I don’t focus much on weight in therapy sessions because I believe that learning how to eat “normally” is more crucial than any number on the scale. In fact, I shy away from weight discussions with clients except when the subject comes up naturally, and hesitate to write much on weight because zeroing in on it, per se, doesn’t generally pay off but does get people anxious and upset. However, recognizing that folks who don’t want to put back the pounds need insights, information, and incentives, I (sigh) write this blog. According to the American Journal of Physiology (7/8/09), there’s more than one way that exercise helps prevent people from regaining weight they’ve lost or maintaining their “defended weight” (what a person weighs naturally). Of course, we could talk for eons about what an individual’s natural or defended weight should be—the weight you generally carry, the number on the scale when...

No surprise to me that there’s a high correlation between stress and weight gain. Slim folks get anxious and overwhelmed too—but don’t feel like eating. Unfortunately, stress and worry more often cause overeating, feeding into and off one another (pun intended), so that my work is to teach overweight worry warts how to scale back their agita to improve their relationship with food. “Stress can cause people who are already overweight to pack on more pounds,” says Jason P. Block, MD, MPH and colleagues (Tufts Health Letter, 10/09), concluding that “subjects with a higher body-mass index (BMI) at the start of [his] study ‘who reported greater psychosocial stress, gained more weight’, whereas this pattern was not evident for those with lower baseline body mass indexes” (American Journal of Epidemiology, 7/15/09). He also notes a difference between the kinds of stress encountered by men and women—males gained weight worrying about bills, lack...

In addition to what you eat affecting your brain chemistry, mood, alertness, energy level, and performance, we’re now learning that how much and when you eat also has an impact. You may know this intuitively from the post-Thanksgiving dinner crash you experience, but not think about how food affects you every day of the year. High-fat/high-calorie meals slow down absorption of food needed for energy, hence that logy feeling that hits us mid-afternoon or after a heavy meal when blood is re-directed away from the brain to the stomach to aid digestion. It makes sense that a dearth of blood to the brain would cause fatigue. So if you’re tired a lot, could be that your stomach is getting more blood than your brain is and you might consider whether your food intake, timing, and meal size could be the cause. Our circadian rhythms (changes in physical and mental characteristics over...

A trio of books by Barbara Small, MA on subjects near and dear to the hearts of disregulated eaters—assertiveness, effective communication and self-talk—belong up there on your bookshelf. Small, a reformed overeater and “nice girl,” counselor, and life coach from Victoria, BC, has lots of insightful and instructive things to say about how to get your head on straight, get out of behavioral ruts, and speak your needs. In WHAT ABOUT ME, WHAT DO I WANT: BECOMING ASSERTIVE she focuses on how to get what you want in life. Starting off with communication styles, she moves on to discuss how we learn to communicate poorly and how to use cognitive restructuring to turn around your thinking with hands-on suggestions to become more assertive. The book is filled with self-assessment exercises, practical advice, and humor. In fact, it’s a mini-workbook written in clear, cogent language that teaches you exactly what you need...

A while back, I read about a research project studying loss of control (LOC) eating and got to thinking about the study’s need to distinguish it from garden variety overeating. The subject can be confusing. For example, the concept of loss of control eating may be helpful for overeaters, but it is problematic for highly restrictive eaters who are too in control when they eat and need to cut themselves some slack around food. So for strict undereaters LOC eating might actually be a good thing. To be clear then, today’s blog is for overeaters who lose control around food to their detriment. The way I see it is that all overeating isn’t LOC eating, and all LOC eating isn’t overeating. Overeating is continuing to consume food past fullness or satisfaction. Of course, sometimes we consciously take a few more bites than we really need, but it doesn’t make a huge...

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,...

It’s hard to watch clients sink into despair about wanting to spend the holidays with family who aren’t very nice to them and who are, frankly, toxic to be around. Clients could feel joyous and proud choosing to be with healthy, loving friends without fear of family dynamics ruining “normal” eating or a good time, but instead, yearn desperately for a happy, functional family that never was or will be. This is a natural concern for folks in their 20s who are just breaking away from home and learning to be independent, but it’s downright self-destructive for people who are older and who need to move on. This blog is for all of you who have yet to emotionally separate from your families, particularly your parents. Separation means viewing them from a mature perspective, ie, adult to adult. You recognize their strengths and weaknesses, no longer expect them to gratify your...

As a therapist, I often get asked what I do with difficult emotions, that is, how I handle life’s rough spots. Although I believe that all emotionally healthy people have a range of techniques for dealing with intense feelings, I know we all have certain skills we rely on. Recently I’ve set up a 48-hour rule about a certain kind of emotion visiting me, and have found it very useful. Not long ago, I had a bunch of bummer things happen to me: being hurt by a friend, problems with a few clients, and a rejection regarding a new writing project. In each instance, I felt some combination of crummy—dejected, angry, helpless, frustrated, misunderstood, devalued, or invalidated. So I followed the 90-second rule (see my 8/21/09 blog), allowing my feelings to flow, no matter how uncomfortable they made me, neither rejecting nor inviting the hurt, but letting it come and go...

I admit, I’m fascinated by the science of eating and weight and thrilled at how far we’ve come from the simplistic notion that slimness is merely a matter of self-control and willpower. The newest headline to catch my eye is “Bacteria in Intestines Play Key Role in Weight Gain, Study Finds”( LA Times, 11/12/09). Its conclusions are enlightening. Reporting on the results of a study on mice in Science Translational Medicine, Thomas H. Maugh II says, “A high-fat, high-sugar diet…alters the composition of bacteria in your intestines, making it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it.” According to researcher Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis, 90% of the bacteria in our gut (needed to digest food) falls into two categories: lean rats have more Bacteroidetes and heavy mice have more Firmicutes. Because Firmicutes are more efficient at converting food into calories, mice with more of...

If you were severely or chronically emotionally wounded in childhood or later life, you may fear “wounding” others if you say no, turn down advice, refuse to be their only support, or simply desire to focus on yourself rather than on them. Many disregulated eaters abuse food (and themselves) rather than hurt another person’s feelings. Hurting someone’s feelings is not a comfortable thing to do, but when appropriate, it is an essential life skill for quality mental health. Even in healthy relationships, it sometimes happens that remarks will be said or actions taken that hurt. We’ve all been on the giving or receiving end of moments like these because we’re human. In unhealthy relationships, however, your heart may get stomped on regularly. In this case, it’s necessary to gently let someone know that they’re hurting you. If they do not get the gentle reminder, be more direct. If they don’t get...