Now that my new book, NICE GIRLS FINISH FAT—PUT YOURSELF FIRST AND CHANGE YOUR EATING FOREVER, is out, I’m often asked whether nice guys have the same problems as nice gals. The answer is yes and no. There are many excessively nice guys out there who have the same traits and use food in much the same way as “nice girls,” but they don’t have the double whammy of family dysfunction and cultural expectations shaping their personalities and relationship with food. When I think about the overweight “nice” men I’ve known and treated, their unhealthy family histories jump right out at me. Many had mothers who were narcissistic, frail, dependent, or entitled. As boys, they lived to serve and take care of their mothers because that’s how they received love and affection and avoided rejection. They often had to back-burner their own needs in order to please Mom or Dad. These...

A new Associated Press/iVillage survey concludes that American women are shedding pounds for the wrong reason. Want to guess what, according to research, the primary motivation should be to successfully keep weight off? Want to guess what the most common motivation is? If your first answer was “for good health” and your second was “to look good,” you’re right in line with the AP survey results. The poll of 1,000 women found that half are unhappy about their weight, including women who were not even overweight! The main reason for unhappiness was because of how weight, or their perception of it, affected their appearance. Only one-third had concern for their physical condition. Okay, if you’re in that one-third, nice going. Not only do you have the right motivation to lose weight, but you have the right one to keep it off. Now you other two-thirds, please take a moment to stop...

This is an inspiring post from a client who is also a member of my Food and Feelings message board. She graciously allowed me to share her words on my blog space, but wants readers to know the following: She’s still a work in progress, as she adamantly stresses in our sessions, worrying that people will think she’s overcome all her problems (heaven forbid!). Nor does she have the positive attitude that shines through this post every day. Some days are better than others. She also fears feeling too good because of childhood messages about pride and how she was invalidated when she did achieve and succeed. To me, these fears as well as her accomplishments are highly telling and speak to the struggles that many of you have. I haven't posted on here in a while. Karen asked if I would share my recent experiences with change and a sort...

Are you someone who goes out of your way to not judge others? Do you go overboard trying to avoid being critical and thinking badly of those you meet and know? This behavior is laudable in theory, but works poorly in a world in which we must make assessments about whether people will be helpful or hurtful to us. The problem comes from confusion over the term judgment. Many people who make a point of not judging others suffered childhoods in which they were verbally abused, invalidated or unfairly criticized on a regular basis. They are acutely sensitive to criticism and uncomfortable visiting it upon others. Although they’re generally hard on themselves, they back off from thinking poorly of others and prefer to think warmly of all humankind. They dislike acknowledging that their parents mistreat or mistreated them and defend spouses, partners, colleagues, and friends who are rude, unkind or even...

Although there’s truth in the adage, “You are what you eat,” there’s also a whole lot of evidence that you are what you tell yourself you are. Or rather what others insisted you were in childhood and what your self-talk confirms about you today. We become, then remain, whatever we believe ourselves to be. Think you’re lovable, then presto, you are. Think you’re not and, well, you know what kind of feelings and behaviors that leads to. You’ve probably read enough of my blogs to know that how your parents and other caretakers treated you in childhood is a major factor in determining whether you feel lovable or not. Sure, genes play a role (although I’m not sure what role on the lovability issue), but what we’re told and how we’re treated literally changes our brains and drives thoughts and behaviors. The classic tale is the child who’s constantly berated for...

Do you believe that “normal” eating means you never have to engage your brain and make hard choices with food because your appetite will automatically do what’s right by you—signal the perfect time to feed your hunger, flash a bulletin about what food will satisfy you, focus on eating well while your mind is elsewhere, and fling out its arms like a crossing guard to warn you to put down your fork because you’re done? If you believe your appetite needs no help from your better judgment, think again. It’s the old nature versus nurture debate. Are “normal” eaters born or raised? The answer is a little of both. We have evidence that genetics and biology play a major role in appetite regulation, as does stress and trauma in early childhood. We also know that the role models we pattern our eating after and how we’re trained to relate to food...

What are your rights? I don’t mean regarding voting or free speech. Rather, what are the unalienable human rights you believe you have? My hunch is that you aren’t convinced you have very many, and that’s why you spend so much time trying to establish that you do—with food, your emotions, with people, and engaging in behaviors which are nothing but self-destructive. Sadly, all your chronic efforts to prove to yourself and others that you have rights only attests to the fact that you’re not convinced. I see this behavior all the time in the food arena. You eat something you really don’t want when you’re not hungry to prove it’s your choice and that you can. Of course it’s your choice. As an adult, who else’s would it be? If you’re frequently/always in “prove it” mode, you’re reacting against the past. Okay, your parents were controlling, rigid, invalidating, and undermined...

Other than for work, since my recovery from binge-eating disorder and chronic dieting in the first half of my life, I really don’t like discussing food and weight very much. Maybe I hear enough about it from clients, but I think the rub is that food and eating, for the most part, are personal and individual subjects and not all that interesting. Does anyone really care what I ate for breakfast yesterday? Do I really care (other than professionally) what someone might eat at a dinner party tomorrow? Not so much. The problem with being obsessed and preoccupied with food, weight, eating, and nutrition is that we tend to blather on about it. We can’t stop thinking about calories, fat grams, complex carbohydrates, or protein when we’re alone, so the conversation spills over into our relationships. My point in blogging about this problem (and it is a societal problem, to be...

You may be wondering how therapy could help you and how it works. Here’s a snapshot of one of my cases, a client who recently ended therapy because she felt she’d made a great many changes and no longer needed our sessions. Specifically, she used to eat mindlessly, but now ate consciously most of the time. She used to turn to food to quell her feelings, but now explored and experienced them and saved eating for times that she was hungry. She used to obsess about losing weight, but now focused on eating “normally” and the pounds were coming off. Here’s how she succeeded. For the first year or so w met weekly. Although she occasionally had to change a date or time to suit her work schedule, she made it clear that our sessions were a top priority. If she had to cancel an appointment, she rescheduled right away. She...

Do you have an identity based on how much you do, how productive or successful you are, how well you care for others, or how stressed you feel? Sadly, too many people define themselves almost exclusively by how busy and selfless they are, and have enormous trouble giving up such an identity. If the description fits, it may be one of the major reasons you’re having difficulty with food. Here’s why. First, of all, doing, doing, doing 24/7 keeps you perpetually stressed out. It’s hard to feel as if anything gets done because there’s always oodles more to do and nothing’s ever done as well as you would have liked because you’re a perfectionist. Your stress level sky-rockets for two reasons: you hardly ever rest or relax and you’re generally unsatisfied with the quality or quantity of your achievements. Your typical thoughts aren’t calming and relaxing; they’re driven by deep feelings...

When you’re unsure of what to do about an issue or feel stuck in a dilemma, it can be extremely difficult to come to a final decision: Should you move to another city, leave a relationship, return to school, put a parent in a nursing home, buy a house, enter therapy, let your teenager go cross-country with friends, etc. Sometimes it seems as if a decision can gnaw at you day and night, yet you still never feel any closer to, well, closure. Here’s a sure-fire way to find your way through the maze of uncertainty. Most people take the wrong route of trying to impose a resolution on an issue rather than use their emotions to journey to an endpoint because they don’t trust their intuition and because our culture has convinced us that we must always know the best/right thing to do. We have little patience for wafflers and...

I was talking with a friend over dinner one night about how she and I were proof that enduring change around food really does happen. She and I were serious binge-eaters earlier in our lives, decades ago. She even wrote about her food excesses in a national women’s magazine! Now in our 50s and 60s, we’re radically different people than we were in our food-hazed days. We eat mindfully and enjoyably, with attention and care. Our wild and crazy eating life is long gone—we have changed our brains permanently! I blog about permanent change for those of you who are just now thinking about improving your relationship with food to let you know that this huge transformation is definitely doable over time. When you’re in the initial stages of trying to quit bingeing, purging, or overeating, the endeavor seems enormous and impossible. You start out with a teensy sliver of hope...

One of the my clients made a comment that keeps running through my head. It goes something like, “I’ve got to stop wearing my wishbone where my backbone ought to be.” Profound, huh? I couldn’t have said it better. How many of you spend your life, like the old song says, “wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’”? Oh, did I forget eatin’? Conversely, how many of you stand up for and go after what you really want? In part, it’s natural to wish that unhappiness would simply go away on its own or that another person will change so that you’ll be happy. However, that only happens in fairy tales. Wishes have little to do with dreams coming true. If they did, you wouldn’t seek wisdom from my blogs. What creates change is lots of hard work until you reach your goals. So many of you have been emotionally hurt,...

If your parents did a poor job of saying no to themselves when they needed to—with food, alcohol, material goods, etc.—you got short-changed on two counts. You missed out on having role models that teach self-restraint as part of good self-care, and you likely failed to receive appropriate comfort when you were told no or guidance and support when you were expected to restrain yourself. These deficits put you at a disadvantage in adult life, where saying no is as necessary a life skill as saying yes. Let’s face it, when we’re told no as children, it hurts. Our will and desires are pitted against those of powerful parents. We have little or no idea what’s good or bad for us, but we sure do know what we want. We’re not using the cognitive part of our brains when we cry for this or that, only our impulses and irrational desires....

I cringe mentally when disregulated eaters reinforce their negative, limiting beliefs over and over and don’t even realize it. The worst offender is the word “can’t,” but many other words, phrases and ideas deter growth and prevent healthy thinking and “normal” eating skills from taking hold. Everything you think and say, especially about what you can and cannot do, impacts your ability to do it. When you recognize that, do you imagine that you’ll never be able to keep track of everything that runs through your mind or slips out of your mouth? If so, you prove my point: You limit your growth when you think you “can’t” pay attention to what’s going on inside you most of the time when the fact is, you can, you can, you can. People who practice mindfulness do precisely that—observe what’s going through their heads and their hearts—as a matter of course. Are they...

Here’s a piece of wisdom which really resonates: You can only move ahead as fast as the slowest part of you can go. It was said by a friend struggling with a thorny personal decision who heard it from her therapist and I’m happy to pass it on. Try reading the statement again and let it sink in before continuing with this blog. Thinking about how to describe this truism, I picture a group of children waiting to be admitted to an event, but only when all of them, including the stragglers, are up at the entrance. No matter how quickly some of them get there, the fastest walkers will have to wait for the slowest walkers. Which leads to me recalling having gone out to dinner with a group of friends recently, some of whom were present at reservation time and some of whom weren’t. The hostess insisted that she...

Check out this quote: "...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet. This quote is for all of you who are living and dying for answers about the questions in your life. You ask me, you ask your friends and family, you search for certainty in books and seminars. You beg, you...

It’s fascinating how our minds work. First of all, half the time we don’t even realize what we’re saying to ourselves; the thoughts just slip by us. Second, when we use harsh words and are hard on ourselves, we generally don’t get the results we want. In fact, often, with eating and other activities, we get the exact opposite of what we intend. For example, I was talking with a client recently about self-care. For months, she’d been telling herself she had to do things like take care of her skin, wash her hair more often, get enough rest, and eat right. Every teletherapy session involved her berating herself for not doing these tasks and failing in her quest to improve her self-care. Might I add that she tends to her husband and children superbly. No need to push herself there because she automatically attends to their needs. As time went...

Many of you know me only through this blog and may be unaware that I also operate two message boards at and. Although I don’t do as much teaching and public speaking as I used to, my events are listed at http://www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow. I have published four books: THE RULES OF “NORMAL” EATING, THE FOOD AND FEELINGS WORKBOOK, NICE GIRLS FINISH FAT, and a book for therapists, WHAT EVERY THERAPIST NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT TREATING EATING AND WEIGHT ISSUES. For more information, visit my websites at http://www.nicegirlsfinishfat.com/ and http://www.eatingnormal.com/. My primary message board is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings. With several hundred members, many of whom are active and some of whom are called “lurkers” (they only read posts), the board focuses on any issues related to food and emotions and is an open forum for members to discuss their struggles, challenges and successes. Members hail from all over the world—Australia, Ireland, England—yet all seem...

I was reading a funky advice column a while back in which the columnist advised the question writer that he was using avoidance as an operating system and I immediately fell in love with the phrase. We all use avoidance as a psychological/emotional deterrent to emotional discomfort or pain occasionally. That’s natural and normal. However, if avoidance is a hallmark of how you negotiate life, you will have to change your modus operandi if you intend to overcome your eating problems. Avoidance is useful when we choose to do it consciously. If you’re in a work meeting and suddenly the argument you had with your best friend pops into your mental space, you’ll certainly want to avoid thinking about it right then. Ditto if you’re spiraling down into depression, you’ll want to redirect your thoughts about the times you’ve failed in life and the losses you’ve suffered. This useful process is...

What is it about being alone that frightens women so? I often hear them—married or partnered friends or clients—expressing great angst about being on their own. Their fear may keep them with people they don’t love and even actively dislike and could propel them to eat for comfort or pleasure. If you share this fear, it’s important to know exactly what you mean by it—to overcome it and stand on your own two feet. There are a few aspects of fearing being/living alone. One is the practical issue of financial security and earning a living. Many women, particularly those who’ve not been trained to support themselves or who’ve long been dependent on a spouse/partner, are afraid they won’t find work that will provide them with the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. They don’t want to give up their creature comforts, even for freedom from someone who is hurtful to and destructive of...

Many of you look back on overeating, bingeing, or making food choices you wish you hadn’t made and wonder why you did what you did. A caution: It’s one thing to seek understanding out of curiosity, but quite another to grope for explanations that only drag you through the past, leave you frustrated about changing your eating future, and prompt you to pass judgment on yourself. When you ask yourself why you act in a certain way around food, what exactly is it you want to know? As a therapist, I’m the last person to say that you don’t need to understand your past to change your present or generate a brighter future. It’s crucial to recognize cause-and-effect, comprehend patterns from childhood, and acknowledge the mistakes you’ve made in your food decisions and why you’ve done so. So if you’re asking why you made an unwise eating choice because you haven’t...

The life skill of knowing when you’ve had enough and it’s time to let go and move on from situations—eating, relationships, jobs, groups and organizations, beliefs—is an essential one. In fact, the more you practice sensing when to let go and move on in non-eating situations, the more you’ll gain competence and confidence with eating just the right amount. Remember, though, the process is more art than science. For instance, how long do you stay in a relationship which is unloving or abusive before getting out? How long do you cling to the hope that a parent will love or approve of you when every shred of evidence throughout your life points to the fact that they won’t? How long do you remain in a group (political, religious, sports, therapy, hobby, message board, etc.) when your heart says you’ve outgrown it? How long should you stay in a job you hate?...

I’ve blogged about reacting versus responding, but recently have been reminded of another word that needs to be thrown into the mix: reflecting. Many people have scant idea what the word means and rarely, if ever, reflect upon their thoughts and actions. Other people confuse reflection with dwelling on or obsessing about issues or emotions. Reflection is an essential tool for living and recovering from food abuse. We all know what it means to react. Words fly out of your mouth before you even realize you’re speaking or know what you’re saying. You hit the brakes when a squirrel races across the street in front of your car. You reach for a slice of birthday cake at a party before asking yourself if you’re hungry or like this kind cake. It’s healthy to react quickly in certain life-threatening situations but, frankly, most of life is hardly made up of events in...

Part of being an emotionally healthy, mature adult means achieving permanent self-love so that you don’t channel energy into looking to others for approval, validation and love. I blog away on this subject because it’s essential to eradicating food abuse and establishing healthy body attitudes and because self-love is difficult to come by if you’re a disregulated eater who had a childhood in which you were emotionally mistreated. If you had parents who were highly critical and frequently mistreated you by invalidating your feelings or by putting their emotional needs before yours—never mind being cruel and abusive—you couldn’t learn to love yourself because we learn self-love through being loved by our care-takers. If you are loved well, you’re likely to grow into someone who loves her/himself well. If you are loved poorly or unloved, you’re likely develop into a person who loves her/himself poorly. In too many cases, parents don’t focus...

When clients begin treatment with me, they often discover and bemoan the fact that simply working on their eating difficulties isn’t enough. If you’re like them, it may be hard to accept how many other aspects of your life need fixing to become a “normal” eater. The truth is, the quicker you begin remedying and resolving other issues and learn the life skills you need, the quicker you’ll improve your relationship with food. Even without eating problems, as you are right now, you’re still lacking the life skills you need to live happily and meaningfully. As Geneen Roth says in WOMEN FOOD AND GOD, your eating problem is simply the door to your best life, a symptom of everything else that’s wrong. The subject is complicated and progress must be made in food and non-food arenas for your eating to become more consistently “normal.” Working both sides of the aisle makes...

Yesterday I was driving and listening to a show on National Public Radio featuring a popular chef. Of course, the talk was all about Thanksgiving foods—recipes, marketing, meal preparation, and table presentation. I was stunned when the interviewee commented that “Food is what Thanksgiving is all about,” and even more astounded when the host agreed with her. Is this what we’ve come to, that Thanksgiving is all about food? Or did the chef make her remark because she’s, well, into cooking and selling cookbooks? I’ve been thinking about her words ever since and wonder if that’s not the major problem of our food-fetished culture: that every occasion has actually become “all about food.” We can’t hang with friends without chowing down, can’t have a work party, birthday bash, or holiday gathering without consuming and imbibing. Then there’s munching our way through movies and now even performing arts centers have a snack...

Most of my clients who have eating problems also suffer from underlying depression or anxiety. Although they readily acknowledge that their relationship with food is way off the mark, some shy away from either acknowledging their depression or getting treatment for it. Sad, because all of these problems are inextricably linked together. Why is it easier/more acceptable/more comfortable to say you have problems managing your relationship with food, than to admit, “I have depression”? One reason is that almost everyone seems to have some difficulties with food these days—they’re fussy about eating only organic, they struggle to lose those last five pounds, or battle with themselves about excess snacking. Even people who don’t have serious food issues may think they weigh too much and gripe that they’re out of shape. Compare that to how people who have depression view their condition. Yes, folks with eating problems often feel shame, but generally...

American psychologist Abraham Maslow is attributed with having said, “You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.” He wasn’t talking in physical terms, of course, but in emotional ones. His quote draws a dramatic line in the sand—we either take risks and charge ahead or hide and remain who we are rather than who we could become. This observation is highly relevant for moving on from disregulated eating, particularly at the dawning of a new year. You cannot be safe and grow, it’s as simple as that. This does not mean that you must move forward, only that if you wish to, by necessity, you must relinquish the comfort of safety. Fact is, for many people, emotional security is more crucial than reaching their potential. This is especially true for those disregulated eaters who have experienced little emotional certainty or security in their lives. Sadly,...

Just as Santa checks his list once and then again, you‘ll need to go over some things to make sure you’re ready for Christmas day eating (whether you celebrate the holiday or simply enjoy an occasion getting together with friends and family) because preparation for challenges is one-third of a successful process. Another third is follow through and the final third is a post-eating assessment which we’ll get to next week. For now, your job is to focus on how you want to think and act around food on Christmas. First, take 10 minutes or so to make sure your belief system is rational and in line with your goals. List your holiday eating beliefs, comb through them for irrational cognitions, then transform them into rational ones (use my RULES OF “NORMAL” EATING chapter on beliefs to guide you). Consider not only food but your mindset about spending the day with...

I was having dinner with a colleague and friend one night and we got to talking about our previous lives and struggles, identifying what helped us progress and how we might use that knowledge to help our clients. With very different histories, both of us had made full recoveries. The more we talked about our transformations, the clearer it became that we did have one very significant thing in common. Neither of us believed that the life we’d been living and the addictive struggles we’d been having way back when were what was meant to be for the rest of our lives. As soon as my friend said, “I just knew this wasn’t the life I was meant to live,” I realized that I had felt the exact same way. There was no chance I was going to spend my life alternately starving and stuffing myself, obsessing about food and weight,...

One of the hardest parts of being over- or underweight and recovering from eating problems is figuring out how to deal with unkind or merely unhelpful remarks. While some assertive folks never put up with inappropriate commentary directed toward them on any subject, others stand up for themselves in every aspect of life except eating or weight. Learning how to handle improper comments is an essential life skill. Assuming that someone has the cognitive ability to change, it’s reasonable to expect that people who say they love you and with whom you are on an intimate basis (friends, partners, and family members) will be able to learn to treat you appropriately. It’s all in what you say and how you say it. The biggest problems I see with clients is either that they sit with hurt feelings so long that they eventually blow up and become ineffective communicators, or that they...

How exactly do we acquire our identity and how does it shape our eating? Much of who we are is dictated by our genes—temperament and talent, for example—but what of other factors? Are you who you think you are, who other people think you are, or a composite of both? If a major part of your identity is feeling unloved and unlovable, how does that affect your ability to overcome food and weight problems? Maybe you’re like my many clients who are kind, other-oriented and compliant, but live in fear of somehow “becoming” unkind, selfish, and demanding. How would this happen: Would you sneak up on yourself at gunpoint and force yourself to be different? Of course not. This fear is irrational. Personality traits don’t simply appear and disappear magically overnight. You have to work on developing qualities—or not. You’re won’t become something you don’t want to be because you won’t...

Recently I read a book describing attachment styles and was reminded of the importance of our earliest relationships which teach us how to connect to and trust in ourselves and others. Not only is your learned attachment style predictive of how you will relate to people in adulthood, it also plays a part in how you attach to yourself—to your internal world—and has a direct bearing on how you may use food in your life. British psychiatrist John Bowlby described four “attachment styles” that develop between children and their care-takers and get played out in life. Note that by neatly summarizing them, I’m over-simplifying a complex subject and that styles are not as black and white as portrayed below. Secure is characterized by people with high self-esteem, positive self-image, and good mental health. They have the ability to form and maintain healthy relationships.Anxious resistant is found in people who have difficulty...

Many disregulated eaters hold dysfunctional beliefs about needing to be sure and dong things right. They must be absolutely certain a choice is correct before making it, or need assurance that previous action was what they should have taken. Although it’s important to make well informed choices and refrain from regularly acting impulsively, we can’t know that what we do or have done will work out the way we hoped. What are you afraid of when you relentlessly seek certainty, especially by asking others’ opinions—pain, making mistakes, failure, or being thrown off course by the zigs and zags of life? If things go wrong, do you believe you’ll be punished by someone or overwhelmed with shame and remorse? Don’t get me wrong. It’s essential to know how to ask for help and to feel comfortable taking in the wisdom people have to offer. But none of that can give you a...

Changing longstanding eating patterns can feel like an overwhelming job. Sometimes there’s so much to pay attention to and get a handle on—hunger, food selection, nutrition, mindfulness, satisfaction, fullness, emotions—that you don’t know where to start. It helps to find one focus and stick to it for a while until you make progress. What you pick doesn’t matter very much, only that you make a commitment to that choice. Here are a list of behaviors that lend themselves well to a productive focus. For a whole month, put your energies into developing positive habits in one of these areas. If you succeed, great, move on to another behavior. If not, figure out what’s not working (like you’re not really trying or a more specific reason), and refocus for another month.Hunger: Use a scale of 1-10 and eat only when you’re moderately hungry.Diet Mentality: Purge your mind of thoughts about “good” and...

Overweight people may be uncomfortable with their appearance due to a concept called learned self-consciousness. Of course, a person can be any weight and self-conscious or plus-size and cool with it. With learned self-consciousness, you are hyper-aware of your body or appearance, uneasy being looked at or even noticed, and become twitchy when people focus or comment on your body. You’re dying to blend in, be invisible, shrink into nothingness. Self-consciousness is a learned trait—and you can unlearn it. Children are notoriously unselfconscious—they scream, dance around, run naked, make silly sounds, and pick their noses in public. They would continue this behavior on into adulthood and probably take it to their grave were it not for the intervention of adults who socialize them into thinking that certain behaviors are unacceptable and off limits. A good deal of the teaching is about our bodies, so that we become preoccupied with how they...

A few months ago, a client was complaining about her fear of making a commitment to exercise. She realized that she was so terrified of failing (again), that she couldn’t even get started. In spite of what many self-help gurus say, if you’re a person with mixed feelings like my client, making a serious commitment to new behavior can be the worst thing you can do to recover from eating problems. Surprised to hear that? Well, read on. Commitment is the promise to adhere to long-term hard work. It’s one of those words like discipline, control, will power and all the “shoulds” that make some people just want to run out and do the opposite. Diet plans and exercise programs are based on the idea of commitment—identifying goals and going all out to reach them. To be sure, a multitude of people find setting, monitoring, and ardently pursuing health goals effective...

Growing up in NJ in the 50s, a special event was going to a diner called Holly’s to have a banana split. Although I looked forward to such a treat, I never classified it as “real fun.” I raise this subject because a while ago on the radio, I heard that Pop Tarts are just that—“real fun.” When exactly did food become major excitement in our lives? Ever since I remember, food has been tasty, yummy, scrumptious and occasionally even deliriously delectable, but when did it morph into an event in and of itself, a happening touted as more wondrous than nearly anything else? Sure, going to Holly’s for a banana split brought me pleasure, but it was one among many I enjoyed as a youth—going to an amusement park, the movies, the circus, ice-skating, bike riding, reading, and swimming in the ocean. Food wasn’t a major topic of conversation except...

Nothing thwarts recovery from food problems more than not believing that it’s okay to succeed—not only that success is acceptable, but that it’s a good thing. It’s shocking how many disregulated eaters grow up with the belief that it’s wrong to succeed, and this belief then becomes a major obstacle to feeling positive about achievement. Whether we’re talking overcoming eating problems or triumphing in other areas of life, what you believe about success is an essential prerequisite to making it happen. Many disregulated eaters have mixed feelings about success because you were raised to think that a trail of accomplishments will lead you to becoming arrogant, boastful, self-righteous, snooty, and unpopular. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We’re talking apples and oranges here. These traits are not a consequence of success, but are characteristics of people independent of achievement or a lack thereof. Let’s take a look at specific unhealthy,...

If you’re an overeater or a binge-eater who’s learning the rules of “normal” eating, you may be a little worried about missing out on the pleasure of eating. In fact, it may be so difficult for you to conceive of not eating foods you love the way you do now that you end up eating more of them just to prove you can have them. Looking for something to “get” in return for “giving up” pleasure? Read on. First off, you don’t give up pleasure when you say no to food when you’re not hungry. Au contraire. Because food tastes best when you’re moderately hungry, your taste buds should perk right up if you’re hitting them at just the right hungry moment—and eating slowly and mindfully. In which case you’ll be extracting lots of pleasure from your food because you’re hungry, more than when you’re snarfing down large quantities in secret...

If you think of your eating problem in a new light—as a coping problem—your goal will then be to improve your skills in order to reduce unwanted eating. To grow these skills, you need to understand what life skills are, which ones you’re already using successfully, and which ones need work. So, a little about life skills to get you started. Barring dumb luck, in terms of evolution, people with flexible, varied life skills do better than those whose are narrow and rigid. Makes sense: the rigid problem-solver uses the same strategy to no avail, while the flexible problem-solver tries this or that until something works. Most of us have a style, a preference for how we deal with difficulties—by turning to others or going it alone, focusing on a long-term goal or taking things as they come, jumping right in or cautiously circling around a problem, using our heads or...

Do you tell yourself you don’t have time for food shopping or preparation, eating healthily, sleeping sufficient hours, or exercising regularly? Do you lament that you’re so stressed and overwhelmed, there’s not a minute to take care of yourself? You may place the blame on there not being enough hours in a day but, really, time isn’t the problem. Your beliefs are! Until you recognize and debunk the lies you tell yourself about being too busy, you won’t resolve your food, weight, and self-care problems.   In truth, there are people who lead super demanding lives who take excellent care of themselves and folks who do next to nothing all day who treat themselves poorly. Regarding self-care, time is a factor, but not the most crucial one. It’s just a common and handy excuse for not doing right by you. When things are important, you carve out a space in your...

When I read this quote by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” I was struck by the power of his words. Though few, they tell an inspiring story. Reading them carefully, you’ll see that the only word missing is the conclusion of the story: “succeed.” Not to bore you with an English lesson, but let’s dissect what Beckett is saying. “Ever tried.” I hear from clients all the time how hard they’ve tried…and how long they’ve been trying. By the time they reach me, they’re often at the end of their rope, having lost 100 pounds or more two or three times and regained it all and then some. Which brings us to “Ever failed.” All of them feel like utter and complete failures, never realizing that it’s diets which have failed them. Diets do work for some people—about 5% of...

I can’t recall who said the following, but this sentiment speaks volumes: “I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere until I got somewhere.” When we overfocus on a goal, we lose connection to the process of getting there. Nowhere is this truer than on the road to “normal” eating. How many of you have had this experience? You have a goal—say, not yelling at your kids, increasing sales for your company, exercising three days a week, or becoming conversant in Spanish. You know in your head that this is exactly what you want to do, while another part of you is saying that this objective is ridiculously impossible and that you can’t possibly achieve it. Inching along, you feel as if you’re standing still, making no progress. But with persistence, step by baby step, you continue to move forward until suddenly, voilá, you’re there—you’ve achieved what you set out to do....

Occasionally, we all act like our parents. How can we not, as they are the ones whose genes we carry and who first taught us how to be in the world. A number of my clients are aghast that they will become too like their parents which colors how they choose to think and act—often to their detriment. Here are some examples of this dynamic:One client is very timid and works overly hard to be agreeable—the kind of woman I write about in Nice Girls Finish Fat. Her father spent most of her childhood raging at her and her sister after their mother died and he had to raise them himself. Afraid of his anger, people kept away and the family became quite isolated. My client vowed early on to put a damper on her temper and go along to get along. Now, middle-aged, she’s had two abusive husbands and is in...

How many of you self-punish to regulate your eating? Punishment starts with fear, self-judgment, and self-anger. Many disregulated eaters get stuck in this rigid, misguided approach and never move on to more enlightened, self-nurturing, self-loving ways of regulating eating. Here’s what self-punishment does: After you’ve done something you feel badly about, you use words or actions to make yourself feel worse. Double ouch! Fortunately, there is another way of changing behavior. The dictionary definition of punish is to “inflict a penalty.” We learn to punish in two major ways: By being punished a good deal as children and by internalizing the punishing attitude our role modeling parents exhibited when they tried to change their or our behavior. When we call ourselves “bad” or other derogatory words after overeating, we engage in verbal punishment. Punishing attitudes abound in society, especially with people who do not meet certain norms: eg, with food, drugs...

In response to one of my blogs, I was asked: “Is it possible to stop people from talking about eating and weight?” Hurray, I thought: “Am I the only one on the planet tired of yakking about this subject?” Short of duct-taping their mouths, we can’t actually prevent people from talking about it, but we can exert subtle and direct pressure on them. Even if our strategies fail, they will help us express our needs, an important skill to practice. There are four ways to handle people talking about eating or weight. First, ignore it. Nod pleasantly while channeling your thoughts elsewhere—to a book you’ve been enjoying, the great sex you had yesterday, resolving a family problem, or writing a grocery list in your head. Sometimes it’s distracting enough to simply take in the scenery or keep your mind blank. Better yet, use the moment to practice deep breathing or body...

Are you so goal-oriented that you overfocus on the endpoint of an activity and miss the journey that gets you there? If so, I bet you’re wildly impatient with the seemingly endless baby-stepping of going from dysregulated to regulated or “normal” eating. Staying super tuned in to the journey can make all the difference between throwing in the towel in frustration and sticking to intuitive eating all the way to recovery. It’s an asset to be goal-oriented—you get things done, are the go-to person, receive compliments galore, and bask in the satisfaction of each new achievement. This talent is successful with work, chores, responsibilities, and for keeping on when others’ spirits flag. However, it is not the only way to get from here to there. Although it’s important to keep goals in mind—improved health, stronger energy, higher self-esteem, and more comfort around food—to become a “normal” eater, it’s equally essential to...

I’ve just spent the better part of an hour unsuccessfully digging through reading material trying to identify where I read (within the last week!) that “biography is not identity.” I had to wait to carve out time to blog about this subject and, in the interim, forgot where I found these four words which leapt off the page and tattooed themselves onto my brain. How often do I hear clients make a determination about who they are based on what happened to them as children? Every day. If they were poor and had to go to neighbors’ homes begging for food to feed their younger siblings, they still carry deprivation and shame with them. If their father left them and their mother when they were toddlers, they still think of themselves as fatherless, abandoned children. If their mother trashed them with her words when she got drunk, they can’t shake the belief...