling which may be all you ever have known eating-wise. Because being disorder-free may have been your goal for years or decades, perhaps you can’t imagine a downside to having a peaceable relationship with food. Growing up, you may have been taught that it’s wrong to rest on your laurels, be content with success, feel satisfied with your achievements, and not keep pushing your limits. When you...

You won’t become a “normal” eater without internal struggle, and I mean tons of it. You know, those head-banging conversations you have with yourself that go like this: I really want it but I know I shouldn’t eat it, and I’ll feel so much better if I take care of myself but it’s so hard, I don’t know if I can except if I don’t learn how I’ll have food problems forever. Or like this: I hate being afraid to eat but I can’t stand the idea of gaining weight, but I know that a few pounds won’t really make me fat except I’m scared that if I start eating I won’t stop and soon I’ll be big as a house. These inner dialogues may make you want to scream, but they’re absolutely essential for growth and change because they shake you out of your comfort zone. Do things mindlessly, the...

While watching the annual Kennedy Awards presentations last year, one of the recipients, world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, commented (and I’m paraphrasing here) that every day he seeks new understanding. Part of his greatness is learning new musical styles and ways of making music, and seeking understanding obviously contributes to that process. It may even be one of the factors that makes it possible. How can a mindset of seeking understanding help you resolve your eating problems, that is the question? Do you awaken every day without judgment about yourself, eat without self-condemnation, engage in self-reflection as naturally as breathing, lead with curiosity about yourself and the world? Or do you keep a closed mind and mull around only what’s in it—often negative thoughts about your relationship with food? Imagine awakening every day like Yo-Yo Ma and making it a priority to seek new understanding. You’d look at your family/neighbors/co-workers differently. You’d...

As you endeavor to become a “normal” eater, you’ll most certainly want to get your teeth and tongue working for you. They’re probably not organs you think much about, except at brushing time or when you have an appointment with your dentist or hygienist. But, they’re key body parts in regulating appetite (along with your brain) and play a major role in registering pleasure and satisfaction. It’s pretty easy to figure out what part your teeth play in the eating process. Chewing not only grinds food into small enough pieces for your stomach to digest it, it also releases flavor. Many rapid eaters don’t chew food long enough and swallow oversized bites. Not only is this unhealthy for digestion, but it prevents flavor from being released. Although you say you love food, do you really love it enough to chew at a slow rate so that flavor bursts out of every bite? Conversely,...

I occasionally hear people discussing their eating problems by throwing around terms like disorder or dysfunction with a sly kind of pride, as if having a medical condition makes them special or unique. To be sure, these people are in the minority; the majority of troubled eaters minimize their condition rather than flaunt it. Most are filled with shame about their abusive relationship with food and want to keep it a secret. Sadly, however, some people use their eating dysfunction to get attention when they feel there’s very little else about them that is outstanding or compelling. After all, tell people you have an eating disorder and most of them want to hear all the gory details or at least cluck in sympathy and offer advice. As a culture, we’re riveted by the eating malfunctions of celebrities, their revolving-door stays in rehab, and their no-holds-barred memoirs. Ironically, these days, it’s almost...

What do you believe you deserve in life? Maybe you think that half a loaf is better than none, that you should be grateful for what you have because other people have it far worse, that if you simply ignore what’s lacking in your life and concentrate on what’s right, you’ll be fine. There’s nothing wrong with any of these perspectives—except if you use them to justify staying in a situation in which you’re habitually unhappy. Whether or not you believe it, you deserve to be happy and successful, not of course every minute of every day, but in general, most of the time. You deserve to be treated with respect, to lead a meaningful life, to make your own goals and find appropriate ways to meet them, to have love and human affection, to live in peace and harmony with intimates, to receive support for becoming a healthier person, to...

I’m always amazed at the shame that underlies disordered eating and the release that comes from talking about it with others. Alcoholics Anonymous says that our secrets keep us sick, and that is an important truth. Being alone with an eating disorder is hell. Either you feel like a freak or, at best, only slightly abnormal. You know there must be a better way to deal with food, but you can’t seem to figure out what it is. Talking with people who are still stuck in disorder is a start because you’re at least breaking down your isolation. It can be a relief to realize that other people have more serious eating problems than you have or that they’ve had them for a longer time. It’s liberating to tear down your wall of shame by telling people about your bingeing, purging, or starvation. It can make you feel as if you’ve...

After it’s been confirmed by your doctor or health practitioner through testing that you have a food allergy or intolerance, it’s time to think about managing it vis a vis your eating problems. If you’re a restrictive eater, you may feel justified in eating little or even less than you have been, or upset that you can’t eat foods you rely on (eg, low-cal yogurt or soy products). Conversely, if you tend toward overeating carbohydrates that contain wheat (baked goods) or dairy (ice cream), you may feel deprived and resent that you have a food allergy or intolerance in addition to dysfunctional eating habits. As a restrictive eater, you must careful not to use a food allergy diagnosis to eat less and will have to work hard to push yourself to find foods that are nutritious and appealing. Because maintaining a healthy weight is essential, you may need to consult a...

It’s very difficult to have food allergies on top of eating problems. Not only must you be mindful of your appetite and the rules of “normal” eating, but you have to deal with the physiological and psychological consequences of eating certain offending foods. Typical food allergies include wheat (gluten), soy, dairy (milk), eggs, peanuts, and shellfish. Studies maintain that some 15% of people in the US believe that they are allergic to certain foods, but that only approximately 1% of adults and 5% of children have true food allergies characterized by an adverse reaction that’s triggered by the immune system. In a true food allergy, your immune system mistakenly identifies a specific food or a component of a food as a harmful substance. This causes certain cells to make antibodies to fight the culprit food or food component (the allergen). The next time you eat even the smallest amount of that...

The stronger the grip your eating disorder has on you, the harder you will have to fight back. I wrote in The Rules of “Normal” Eating that trying to overcome an eating disorder is not for the faint of heart and I meant it. Fighting to overcome your dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors around food is a battle like few others. The struggle will reach into every corner of your existence and you will have to face off with food—your desire to eat or not eat—many times each day in order to become healthy and learn to eat “normally.” By struggling, I mean tolerating impulses without acting on them, tough work after years or decades of mindlessly following a destructive eating path. Your inner conflict to continue behaving the same way around food as you always have will bump up hard against your growing desire to be healthy and fit. Whether you’re...

Whether you’re a chronic overeater or undereater or yo-yo between the two, you need to harness your problem-solving skills to make progress. Some of you are probably terrific problem-solvers—the go-to people in your company, the family decider and planner, the friend who knows how to clean up everyone’s messes. In that case, you’ll be able to use skills you already have to resolve your eating issues. However, some of you may not shine at problem solving in general. You may not recognize or be willing to acknowledge this deficit and wonder why other people are happier and more successful than you are. If you don’t have terrific problem-solving abilities to begin with, it will be harder for you to resolve eating issues. The first step in problem-solving is, of course, to identify the problem. Pick one aspect of eating that is plaguing you—snacking on high calorie foods as an afternoon pick-me-up,...

Many of you will not be able to overcome your eating problems until you get out of the unhappy situations you are working or living in. I know this advice is hard to hear, that you fear making major change, and that you will even forgo a healthy relationship with food to maintain the status quo. However, dysfunctional eating is often a reaction to a toxic situation and you won’t become a “normal” eater until you opt out of it. You may hate your job or like it but feel constantly stressed, overwhelmed, pressured, and frustrated. Or you enjoy your job, but not your colleagues who appear to delight in excluding or harassing you and go out of their way to make your life hell. Or you have an ogre of a boss who is chronically mean, condescending, blaming, insensitive, and/or petty, for whom nothing you do is ever good enough...

We first hear the word “self-control” early in childhood and go on to use it to explain our eating successes and failures ever after. We act as if it’s a commodity we can go out and buy at the corner store, as if we either have it or don’t, as if it’s something outside ourselves that we can somehow get hold of and place inside us. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and we do ourselves a disservice by our wrong thinking. Self-control is a process, not a single action; it’s an acquired skill, more a way of thinking than behaving. It develops over time, generally starting in early childhood, but can also be learned at any time in adulthood. Let’s look at the word. The self part is pretty clear: it’s about us. The control part is more complicated. There are a number of meanings for the word control,...

If you’re having trouble saying yes or no to food, think about there being a flip side to every choice—each time you make a healthy decision to eat or not eat, you’re reaping a heaping of rewards. You’re not simply saying no to deprive yourself of food, but saying yes to taking better care of yourself. You’re not merely saying yes to a food you’ve previously rejected thinking it was “too fattening,” but saying no to the artificial restriction of diet think. The truth is that every time you accede to or refrain from anything in life—food or otherwise—you are moving toward one thing and away from another. Let’s say that you reject food you genuinely crave because you fear weight gain or that eating it prevent weight loss. Instead of focusing on pounds, consider all you will achieve by saying yes to that food: honoring your appetite, attempting to meet...

If you are journeying from dysfunctional to functional eating, you will have to change more about you than your relationship with food. In fact, that may be the final thing that shifts as you work on becoming a healthier person all around. Beware: if you only focus on whether or not your eating is becoming more “normal,” it’s easy to fall into hopelessness. You may have to develop other aspects of your personality—by altering particular character traits—before your eating habits will budge. For example, if you’re unhappy with your living situation or job, major contributors to both satisfaction or stress, you may not be able to give up disordered eating. Try as you might, you’re asking too much of yourself. Living or working under conditions in which you regularly feel unheard, undervalued, shamed, or in other ways disempowered will make change all but impossible. Once you learn to speak up and...

When you decide to work on overcoming your eating problems, what’s your idea of how that will happen or even when you feel a spark of hope that you could be happier and healthier around food, what’s your notion of how you’ll get from here to there? I bet that few of you have or had a clear, realistic idea of what recovery entails and, instead, your heads are or were filled with misconceptions such as: 1. Recovery will follow a straight line. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We generally make a change or two and engage in the new thinking or behavior for a while, then stop it. Why? Likely because the old ways are so deeply grooved in our brains that it’s easier to return to them. So we end up at times doing well, doing poorly, and standing still. The truth is that recovery is always...

Measuring your progress in recovering from an eating disorder can be perplexing: Are you going nowhere if you just had a whopper of a binge or went on a one-day fast for quick weight loss? Do you have to be symptom free to be moving ahead? Should you be focusing on the times you eat “normally” or the times you don’t? Progress can be measured in three ways. The first is by the duration of the dysfunctional behavior, that is, how long it goes on. Say, for example, your usual binge lasts for hours. Or, conversely, when you’re in self-denial mode, you can go nearly all day insisting that you’re not hungry enough to eat. You’re making progress in the first instance if you binge for 20 minutes, catch yourself, then stop. You’re making headway in the second instance if you force yourself to eat after an hour of self-imposed starvation...

When you see another person, a friend or a stranger, is their weight or appearance the first thing (perhaps the only thing) you notice? Do you automatically assess how they look or calculate their weight? Perhaps you have such a knee-jerk reaction that you’re unaware that you judge each and every person’s size, clothes, posture, or hair. Or maybe you know you give them the eye test and assume that’s what everyone does. The truth is that what we notice about others (and ourselves) is unique to us. Although you might flinch at a clothing faux pas, someone else might either be unaware of or fail to think much of it. We see what we are programmed to see. For example, you and your friends might be gazing at a ship full of passengers on deck steaming into dock. One of you might wistfully think of a romantic cruise she wants...

In this fix-it-quick, make-it-happen-overnight culture, it’s hard to grasp the fact that in order to overcome your eating disorder, you will have to give up doing things (often many things) the way you are doing them now. Some of the surrender will involve thinking, that is, letting go of unhealthy perceptions and assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones. Other kinds of giving up relate to behaviors, food- and otherwise. It’s natural to want to hold on to what is familiar, but you won’t recover from dysfunctional eating by clinging to the same old same old. What are you willing to give up to get healthy? You may be able to get away with small sacrifices—eating while watching TV, weighing yourself daily, checking out a colleagues’ candy dish every day on the way to the bathroom, or browsing through magazines looking at skinny models and celebrities. But it’s highly unlikely that...

Most people who contact me through my books, workshops or therapy practice have no idea what they will have to go through to become “normal” eaters. I hate giving them the news that it’s a Herculean job to heal dysfunctional eating and that for many folks it will require lifelong effort because of their genetics, biology, and previous experience. However, I’ve never met anyone who’s done the work and succeeded who isn’t happier and who doesn’t strongly believe it’s been worth the work. Which brings me to the topic of change in the moment. Too often I hear of elaborate plans that disordered eaters have to modify their behavior. They make lists of things to do instead of eating or obsessing about food, read constantly on the subject, join groups and message boards, and take workshops. Perhaps they believe that the more input they get, they faster they’ll heal. While I...

I just returned from a wonderful time (professionally and personally) at the Lake Austin Spa Resort in Austin, Texas where I’d been invited to do two workshops on eating. Although the resort caters to both genders, unsurprisingly, only females showed up to hear me. During the workshops, it became clear that many women believed they had to be away from work and family to take care of themselves, and I was struck (once again) by how hard it is for women to put themselves first. I got the impression that many of these women felt they could do so only when they were out of their home environment. For example, discussion arose over what and when to eat if you have a husband to feed. Eyes rolled when I suggested that women ask their spouses to be more flexible about eating times; snickers erupted when I proposed that husbands consider making...

I’ve noticed over and over that disordered eaters frequently go right to trying to change their behavior before doing the requisite work of transforming their beliefs about food, eating, weight, and body. Although you might be able to alter a few, minor behaviors, without working on beliefs, on the whole, you will need to examine—and perhaps revamp—your entire belief system regarding food if you wish to eat “normally.” For example, if you believe that you shouldn’t eat when you’re hungry because food is the enemy and will make you fat, you’re going to struggle over the issue. It won’t get easier to respond to your body’s hunger until you’ve developed beliefs such as, “I can eat whenever I’m hungry,” or “Eating when I’m hungry won’t make me fat.” Another instance of forcing behavioral change when you don’t have a belief underpinning it is trying to stop eating when you’re full and/or...

Psychology teaches us that there are two ways to change behavior: one is through incentives and the other is through punishment. Incentives mean working for reward or pleasure, and punishment involves taking action to avoid pain. One form of behavior modification is not necessarily more potent than the other, but using only self-punishment will not help you become a “normal” eater. If you are used to coming down hard on yourself in your efforts to eat more or less, you will have to change your approach. Think about how you were encouraged to alter your behavior in childhood and how your parents tried to modify theirs. Did they beat themselves up when they didn’t measure up? Did they punish you verbally or physically when you failed to meet their or your expectations? Or did they use appropriate incentives to sustain motivation and offer healthy rewards for you to do better? My...

A query came up a few weeks ago on The Food and Feelings message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) about how to use feelings to prevent food abuse rather than going unconscious and being barraged by an onslaught of negative emotions after the abuse. This issue arose often during my years working at a clinic with polysubstance abusers who often felt little or no fear about dealing drugs— ignoring the real possibility of arrest—but were terrified about going to jail after being caught. These clients appeared fearless, but were not: they buried their fear until they were forced to face consequences. My work was to help them experience their full-blown, post-behavior fear before they behaved badly in order to prevent it. The same process applies to eating or not eating. If your medical tests warn that you’re at high risk for major trouble in the near or distant future because of the way you...

What if you could make all the changes in your life you need to become a “normal” eater? What if you had in your power the ability to reach your eating and realistic weight goals? There is an expression that says, “If you believe you can’t, you can’t,” illustrating that belief is the bedrock of behavioral change. Although transforming beliefs from irrational to rational is an arduous task, it can be made easier when you take away the pressure and think in terms of “What if?”. There are a number of questions that stimulate thinking (and hopefully change) in the eating and weight arena. What if you stop trying to make everyone else happy and put yourself first? What do you believe will happen? You may imagine that your world will fall apart, that intimates will be angry at or disappointed in you, or that your value to the universe will...

If you discovered my “normal” eating blogs through an eating message board, then you know what a support they can be for recovery. If you have never been on one, you are missing out on a terrific tool for education and self-discovery. A message board is a cyber space where people can talk about their eating and weight concerns. You can read other people’s messages or post one yourself. You can remain anonymous or identify yourself. There is no pressure to “speak,” and you can say as much—or little—as you’d like. You can bring up a topic or follow a thread which someone else raised. One rule of thumb is to avoid hurting other people intentionally. You can use message boards in various ways. You can ask questions about people’s experience with food, hunger, diets, nutritionists, or how they react to medications. You can post your own experiences with any of...

I often hear people working hard at recovering from eating problems say that they feel as if they’re getting worse, not better. More often than not, this complaint is based on subjective experience rather than objective evidence. When people say they’re feeling worse, it usually means that the behavior they’re trying to reduce or eliminate has increased in frequency, duration or intensity, that they haven’t noticed sufficient change, feel hopeless, or that they are in more emotional distress. First off, people with eating issues often don’t recognize their progress. Problems—they see ‘em all; progress they miss. So I honestly don’t consider their assessment of “worse” as necessarily valid. They could be making strides in many areas that seem trivial and not worth noting—bingeing less often, speaking up, catching themselves in their stinkin’ thinkin’, learning more about their motivations and internal conflicts—and so they miss the fact that they are actually getting...

I bet that none of you would expect to learn to become a dancer or an accountant in a matter of weeks. You’d never dream of becoming an expert ice-skater or teacher without years of practice and experience. Why, then, would you assume you could learn the skills of “normal” eating without a good long period of hard work? Why, indeed. The answer is complicated because the desire for rapid recovery is often based on false assumption: you think you should know how to eat “normally,” or believe the skills are easy to learn. We’ll spend four years in college, more in graduate school, or years apprenticing to build on-the-job expertise because we allow ourselves a grace period for “hard skill” acquisition. But we assume that we should be able to pick up “soft skills” like eating, handling emotions, becoming assertive, or having successful relationships by snapping our fingers. Not true....

Because we associate the New Year with starting a diet, it may be hard to shake the idea. Come January first and you’re just itching to turn over that new leaf, write that next chapter in your eating or weight story, dump the old body and break out the new one. Although resolutions can seem artificial and silly, a new year seems the right time for a fresh start. This year make sure you’re not following the herd and behaving like a sheep. Make sure your resolutions are in your long-term best interest. Instead of setting goals on eating and weight and rushing to transform yourself into Ms. or Mr. America, how about focusing on which personality traits you’d like to hold onto and which ones you’d like to ditch in 2008. Forget about your appearance and consider how you might become what psychology calls your ego ideal—the person you would...

The first step in intuitive eating is to believe that you’re entitled to any food that will not harm you physically—those to which you aren’t allergic or sensitive and which don’t give you indigestion or heartburn. Entitlement is key to because believing you aren’t entitled makes it impossible to follow the rules of “normal” eating. If you don’t accept that you can eat whatever you want, you won’t be able to follow Rule #1, eating when you’re hungry. You might be starving and crave a tuna melt, but deny your desire and refuse to “give in.” You might eat mostly salads because any other food is taboo. Alternately, believing that certain foods are off limits, you might yearn for them so desperately that you end up eating them when you’re not hungry in pure rebellion. Again, remember, “normal” eaters believe that they can have any food they want whenever they want...

Coming in contact with a range of dysregulated eaters on a near daily basis, I can’t help but notice the part that all-or-nothing thinking and behavior plays in dysfunctional patterns. Either you won’t allow yourself to miss a day of exercise (whether you’re sick or over-committed) or can’t get yourself to start or regularly engage in an exercise program. You rationalize why you have to take that run or why you can’t possibly make it over to the health club. The work for both you under-doers and over-doers is to move toward more functional behavior that avoids an all-or-nothing mindset. Basically, you each have to tolerate discomfort in order to become healthier. The goal is to modulate and moderate behavior so that it is healthy and serves your rational goals. As an over-doer, you need to endure the anxiety of not doing. That means sitting with the distress of wanting to...

Every time I see my neighbor who’s a quadriplegic, I think to myself, I bet she’d give anything to have a choice about whether to exercise or feed herself. We take so much for granted as we muddle along, especially using the easy way out and deciding by doing nothing and letting things happen. Letting the chips fall becomes a way of life. Think, what would life would be like if choices were taken away from you? As the saying goes, use it or lose it! Do you live as if you have forever to be different—unconsciously, blocking out how your food intake in (or lack thereof) might damage your future health? It’s one thing to be present to the moment; it’s another to be barricaded in it and act as if now is all you have. Consider this question: If you had to be in a wheelchair for the rest...

Procrastinating is one of the unappealing aspects of being human. Everyone does it sometimes. After all, why be unhappy today when you can put it off ‘til tomorrow, right? Well, that might work with making an appointment to have your teeth cleaned or doing your taxes, but if you keep postponing these activities, your teeth will rot and the IRS will be camping on your doorstep. We think we can ignore unpleasant consequences because they’re off in the future, but every day brings us closer and closer to them. Many people talk about changing their eating habits but do little or nothing about it. Understandable: change hurts, is hard, and rocks our boat. Fortunately, in my practice and classes, I work with individuals who are eager to learn new attitudes and behaviors. But, what of you folks who keep saying that you’ll get into therapy or join an eating support group...

My job as a psychotherapist is to crawl inside someone’s head and look out at the world through their eyes. Through that process, I’ve learned that many people with eating problems are hyper-self-conscious and -self-critical about their food intake because they assume that others are as focused on and negative about it as they are. The same holds true for many overweight people and those who fear weight gain who, hating fat, assume that they’re being judged in the same pejorative way that they judge others. It usually comes as a surprise when I tell them that there are folks out there who don’t care very much about what others weigh, and that the majority of people don’t pay much attention to what others eat or don’t eat. Those kinds of things are not even on their radar screen!One of the limitations of life is the lens through which we see...

One of the worst feelings a dysregulated eater experiences comes after engaging in a behavior you know is self-destructive but you go ahead and do it anyway. No sooner have you swallowed the last bite of whatever you ate so fast you didn’t taste it, than in rush self-loathing and regrets. No sooner have you closed the bathroom door behind you after a purge, than here come the recriminations and remorse. If only you could turn back the clock and undo your acting out, everything would be all right. But, of course, you can’t, and things are anything but all right. In your mind, you’ve lost control again, ruining your day, your week—your life.Okay, let’s put your behavior into perspective. What you did may disappoint and upset you, but it’s changeable and you’ve hurt no one but yourself. The absolute worst thing you can do following a binge or a purge...

Along with writing books about compulsive, emotional, and restrictive eating, I also teach “Quit Fighting with Food” workshops and provide psychotherapy. Between my individual and group work, I’ve recently been struck by the lack of trust people with eating problems have in themselves. They’re torn apart by wanting to look a certain way (thin!), their natural, normal appetites, and rebellion against childhood eating mandates and current bombardment with information about nutrition and what to eat. No wonder they’re confused. As the saying goes, “What’s a girl—or boy—to do?” Self-trust is a learned behavior, about food or anything else. Healthy parents act in your best interest by initially making beneficial decisions for you, then, age appropriately, guiding you toward them. When they make good choices for you and gently and fairly lead you toward them, you internalize the process (doing what’s good for me feels good). When they force you to do...

New year, new you, right? Wrong. Most of us have the identical assumptions and attitudes about food and eating (and everything else!) on January 1st that we do on December 31st. That’s because, wish as we may, the stroke of a clock does nothing to change what we think, feel, and do. Only we can initiate that transformation and it won’t happen overnight. Truly fresh and innovative thinking about food and eating comes from the realization that there’s no magical makeover awaiting us and that change comes only from hard work and lessons learned from occasional hard knocks. Three cheers for everyone one of you who began this year by not going on another time-wasting, soul-crushing diet. Hats off to you each of you who began treatment this month (in- or outpatient, group or individual) for your eating problems. Hip hip hurray for every person who buried their scale in the...

Are you thin skinned? Do you always take things personally and often feel hurt? Would you like to have a more detached attitude about slights and insults and not take them so deeply to heart? Would doing so brighten your life and improve your eating? If you’re easily wounded, you’ll likely have a difficult time as a dysregulated eater not using food for comfort. You’ll see rejection and hurt constantly aimed at you. Life is full of slings and arrows, and how you think about and deal with them is key to maintaining high self-regard and feeling okay in a world that is not tailored to avoid hurting us. It takes learning and practicing changing beliefs in order to become thick-skinned. Thick-skinned people have specific qualities and ways of thinking which help them ward off the blows of life. They…aren’t seeking love or approval from everyone they meet. They recognize that some people...

The time to think about how to stay sane over the holidays is neither while they’re happening nor after they’re over. If you want to stay sane—not just think about it without genuine intent—you’ll start thinking about how you want this season to be now. If you live alone, that may an easier job than if you have a family. Either way, the goal is to create the structure and balance you want and feel so strongly that you follow through.Alone time:When are you going to have time with yourself or with people you love? If you live alone, that doesn’t mean you can take self time for granted, especially if you have a million friends or family members insisting that you join them for a holiday event. Time by yourself is especially crucial if you’re an introvert, which I bet many of you are. Carve time into every day where...

Most dysregulated eaters agree that their self-talk is abysmal, that they’d never speak to someone else the way they speak to themselves nor let others put them down the way they put themselves down. Just to be sure you know the kind of self-talk that is hurtful and, therefore, unacceptable, I thought I’d share what you don’t want to say. When clients make mistakes, they often accuse themselves of being stupid or dumb. They may say it playfully or even with a smile, but it’s still a put down. And they’re neither stupid nor dumb, but simply weren’t paying attention or didn’t do as well as they’d hoped. Why, then, would they call themselves stupid or dumb? Perhaps because they were told that these descriptors fit them as a child or this is what their parents said to themselves when they made mistakes. When things don’t work out, clients often say, “This is...

Most of the time I focus on helping people alter their beliefs to change their emotions and behaviors, but once in a while I’m reminded of how the belief/emotion/behavior triad works in other ways. For example, how behavior can shift emotions, especially when you can’t get yourself out of the rut of, “I can’t…This is too hard…Life is terrible…No one cares, etc.” Well, you get the idea—when it really is nearly impossible to talk yourself out of your stinkin’ thinkin. In that case, if you can’t shift the reality inside of your head, you will have to shift the reality outside of it. Here’s how. Let’s say that negative, depressing or anxiety-provoking thoughts are running rampant through your brain and stomping all over your good sense no matter how hard you try to bat them away. You’ve tried reframing your irrational beliefs and showering yourself with positive self-talk until you’re sick...

I know that I harp alot on eliminating the word “should”—along with must, ought, have to, and need to—from your vocabulary. This advice is not fanciful or arbitrary. The use of such words is an indication of immature thinking, harmful not only to reaching your eating and weight goals but to your self-image and well-being. Here’s why. When you’re unhappy with an attitude or behavior and insist you should be different, it implies that there’s something wrong with you as is. Stop and think about this concept. Every time you tell yourself you should or must change, you’re saying that the current you is wrong or bad. You probably don’t realize it, but this is the undermining message you give yourself. You might as well just come out and say you’re unacceptable which, of course, only reinforces the crummy feelings you have about you to begin with. Regularly commanding yourself to...

I get some of my best ideas for blogs from counseling clients. For example, one day in a session with an anxious client who tries her hardest to control what will happen in the future, we got to talking about whether by giving up excessive control she was letting go of all control. My take is that you can stop being controlling—of the future and the present—without relinquishing control over your life. Many of you view control as all-or-nothing—you either have it or you don’t. To reduce anxiety and feel confident and secure that things will work out, you work diligently to get people to do exactly what you want, make rigid, must-follow plans, or need to do the “right” thing. You’re trying to ensure that when you get to the future, all will be well, and the only way you know for that to happen is to micro-manage your life...

One of the tendencies of people with eating disorders is to constantly evaluate how they’re doing—not only with eating, but in many aspects of life. Whenever clients frequently comment that they’re “doing good” or “had a bad week,” I know that they likely need to back off from a harmful habit of self-evaluation. We all need to assess our behavior. But there’s a world of difference between reflecting on how you manage an occasional crisis or celebrating a personal triumph and putting every action you take under a microscope. Maybe a judgmental mindset comes from years of living with the good/bad diet mentality, or perhaps folks who need to constantly know if they’re doing well are drawn to the all-or-nothing, angel/devil rigidity of diets. Although it’s useful to observe and monitor your behavior, it’s unhealthy to keep on judging it. Mental health does not mean walking around thinking you’ve had a...

When disregulated eaters with long histories of dieting and bingeing begin to engage in new behavior for a few days or weeks, they often panic that it won’t last. Along with this fear is a fierce desire to know that the future will be better. Paradoxically, focusing on whether new habits will continue or not, may end up ensuring they won’t. While the months and years ahead look foggy, memories of our painful eating histories are all too sharp and clear. We recall how we’ve struggled with food, deprived ourselves, obsessed about weight, binged our hearts out, and let food rule our lives. These memories become a problem, however, when we cannot imagine that our future will take a different course than our past. The minute we consider that we might repeat the past, we’re already merging with it and failing to be present to the only moment that counts—the one...