There must be something in our DNA that makes us think we can take short cuts to reach our goals because we all skip down that road once in a while. But if you think you can sneak a short cut to resolve your eating problems, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Ironically, the less often you try to take the easy way out, the faster you’ll progress. Be honest, do you hear what experts say about making progress and think, “Well, that may work for other people, but I’ve got my own plans and ideas,” read a book on recovery and believe you can get around the author’s advice? Or maybe you know folks who’ve resolved eating problems like yours, and view their path to wholeness and health as too long and arduous, so you follow your impatience down a short cut that turns out to be a dead end. There’s no...

Ever wonder how your treaters view working with you as a troubled eater? This topic came up at a workshop I taught last week for the Mountain Area Health Education Center and the Center for Disordered Eating in Asheville, NC. Here are some of participants’ sentiments, which are representative of clinicians in general. The clinicians in the workshop—nurses, therapists, and dieticians—work in clinics, private practice, hospitals, and rehabs and treat a range of problems, including anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating, body dysmorphia, nutritional imbalances, depression, anxiety, and bi-polar disorder, along with medical conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. All are committed to helping clients: eat more “normally” and healthfully, love their bodies at any size, reduce health risks and increase longevity, decrease food obsession, fight destructive cultural values condemning fat and extolling thin, use their bodies more functionally, turn to people instead of food or weight/food preoccupation when distressed, and live a...

A message board member ( HYPERLINK "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) asked me to blog about chronic illness and eating. Chronic illness is stressful—intermittent or ongoing pain, medication protocols, doctors’ visits, unexpected reoccurrences, indeterminate remissions, and lifestyle limitations that make "normal" eating difficult due to lack of exercise from pain or limited mobility, being home a great deal surrounded by food, increased depression, and using food for comfort or to reward yourself. Although I’m no expert on chronic illness, my take is that your relationship with food before chronic illness is often (but not always) a predictor of your relationship with it when illness sets in. Ask yourself: how healthy was my relationship with food before my illness? A similar example is that disregulated eaters who develop food allergies have trouble coping with restriction because it generates feelings of deprivation and unfairness, whereas “normal” eaters aren’t so bothered by saying no to off-limit foods....

When you haven’t succeeded in reaching your eating (or other) goals, does that mean you’ve failed? Does not succeeding signify that you’re at the end of a process or in the middle of one? Does it mean that you’ve tried your hardest and should give up or that you’re simply not there yet? How you answer these questions will predict your success. People who’ve tired for decades to develop a healthy relationship with food or to lose weight or keep it off often complain, “I’m a failure,” “This won’t work,” or “I’ll never be a ‘normal’ eater.” Although it’s crucial to be honest and not deny or minimize reality, believing you’re a failure lays the ground work for it because it stops you from trying. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to totally eliminate the high-voltage word failure from your vocabulary because it so easily can trigger negative feelings about yourself. When...

I was reading a mystery recently in which an impatient character chided her partner for not getting out and doing something to solve a murder. Her partner coolly replied, “I am doing something. I’m waiting.” A valuable perspective, especially for all of you who can’t sit still and insist on charging into the future—or eating because there’s nothing to do. The point is that waiting is doing something. Waiting is what comes before one action and after another, a doing sandwiched between two actions that move you forward, one in the past and one in the future. Sometimes you can’t know what the second action will be because you must wait for a reaction to your first action. Waiting is as important as taking action, but most of us do it poorly. It’s difficult because it makes us feel passive and at the whim of fate, because it churns up our...

We’ve all been in the situation of explaining repeatedly to someone how we’d like them to alter their behavior, with the result of absolutely zero change occurring whatsoever. This can leave you feeling frustrated, helpless, angry—and wanting to eat. The fact is, because of how their personalities are constructed, not everyone is open to change. If you think of people as closed- or open-looped, you’ll get the picture. For example, clients seek therapy with me because they want to eat differently. Ditto people who join my message boards, attend my workshops, or read my books. They are open-looped people seeking out new information or insights to improve themselves. Sure, they may be a bit wary of change, but they basically see becoming different as making life better than it has been. We can think of them as open-looped, that is, they are eager to take in new bits of data about...

I wrote THE FOOD AND FEELINGS WORKBOOK due to the realization that clients had a very difficult time following their appetite according to THE RULES OF “NORMAL” EATING because their feelings—or more precisely their lack of attunement to and understanding of their feelings—kept getting in the way. In short, the fact that disregulated eaters need to better manage emotions is one of the things that’s been keeping them stuck in unhealthy eating and self-nurturing patterns. Now it seems that researchers have quantified mood and its relationship to body weight. An AARP article, Mood and Food: Can’t lose weight? Your personality may be to blame (1/12) offers some enlightening conclusions. Not astounding insights, but more reason to work on managing your feelings more effectively in order to become a “normal” eater. A National Institute on Aging study “found that impulsive people weigh about 22 pounds more than those who are cautious. Antagonistic...

I’ve blogged often about the wild child in you that’s been getting its way around food—the part that’s entitled, defiant, demanding, uncaring about consequence, and who lives only in the moment. But there’s another part of the wild child that knows she’s out of her league around food and desperately, more than anything in the world, wants the loving, nurturing, compassionate, caring part of you to reign her in and be in charge. Young children have no idea what’s good for them. They act impulsively and lack the life experience and awareness to look beyond now to consequence in what adults call the future. They barely have a past, never mind figuring out what lies ahead. Although they don’t know exactly what they don’t know, they yearn for safety from adults who seem to have wisdom. In short, they sense that you might know what’s best for them no matter how...

Many disregulated eaters grow up in dysfunctional families and, therefore, lack understanding of what constitutes normal behavior and feelings—you may do whatever your parents did or exactly the opposite and be confused about what is mentally healthy or unhealthy. This uncertainty limits your life skill effectiveness and makes it harder to improve your relationship with food. So, here are some guidelines for emotional health. There are people in the world who will love, value, and take care of you age appropriately. They’ll listen intently to what you have to say, take you seriously, believe you, compassionately challenge you when you do things not in your long-term best interest, validate and support your feelings, and enjoy being close to you. It’s natural to want to confide, share, and express feelings and expect a friend/lover to do the same. This creates mutual trust, understanding and closeness. There are people who will tolerate you...

I’ve been writing treatment plans for clients at different worksites since the late 1980s, and now do them for telephone/Skype clients when I do an initial consultation. It recently dawned on me that disregulated eaters would benefit from developing their own treatment plans. It’s a pretty straightforward endeavor. Here’s how. A treatment plan gives structure to getting from here to there. It’s a crucial tool for disregulated eaters who crave the do’s and don’ts inherent in diets (minus restriction). A treatment plan is different from devising goals because of its flexibility and internal exploration. In most clinical settings, a treatment plan review is done quarterly or even monthly. After each review, the plan is rewritten to meet current needs. You can devise one for yourself. My treatment plans have four parts but you can create your own: Strengths, Challenges, Goals, and Avenues to Reach Goals. Strengths include abilities and competencies, such...

I’m always looking for evidence-based ways to help clients improve their mental health. There’s so much pseudo-science out there, that I was delighted when a friend told me about the website of Greater Good in Action: https://ggia.berkeley.edu/. All of their practices are based on scientific studies and trials. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of their suggestions will work for you. It only means that they work for many people. The Greater Good in Action at UC Berkley encourages these practices:Awe: Observing nature and the beauty of the worldCompassion: Loving-kindness, eliciting altruism, feeling connected/supportedConnection: Effective apology, forgiveness, shared identity, friendship, gratitudeEmpathy: Increasing closeness, letting go of anger, active listening, positivityForgiveness: Forgiveness, letting go of anger, effective apologyGratitude: journaling, letter-writing, positivity, nature, relationshipsHappiness: strengths’ focus, random acts of kindness, best possible self, gratitudeKindness: shared identity, feeling connected, compassion, make giving feel goodMindfulness: body scan meditation, mindful breathing, self-compassion breakOptimism: three good things,...

I love using metaphors in writing and therapy. They’re powerful tools to engage the unconscious mind and change our thinking without even realizing it’s happening. Fact is, we often think and self-talk in metaphor without knowing it, so we might as well intentionally use ones which are positive and promote transformation.A while back a client described a binge she’d had as “falling into a hole,” after which she gradually returned to “normal” eating. Let’s take a look at her metaphor. What sensory sensations and emotional reactions does this image generate in you? Holes are often deep and dark places and falling into one might cause us to feel claustrophobic, panicky, and maybe hopeless about climbing out. We view falling into one as a bad thing to happen to us. So this client was equating all these feelings with having taken in more food than she wished to and making a judgmental,...

While listening to an NPR program on changing our thoughts about death and dying, one of the experts interviewed encouraged listeners to become proactive in their lives, wisely admonishing that “hope is not a plan.” I couldn’t agree more. How often do I hear clients and Food and Feelings message board members express their hopes without strategies to transform them into reality. And how do you think that turns out? Without a plan, outcomes are generally poor, and disregulated eaters feel like failures. For example, say, you’ve been eating relatively “normally” for a couple of months and are about to visit your family for a week. In the past, when you’ve gone back home, you’ve fallen into unhealthy eating behaviors—snacking mindlessly, making mostly unhealthy food choices, and gobbling up everything on your plate. Rather than develop a plan to avoid these behaviors, you simply hope things will be different because you’ve...

Disregulated eaters often are not merely unhappy with their eating but with their lives. In fact, sometimes this every day dissatisfaction is what drives them to eat. In order to have a satisfying life, you must know your values—What means a great deal to you? What do you love above all else? What activities bring you the most happiest? If you knew you were going to be stranded on, say, an island for the rest of your life and had the opportunity to choose what you wished to bring along with you, you’d want to make some serious decisions. Rather than what you “feel like” taking, you’d want to think long and hard about what is dearest to you and what would keep you alive and thriving. Let’s even say that certain choices could be replenished, but you couldn’t change your initial decisions. Whatever you chose, you’d have to stick with...

What’s the difference between having a habit and having an addiction? It’s important to distinguish between the two, which I don’t think disregulated eaters always do. I say this due to how often I hear them say that they’re addicted to food when I think they really mean that they’re habituated to it. Here’s an example. Recently I had some medical tests that required abstention from coffee and lactose products, which meant not having my morning cup of java or nightly yogurt while watching the late news. I knew from experience that I’d have a wicked withdrawal headache without the coffee which is addictive, so I started cutting down gradually a few days before and voilá, no headache on testing day. And, although I felt a pang for the yogurt, I felt physically fine without it. Let’s look at the difference in not consuming these foods, noting similarities and differences. I...

A debate that comes up frequently on my Food and Feelings message board is whether telling ourselves things we don’t believe—that we’re lovable or deserving—is foolish self-deception or the way to encourage change in thinking or behavior. This is another way of asking if, as the AA saying goes, it works to fake it til we make it. Truth is, all learning is through "faking it til you make it.” Do you think I told my initial psychotherapy clients how uncertain I was that I could help them because I lacked clinical experience and often felt as if I had no clue what I was doing? As you were acquiring your job skills, did you admit to customers, clients, colleagues (or your boss) that you were flying by the seat of your pants? As a salesperson, would you tell prospective buyers that you have no proof and only hope that a...

Disregulated eaters often tell me that they engage in unwanted eating because they’re unhappy or can’t find meaning in life, so I was pleased to come upon an article in THE WEEK (2/22/13) which draws enlightening distinctions between the two. The article, The last word, puts forth the wisdom of Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist who lived through the Holocaust, authored the classic MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING, and died in the late 1990s. Frankl saw happiness and seeking meaning in life as two extremes which were mutually exclusive. To him, happiness is momentary and fleeting, while finding meaning brings more lasting, positive feelings. He says that “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’” He means that we can’t simply go around grabbing at happiness, but that it must be the consequence of other pursuits. That is, one becomes happy as an...

I went to a terrific lecture on Mindfulness Meditation, a powerful tool for changing thoughts and feelings, de-stressing, and becoming emotionally and physically healthy. For those of you who want a research-driven, evidence-based approach to stress reduction, reducing disregulated eating, and achieving greater happiness, this is it. Mindfulness meditation is no “woo-woo” method of improving your life. It has a proven track record which you can check out at Massachusetts General Hospital: Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure. Quoting from a handout on the subject, mindfulness is the “dispassionate observation of and discerning the difference between sense faculty activity and thinking-fabrication.” It is a type of meta-cognition (rising above thoughts) by not getting involved in them. In this approach you know you have thoughts and recognize them as simply that. Just as, while waiting for a train, you don’t hop on every one that stops at the station, you don’t engage...

It makes perfect sense that humans have used the past to predict the future. Consider the maxim that “those who ignore history are bound to repeat it” and that “you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.” Although I wouldn’t argue with either adage, I want to warn you about using your past to predict your future. I was thinking about this subject while talking with a client whose dysfunctional family created a great deal of chaos for her in childhood. She was always on high alert and trying to figure out if Mom was going to blindside her with criticism or if Dad was going to be drinking which meant driving unsafely. It was essential for her physical and emotional survival that she look for connections between what happened last time Mom was in a bad mood and Dad was on a bender and how...

Though I haven’t read the book, here are a few excerpts from the prologue of MISSING OUT: IN PRAISE OF THE UNLIVED LIFE by Adam Phillips (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). Although some of you may scratch your heads as you read—Phillips is a complex, deep thinker and philosophical writer—I hope you’re able to appreciate how you can use these concepts to help in resolving your eating and body image problems. On it being okay to want and not have what you want: “What we fantasize about, what we long for, are the experiences, the things, and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad. But we [also] learn to live somewhere between the lives we have and the lives we would like.” On creating the story of our lives: “There is always what will turn...

Disregulated eaters often become victims of their to-do lists. Feeling stressed by what you believe you have to do, you’re more likely to turn to food to reduce you’re the pressure you’re experiencing. Here’s how to get yourself out from under. What helped one client I work with who drove herself crazy with whatever tasks she had left undone was to first and foremost realize that she had created the list herself. Sure, she had a job that required her to work and complete tasks, but she’s the one who felt driven about accomplishing them quickly and perfectly. No one was pressuring her. Too many of you whip yourselves into a frenzy in order to wipe your to-do list clean—only to create a new one the moment you’ve checked off the last item. When you do this, as the saying goes, you feel like a hamster who can’t stop running on...

You may believe that if only you were happier, you’d have a better relationship with food. But what makes for happiness—wealth, genetics, a great job, a loving family? You might be surprised to know it’s none of the above and readily available to you. According to a University of North Carolina study, happiness comes from pursuing the goal of helping others (“A genetic guide to true happiness,” The Week, 9/13/13). This study involved 80 volunteers who had their blood drawn after being asked the frequency that they felt “hedonistic pleasure” and/or deriving a sense of purpose in life by contributing to their community. Researchers found that “the genes of the volunteers whose lives contained lots of pleasure but little meaning were priming cells to express high levels of inflammation—which is linked to cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease—and a weaker anti-viral response to infection.” Seeking short-term pleasure (and what is non-hunger eating...

I was Skyping with a client who mentioned feeling awful about herself because she was having difficulty in a college math class. Many people I treat have a similar reaction—not to math, but to letting not doing well in an activity sour their view of themselves. And, of course, feeling negatively about themselves often primes them for a binge. Here’s how to think. You want to start from the premise that you are going to do some things well in life and some things poorly, that you have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else, and that your success or failure in an activity has nothing to do with your value as a human being. Working off this assumption, you won’t misinterpret what doing poorly means. Of course, you might still wish to do well in, say, math, but doing well or poorly won’t remotely define you’re worth. When I told...

A while ago I had a heartening discussion with a client who was finally able to keep her self-care consistent and was amazed at the difference it made in her eating and her life. Here are a few ideas we came up with that underlie her transformation, along with several metaphors that helped in maintaining her stability and consistency. Talking about how often she’d felt “depleted” which would drive her to eat, she shared how she’d recently turned this situation around by making several changes at once. First, she refused to allow her spouse to constantly criticize and talk down to her. Second, she began taking time for herself, including walking for 15 minutes daily and having a quiet cup of tea when she felt tense. These actions alone made her feel more solid and whole. By practicing ongoing self-care, when she entered a period of stress, she felt up to...

Many of my clients and Food and Feelings message board members turn to food when they feel powerless, especially vis a vis their parents. That’s because they ironically yearn for and spend time trying to gain power—the ability to get things done—that they already have (and have had for years). For sure, when we’re children, we’re seriously powerless. We can’t reach the top of the dresser, go places by ourselves, or get to run the show. Not only are we too physically small and weak to have much leverage, but we don’t have a completely formed, functional brain (that doesn’t happen until our late 20s!). So it makes sense that we’re forced to rely on adults, specifically our parents and older family members, to get virtually all of our needs met. Because they have power, we must adapt to their needs (crazy as they often are) in order to meet ours....

Many disregulated eaters have convinced themselves that eating solves their problems, or at least extinguishes the distress they have about their problems. Really? I’m of the opinion that eating to solve problems only causes more of them. I’m not saying that when you were a child eating didn’t make you feel better emotionally. Back then when you overate, binged or snacked in secret, you might have felt comforted without the guilt, shame or disappointment in yourself that you feel today when you engage in these behaviors. When your problem was, “I’m in emotional pain and I have no other way of soothing myself,” eating came in very handy. Maybe overeating helped you tune out the nightly battles between your parents at dinnertime, or crawling under the covers and snarfing down candy bars provided you with a bit of sweetness in a life that was full of bitterness, or maybe being a...

I hate to break it to you, but there is no “child within you” or “inner child.” The term has been around for decades, and I hear it often when talking with clients. If you’re willing to give up this concept, you can replace it with one that is more constructive and healing. If you’re an adult, you can’t be a child. You have the brain and other body components of an adult. Sure, you may act like a child, think immaturely, feel childish, or be totally in touch with and affected by your positive or negative memories from childhood—but you can’t do this as anything but the adult you are. There is no “part” of you that is a child, as in, “The child in me wants to strike back when someone hurts my feelings” or “There’s a wounded child in me.” Where is that child? Exactly which part of...

Many disregulated eaters insist they can’t possibly resolve their eating problems without being confident that they will. Although confidence is touted in generating success, it can be a red herring. Truth is, you can be confident and still make poor decisions, as you well know when you consider the times you’ve felt absolutely certain that you’ll never binge or diet again. So, agreed, confidence is not the key to recovery?Instead, how about the quality of discernment which is synonymous with judgment, clear-sightedness, discrimination, and insight? Now there are some useful qualities. Your poor track record with food isn’t due to lack of confidence, but to a deficit in discernment—poor insight into the cause of your eating problems, failing to allow yourself to consider consequences, and not taking into account a host of feelings and beliefs which drive disregulated eating. For example, most of us have seen horror films in which the...

I know I’m bucking the trend here, but hundreds of conversations with clients have convinced me that there is an often missed correlation between mindfulness around food and mindlessness in the rest of the lives of disregulated eaters. From my perspective, many of them would benefit greatly from being more mindless in life so that they can become more mindful around food. Here’s why. As I wrote in Nice Girls Finish Fat (whose ideas also apply to “nice” men), your typical disregulated eater—at least those I’ve come across in my 30 years in the field—is no goof off who wants only to party, play, take life easy, and let loose. I’m not saying that some weren’t perhaps that way at one point in their lives, only that when I meet them, they’re fixated on being responsible, doing things “right,” achieving success, and desiring above almost all else to be “good” people....

Because most of you are searching for ways to become and stay motivated when it comes to eating, exercise and self-care, it’s important to understand what motivates people, in general, and you, in particular. Moreover, it’s crucial to recognize ways you’ve been trying to motivate yourself that have been proven not to work long term, such as focusing on weight loss and approval-seeking. What works? Read on. The following theories and tips come from an interview (Talk of the Nation, The Art and Science of Motivation, NPR) with two experts on motivation: Steven Reis, author of WHO AM I—THE 16 BASIC DESIRES THAT MOTIVATE OUR ACTIONS AND DETERMINE OUR PERSONALITIES and Daniel Pink, author of DRIVE—THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US. Dr. Reis defines motivation as “the assertion of your values” and strongly encourages us to surround ourselves with people who are supportive of them. Because we all prioritize values...

A client told me that she’d just been put on medication on which she couldn’t drink alcohol or would suffer serious side effects. Although she usually had a glass of wine at night to unwind, she said it was no big deal giving it up because the medication would make her feel better and she didn’t want to cause herself harm by drinking. Sighing, she said she only wished she could say no to food as easily. She went on to wonder how the alcohol decision felt like such a no-brainer, yet the idea of giving up certain foods made her feel deprived and resentful. I pointed out that other people might feel exactly the opposite: to give up specific foods would be no big deal, while the thought of reducing (or eliminating) alcohol consumption would send them into a tizzy. This led to discussing what’s really going on when we...

In an issue of Psychotherapy Networker (Sep/Oct 2012, vol. 36, no. 5, p. 20) I read a review of the book MINDSET: THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS by Stanford University developmental psychologist Carol Dweck which explains how our self-view can be changed to spur us on to success by shifting our mindsets. It’s relatively simple. The article, “The Truth about Bullying,” by Stan Davis, explains Dweck’s concept of fixed versus growth mindsets. People with a fixed mindset see themselves and their attributes or inadequacies as more or less permanent—they’re good at some things and bad at others, outgoing or shy, lovable or unlovable. Fixed-mindset thinkers view their successes as a “reflection of their more or less immutable gifts or talents” and view their failures as a “reflection of unchangeable deficits and weaknesses.” So many disregulated eaters have this kind of fixed mindset: they’re either this or that and mostly don’t feel...

Disregulated eaters tend to act as if feelings and behavior are one and the same, or at least as if they’re so intertwined that they can’t be separated. A line in a mystery I read long ago struck me as a useful description in distinguishing the two. I hope it helps you recognize the difference, especially around your eating. The line came from the protagonist in Lawrence Block’s mystery, EVEN THE WICKED: “There is, I have been taught, all the difference in the world between the desire and the act. The one is written on water, the other carved in stone.” The speaker is a recovered alcoholic, a deeply flawed but reflective private eye who has found a better life in recovery after years of addictive misery. Not so different from disregulated eaters who are working towards “normal” eating and learning not to act on impulse. I like the way that...

Disregulated eaters, as we know, tend to see things in terms of perfect or defective. How many times have you looked at someone who appears healthy and thought how they must be eating “right” all the time? How many times have you met people whom you thought had no flaws and wished to be them or like them? The truth is that there are no perfect eaters because there are no perfect people. Because I recognize that people who know of my work may perceive me as a perfect eater, I’m wary when they ask what I eat or how often, and evade answering these questions as best I can. I also know that clients who feel defective often project a wish onto me that I be perfect, and I try to show them some of my (many) imperfections to dispel this untruth. If I show and accept my flaws, I’m...

Many of you may look around at friends, family, or perfect strangers and wonder how the dickens they can stop themselves from overeating or noshing when they’re not hungry. One answer is that they’ve learned to delay gratification. Although this behavior involves genetic tendencies, childhood learning is also major behavior-shaper. Parental modeling and instruction are strong influences in developing the ability to delay gratification. Did your parents model waiting for rewards or have difficulty controlling their impulses? What did they teach you about the benefits of restraint? Moreover, how did they teach this lesson—compassionately or punitively? If you were unfairly punished for surrendering to impulse, might you be rebelling against restraint today? Trust affects kids’ patience (SCIENCE NEWS 11/17/12) describes the findings of a new study: “Kids’ beliefs about the reliability of the people around them can dramatically shape willingness to wait for a sweeter payoff…” This means that if you...

I had an interesting discussion a while back with a client about what self-reflection is and isn’t. It makes sense that if she had questions about it, disregulated eaters in general might have them too and that the subject would be blog-worthy. Self-reflection is a critical skill for recovery and emotional growth—but only if you do it correctly. Basically, the problem arose for a client who said that every time she tried to reflect upon her actions, her inner critic grabbed center stage and wouldn’t give it up. She thought, therefore, that reflection meant evaluating herself as good or bad. For her, and for many disregulated eaters, assessment almost automatically means coming up short and giving yourself a negative review. This mindset explained why self-reflection was such an onerous process for my client, which is exactly the opposite of what it’s meant to be. Self-reflection is an observational, non-judgmental process, a...

I’ve long said that this culture, and especially disregulated eaters, need more intentional mindlessness in their lives along with, of course, more mindfulness. Of course, it’s not something one could campaign about the way there’s a movement for mindfulness, but the value of mindlessness should not be underestimated. Maybe it’s simply a question of being mindful enough to know when you want to be mindless. When you’re really tuned into yourself, that would sound like this: I sure am exhausted and my brain and body long for a rest. If that’s what I’m craving, then I’m going to tune out the world for a while until I feel refreshed. Do you hear any judgment here? Notice any struggle about whether this desire is right or wrong? None at all. My point being that the body/mind knows what it wants and needs and you ignore mindlessness at your own eating peril. If...

Do you often eat food that isn’t good for you and that you’re not hungry for because you insist, “Well, why shouldn’t I eat it? I deserve it.” Truth is, when you feel truly deserving of good things, you don’t think this way. Yes, you do deserve to eat yummy foods, but with entitled eating, yumminess lasts until you guiltily swallow the last bite or feel sick to your stomach. Hello, you’re not eating for pleasure, but because you don’t have enough of it in your life. What follows your fleeting food fling is hours or days—or a lifetime—of feeling crummy about your eating and yourself. What you’re actually proving is that you don’t believe you deserve to feel good because feeling yucky is exactly what happens when you regularly eat for non-hunger reasons. Paradoxically, you end up driving home the point that you deserve pain and suffering, not pleasure. How...

A reminder of the importance in social relationships to help you become a “normal” eater. As Geneen Roth says so insightfully, in order to heal from eating problems, troubled eaters need to replace food with people. It seems that science agrees with Roth. If you are willing to do this, it will speed your recovery. In “Loneliness, Social Integration and Consumption of Sugar-Containing Beverages: Testing the Social Baseline Theory” (R.E. Henriksen, T. Torsheim, ad F. Thuen, 8/8/14, doi: 10.1371/journal.pome.0104421) the authors assert that “Social Baseline Theory (SBT) proposes that close relationships aid in metabolic resource management and that individuals without significant relationships may experience more demands on their own neural metabolic resources on a daily basis when solving problems, remaining vigilant against potential threats, and regulation emotional response.” This Norwegian study used self-reported data on “social integration and consumption of both sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened sodas and juices.” Their results: “perceived...

Who doesn’t know that it’s better to speak positively than negatively to yourself as a foundation for transformation? Hopefully all of you. Now here’s a new twist: when speaking to yourself, replacing the word “I” with “you” or your own name. Studying “the pronouns people use when they talk to themselves silently, inside their minds,” University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross concludes that “a subtle linguistic shift—shifting from 'I' to your own name—can have really powerful self-regulatory effects.” (“Why saying is believing—the science of self-talk” by Laura Starecheski, 10/7/14,3:16am/ET, Shots, Health News from NPR), According to Kross’s research, this shift can change how we feel and behave.He cites basketball star LeBron James, speaking about himself by using his own name when discussing his 2010 decision to switch teams: "I wanted to do what was best for LeBron James," said the athlete, "and what LeBron James was going to do to make...

“The shortest line between two points can be a crooked line,” said Bertolt Brecht, 20th century German poet, playwright, and theatre director. If this is true—and I believe it is—what does that mean for your recovery? My guess is that you will need to do a whole lot of rethinking about what progress and the journey toward success mean in order to reach your goals. The moment I read this quote, I thought it was terrific, mostly because of the visual image it triggers. We too often think of success as linear, as going from “here” to “there” on a direct course, and that mistaken assumption actually makes it far more difficult to succeed than believing that you’ll be doing a lot of zigging and zagging before you come to rest at a comfortable place in your relationship with food. Doesn’t a crooked line describe exactly what you’ve experienced? For example,...

A while ago, a client mentioned finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of her food and emotional problems. It dawned on me then that rarely are we in tunnels that are pitch black, totally devoid of light. In fact, most tunnels we find our way through have intermittent light that provides enough illumination to help us emerge from them. Where have the lights come from in your “tunnels” of overcoming eating problems, clearing trauma, and healing from emotional wounds? It’s important to remember what and who lighted your way so you can bring up those memories when you feel trapped and alone in the darkness. Moreover, it’s far more beneficial to focus on these “lights” than on how trapped you felt in whatever tunnel of despair you had been in. These bright memories alone can light the way for you now out of pain and suffering. Which...

A crucial trait that moves people from disregulated eating to “normal” eating is being resilient. High resilience is what makes them more resistant to the stresses and strains of life and better able to cope without turning to food. Read on to learn more about resilience and how to pump yours up. Research suggests that resilience may have its roots in an abundance of the brain chemical neuropeptide Y, with evidence suggesting that its levels have a strong genetic component. Dennis Charney, a psychiatry and neuroscience professor at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, “studying American prisoners of war in Vietnam who did not, despite the traumas endured, become depressed or develop PTSD, determined that they had 10 “critical psychology elements and characteristics…identified as: 1) optimism, 2) altruism, 3) having a moral compass or set of beliefs that cannot be shattered, 4) faith and spirituality, 5) humor, 6) having...

In one day I had three sessions focused on disregulated eaters judging themselves as bad for having thoughts they believed they shouldn’t have which then led to a binge. I don’t think I realized just how common this problem is until that day. If you judge your thoughts, it’s time to understand why you do and stop this destructive behavior. News bulletin: We’re allowed to have any darned kinds of thoughts we want. You may have learned that you must be pure of mind, but that’s nonsense. Your thoughts are private and personal, and having a wide range helps strengthen your authentic self—not the self you think you should have. Though they may cause you to feel discomfort, thoughts are neither good nor bad, but may be positive or negative, beneficial or harmful. And, to a large extent—surprise!— they’re under your control. For example, say you’ve had an argument with your...

When you’re trying to learn new behavior, how long do you give yourself? Do you expect to become habituated after a few tries or do you believe it’ll take such a long time that you give up in despair before you even start? Here’s what one scientific study has to say about habit formation. Most of us have heard and may even believe that it takes 21 days to form a habit. However, James Clear in “How Long Does It Actually Take to Form a New Habit (Backed by Science)” debunks that theory. In his 4/10/14 HuffPost Healthy Living article which can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/forming-new-habits_b_5104807.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000030, he tells us that there was never any science behind the “3 week” habit-formation principle—simply observations made by a plastic surgeon, Maxwell Maltz, about his patients’ recovery. According to a University College London study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology examining habit changes...

The day after I read an article on “busyness,” a client happened to share an epiphany she’d had: Tired of hearing herself say how busy she is as if it would earn her a gold star on her forehead, she decided that putting herself under the gun 24/7 wasn’t such a hot idea and that she’d have a better chance of relaxing, caring for herself, and eating “normally” if she slowed down the pace of her life. I couldn’t have agreed more. The article, “Are we really as busy as we think we are?” by Hanna Rosin (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 4/15/14, page18E), drives home this point: “The art of busyness is to convey genuine alarm at the pace of your life and a helpless resignation, as if someone else is setting the clock, and yet make it clear that you are on top of your game.” I used to be guilty of...

More than anything, more than even genetics, your beliefs dictate your world view and behavior. In order to understand why you’re so doggone attached to your current, wrongheaded beliefs, you have to understand their purpose and where they come from. In THE BELIEVING BRAIN, author Michael Shermer spells out the answer, “Our brains evolved to connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen. These meaningful patterns become beliefs, and these beliefs shape our understanding of reality. Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs.” (NY Times Books, 2011, p. 5) By the way, we call this confirmation seeking “confirmation bias.” It’s not only people whose brains are geared to connect the dots. When my cat spots or smells her pet carrier, she hightails it under the sofa. She’s figured out that each time we...

Here are some choice nuggets from Psychotherapy Networker (Jan/Feb 2014), whose entire issue is devoted to brain science and tells us a great deal about our habits. According to Brent Atkinson, Ph.D. (“The Great Deception—We’re Less in Control Than We Think”), “Whereas undisciplined people are influenced primarily by the gut feelings they experience in the present moment…disciplined people are equally influenced by good and bad feelings generated while remembering the past…or envisioning the future” (p. 28). Think about consequences and you’ll always do fine. He maintains that “…distress tolerance and self-soothing exercises help clients turn toward their own upset feelings and engage directly in physiological soothing, temporarily postponing thoughts about problems. This process of self-accompaniment elicits a sense of calm in the storm, allowing clients to avoid alarm or panic when things aren’t going well...each day that goes by without practicing distress tolerance and self-soothing decreases the likelihood that their brains...

Blogging about Rosie O’Donnell’s quest for better health is a deviation for me because I don’t generally blog about celebrities’ eating or weight issues, her focus is not exactly my focus, and her path toward health is not one I necessarily endorse. However… First off, Rosie is a recent transplant to Sarasota—well, she lives here part of the year— where I call home and saw her recently at our local comedy club, McCurdy’s. She was terrific, mostly making comedy out of raising her five children. What she didn’t much joke about was her near fatal heart attack in 2012 caused by an artery which was 99% blocked. Instead she got serious about women, including her former self, not taking care of their health. I must say that for a funny lady, she was deadly serious about educating women about the signs of a heart attack which are as follows: Uncomfortable pressure,...

Whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re always either reinforcing or changing behavioral patterns. This is true of our own attitudes and actions as well as those of others. Being aware of this dynamic is crucial to shaping the behaviors we wish to have. My thoughts on this subject stem from a conversation I had with a client about how to raise her sons effectively. She said that whenever she interacted with them, at least one of the things she attempted to get across was that she loved them. I then suggested that she might also consider how her words or actions were either reinforcing their old, unwanted habits or changing them. We moved on to talk about how she could apply this principle to transforming her eating and improving her relationship with her spouse. Think about it: Whatever you choose to think or do shapes your future thoughts and...