Wanting to Lose Weight
One of the most frequent laments I hear from clients is that, although they are finally starting to eat “normally,” they’re not losing weight. They understandably would like to shed pounds along with becoming healthier, yet recognize that focusing on weight loss per se might derail their improved eating. This is tricky business for troubled eaters.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight as long as it’s part of an entire regime toward health and fitness. The best approach is to follow the Health At Every Size protocol. Its health and fitness—rather than weight loss—goals, keep you focused on carin...
Source: Normal Eating - March 24, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Benefits of Habits
I came across a simple, but enlightening quote about habits that I thought worth passing on. Basically, it said that because no one escapes forming or falling into habits, we might as well choose positive rather than negative ones. Who could disagree?
Though I’ve blogged about this before, it’s worth repeating—habits and routines serve an evolutionary purpose. Thinking eats up mental energy, so our ancestors who negotiated life without unnecessary thinking had energy left over for more important, life-enhancing tasks. An ancestor who, like clockwork, headed out early each morning to hunt for game saved energy and ...
Source: Normal Eating - March 21, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Vulnerability and Emotional Eating
Vulnerability is a universal feeling, one to which we may attribute different meanings, and the meaning you make of this emotion will determine what you do with it.
Associated words to feeling vulnerable, physically or emotionally, are weak, small, insignificant, in danger, in trouble, susceptible, defenseless, or exposed. Each word indicates being at risk for harm due to lack of power. That’s because when we first felt vulnerability, in infancy, we did lack power to impact our lives. Our current take on vulnerability depends in large part on how our vulnerability was treated in childhood.
If we couldn’t fight back...
Source: Normal Eating - March 17, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Consciousness Is The Key to Success
Want to know one of the major reasons you haven’t changed your eating habits? Simple. You’re still responding in an unconscious way around food. Become more conscious and I guarantee you’ll leap forwarding in resolving your food issues.
Habits are behaviors we do without much thought. In evolutionary terms, we form automatic actions for survival. Our mind-body habituates so that it doesn’t have to put substantial energy into making the same decisions repeatedly, allowing it to direct energy in more vital directions in order to keep you alive and thriving. Humans wouldn’t be around today if they weren’t geare...
Source: Normal Eating - March 14, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Tolerating Abuse
If you’re often mistreated by one other or many others, you may have a high tolerance for abuse. This happens when you learn to put up with abuse to survive as a child. As an adult, not allowing yourself to be abused is certain to improve your eating.
For example, one client complained about a life-long battle with her brother who had never liked her and always tried to push her around. These siblings grew up with abusive parents, so I wasn’t surprised that one of them grew up to be an abuser and the other to be an abusee. My client put up with her brother turning up at all hours of the night demanding to crash at...
Source: Normal Eating - March 10, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Changing Behavioral Patterns
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 c...
Source: Normal Eating - March 7, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Are You Looking to Be Full or Fulfilled?
When yearning for fulfilment, It’s not by chance that disregulated eaters fill themselves with food—and with people, activities, and material goods as they seek satisfaction, contentment, connection, and meaning. Sadly, they rarely get what they’re looking for because full and fulfilled are as different as apples and oranges.
Many disregulated eaters yearn for more out of and a deeper engagement with life. They talk about feeling empty as if they could ingest something which would stay there and keep them feeling full up. The problem with using food—or success, applause or achievement to do this—is that you ke...
Source: Normal Eating - March 3, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
One More Reason to Exercise
When most disregulated eaters think about genes, they look at them as static predeterminants of body weight, but there is more going on than meets the eye. Did you know that you can actually change your cellular structure by exercising?
“How exercise changes cells is a mystery” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 8/27/13, p. 18F), reminds us that some of our genes turn on and off—called expression—“depending on what biochemical signals they receive from elsewhere in the body. When they turn on, genes express various proteins that, in turn, prompt a range of physiological actions.” For example, it turns out that somethi...
Source: Normal Eating - February 28, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Venting versus Complaining
There’s a fine line between sharing intense negative feelings, called venting, and their morphing into gripes and grumbles that seem to have a life of their own. The former is a useful way to manage emotions in the short-term, while the latter actually adds considerably to emotional distress. Therefore, it pays to be able to distinguish between the two.
When we feel as if we can’t take it any more, we often vent—about a boss’s constant criticism, our partner’s habits, harried lives, difficult children, or chronic illness. If we’ve picked the right people to vent to (active listeners, for one), we receive val...
Source: Normal Eating - February 24, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Having Problems to Solve Them
I was talking with a client who complained about having problems, yet felt she built her self-esteem around solving them. Her thinking made me realize that disregulated eaters often seem stuck on this merry-go-round. If you too are on it, it’s time to get off.
Here’s how her logic went. She didn’t feel she was worth very much as is, and only felt good about herself when resolving difficulties and getting out of jams. She believed that she intentionally attracted problem people and got into thorny situations in order to feel competent and clever through inevitably escaping from these people and predicaments. She we...
Source: Normal Eating - February 21, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Relationship Between Thinking About Weight and Losing Weight
Here’s your pop quiz for today: 1) Is there a correlation between how frequently you think about losing weight and the shedding of pounds? 2) Is there a correlation between how desperately you want to lose weight and losing it? 3) Does focusing, or worse, obsessing about losing weight actually help you lose it?
I confess, I don’t know if there’s been research done on these questions, so you’re stuck with my take on this subject based on 30-plus years of experience working with people who are unhappy with their eating and their weight. To a person, I would say that one of the major impediments to “normal” eat...
Source: Normal Eating - February 17, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Don't Tell Yourself You Don't Care
Do you know the three words you never want to say to yourself when you’re faced with eating decisions? “I don’t care.” Say them and you know what food- and body-abusing road you’re heading down. The fact is, you do care. You care, you care, you care!
Not long ago, I was privy to observing a friend debate whether to eat something that wouldn’t be healthy for her due to food allergies and other metabolic problems. I listened to her struggle aloud and knew she was heading for defeat when she said, “I just don’t care.” Of course, she overate—carbs, of course—as I sat there helplessly and mutely watchin...
Source: Normal Eating - February 14, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Scarcity Mindset
Do you have a scarcity mindset? You are if you fear you won’t get enough of what life has to offer, especially with food. If the shoe fits, read on to find out more about your irrational viewpoint and how to change it.
In SCARCITY: WHY HAVING TOO LITTLE MEANS SO MUCH (Economist, 8/31/13), authors Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir focus mostly on poverty and the minds of people who are poor. But they also universalize their theories about feeling deprived in general. They insist that “People’s minds work differently when they feel they lack something. And it does not greatly matter what something is. Anyone who...
Source: Normal Eating - February 10, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
There May Be an On-Off Switch for Eating
Many disregulated eaters say they feel as if they have an on-off switch with eating. Now, it seems that researchers may have found evidence to back up this belief. At least in mice, there seems to be an open-shut valve when it comes to food.
Through experiments which compelled full mice to keep eating and hungry mice to avoid food, researchers have identified the cells that control our appetite switch. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists used a laser on the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (or BNST) in the brains of mice to either excite or quiet them (Science News, 11/2/13, “On-off switch for ...
Source: Normal Eating - February 7, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Great Body Image Video Series by Jean Fain, LICSW
A negative body view too often accompanies eating problems and it can be hard to shake. If you’re serious about wanting to feel positive about your body at any weight, you won’t want to miss BODY COMPASSION, Jean Fain’s new (free!) video series.
This series is a natural follow-up to THE SELF-COMPASSION DIET, a book by Jean Fain, LICSW, which is really no diet at all, but an approach to loving your body into health and fitness. Her five-part video series is a great teaching tool. Part 1, Why Body Image Matters, describes the health and mental health risks of having poor body image and how developing a positive body...
Source: Normal Eating - February 3, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
