Hello Everyone! My name is Shelley and I am an emotional eater and therefore a chronic dieter. Hmm, now that’s a term that until recently I never knew, but in the last few weeks so much has “turned around” in my life…

I was raised in a large family with 5 brothers and sisters and in our house at meal time if you “took it” you “ate it.” There were also many times that I can remember having a “heated” discussion at our table and my escape was to bury my face in my plate. Hand to mouth, just eating and staying quite, hoping the conversation would not turn to “me” being the one getting the criticism of the day!

As I grew I was active, swimming and playing outside as a child and teen not having what I would call a “weight issue.” When I went to college my food intake consisted of Diet Coke and small meals, and I was pretty active; I went to a large university so I did lots of daily walking. A few years later, as a “bride” I survived on what I will call the “bride’s diet” of one meal and Diet Coke through the day so that I would look ever so thin at my wedding.

There were just a few times that I would call how I ate “dieting.” Food was always something that I “did.” As many with any type of obsessive problems “do” I “used” food. When I was happy, I ate, when I was sad, I ate, when I did well on a test I ate to celebrate, when I did bad on a test I ate because I was upset, oh, I ate for just about any reason.

Over the course of the next 22 years my weight would go up and down. I’d follow Atkins and lose 25 pounds and slowly it would creep back up, and then I’d get sick of what I looked like and then I would do Jenny Craig, or Weight Watchers; you name it I’ve done it! But I never realized what the real issue was… I am an emotional eater!

My life is a wee bit stressful; I am the mom of a healthy 21-year-old daughter, and an 18-year-old daughter with special needs and wife of an entrepreneur. The second is what causes a lot of anxiety in my life. And so I “eat.” When things are good, I eat, when things are problematic etc., etc. I think you see the pattern here.

So what happened? What was this major “da dah?” What was it that made me want to stop and get off this vicious chronic dieting cycle, and think it’s time to get with the program and get healthy? And no, I wasn’t visited by three ghosts… However, recently I did wake up one morning and take a good look at myself in the mirror and I didn’t recognize the reflection looking back at me.

If I squinted a little bit I saw “me” with a lot of what I will call “stuff” around me. Not only was it “physical stuff” but I could see a cloud of what I will call “mental stuff” too that I have been carrying around with me literally and figuratively for a long time and I decided it’s time to “unload.” Time to put myself first for once and really take care of myself so that I can look in the mirror sometime (hopefully soon) and see the real “me.”

I know I’m not the only one out there with these issues so I invite you to join me in a “Wellness Makeover,” you can follow along here on Facebook. Because after all, if you don’t do it for yourself, who is going to do it for you?

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A Healthy New Life: One Mom’s Wellness Makeover

Cravings in general do not have to necessarily be “bad” things. It’s all in how you respond to them. In this post, I’ll explain how to healthfully handle cravings.

Identify Your Type of Inner Voice – and Squash It!

Reflect on the last time you had a memorable craving, what “voice” did you hear?

The Seductive Seller

“You know you want me. I’m sooooo good. You deserve it. You worked so hard.” The seductive seller accentuates all the positive aspects of the food and none of the negative. It preys on the food-as-reward mentality (which is a dieter’s trap). The problem is responding mindlessly to the food seduction rarely gives you the satisfaction you are actually looking for. Maybe you don’t even need food. Maybe you need a hug or a kiss – or some sleep! Don’t let the seductive seller sweet-talk you. Make sure when you choose to eat something you take your time and enjoy each and every bite.

The Inner Critic

“You are so weak. You fail at everything you do and you’re going to fail at this, too.” The inner critic is all about demoralizing and sap motivation techniques. The self-hate it perpetuates is toxic to your well-being. Listening to these messages makes you more vulnerable to them. Next time you hear the inner critic come out, confront it. Be aware that these are just words flowing through your mind. You don’t have to follow them.

Respond to Cravings with Awareness and Mindfulness

As I said at the top of this post, cravings don’t have to be a bad thing. You are in control. Recognize a craving when it comes on, squash the voice and choose to take a mindful approach. Ask yourself “am I hungry or do I need something else?”. Maybe you need some rest, a hot bubble bath, or a chat with a close friend.

If you do feel hungry or if you just want to respond to the craving even though you know you’re not, it’s OK. Giving yourself permission to respond to cravings can be very liberating. But make sure you choose a reasonable portion size of your food and really take the time to slow down and enjoy each wonderful bite. Notice the taste and the pleasure it brings you. Experience it with all your senses. You may not even finish it before feeling completely satisfied. So stop early.

Taking the mindful approach to cravings is a healthy way of living a life you deserve. Next time you have a craving, embrace it!

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How to Healthfully Handle Food Cravings

My mom had a magnet on our refrigerator that said “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!” Of course, there was a picture of a pig eating a piece of coconut cream pie on it. (Lest you think I come from a family of skinny-minnies, quite the contrary. Most adult women in my family weigh in the 200-300 pound range).

As a nutrition expert who works with emotional eating, eating disorders, and weight management I honestly think that magnet should say “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the mind.” While it doesn’t rhyme as well, I do think it is the true damage of overeating. The guilt people can carry can overwhelmingly sabotage any progress toward mindful, healthy eating.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. I’ve got a few tips that will help you better deal with it:

• Don’t feel guilty about wanting to eat. Food is necessary for your survival, and it was intended to be an enjoyable experience, not a guilt ridden one. If you think about food often, don’t beat yourself up. With the abundance of cheap food widely available it is no wonder food is on the brain. Remind yourself that guilt can reverse your positive progress.
• Expect the “overeating relapse.” Nobody is perfect – good thing or life would be boring! Don’t encourage a “relapse” every time you pass the fast food joint or the junk food aisle. But trust me, you will have a time when your life feels “out of sorts” or particularly stressful. You’ll probably overeat. The best thing you can do is learn from it. If the food didn’t cause the problem, it won’t solve it either. What did you really need? To feel good? Maybe next time, a conversation or a hug will do the trick without the extreme guilt that follows overeating.
• Don’t let “triggers” control you. Triggers are things in your physical or emotional environment that make you want to overeat. They can be particular foods, feelings, or events. Common triggers include parties revolving around food, feeling depressed, bored or frustrated, loneliness, or having a bad day. How will you positively deal with triggers when they come your way? I advise my clients to avoid “food triggers” for a few weeks; eventually, the temptation fades. For some clients, the opposite works. I tell them to eat their “trigger” every day. Sooner or later, they get sick of it once the allure is gone.
• Focus on the positive. Rather than making statements such as, “I’m useless at…” or “I’ll never be able to…” change your focus to something more encouraging. What have you done that is working for you? What is positive? If you hit a weight loss plateau, how much have you lost in total? How many exercise calories did you burn this week? How many nights did you get enough sleep?

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How to Overcome the Guilt of Overeating

The Material Girl has clearly revolutionized women’s fashion and women’s fitness. She has shown women that the weight room is not just for men and female bodybuilders. But following the recent divorce from her husband Guy Ritchie, Madonna has been hard at work being a single mother and running around the world for her Sticky and Sweet Tour.

While any 50+ woman would kill to be in half the shape that Madonna is in, a handful of pictures of her have shown her to look downright exhausted and perhaps even too thin with too many muscles. Perhaps the toll of a dissolved marriage, international travel, a deathly accident on the set of her tour and mothering four kids is showing its signs on this entertainment and fashion icon.

Next, there is Jessica Simpson. The stress of her highly publicized relationships and break-ups seem to also show up on her body. Rather than drowning her Tony Romo sorrows in extra cheese pizza and fried chicken, she hits the gym, tones up and slims down. Highly criticized for putting on a few extra pounds here and there, Jessica is no stranger to the pressures of Hollywood thinness.

Usually, her weight seems to increase when she is in a long-term, serious relationship (think John Mayer and Tony Romo) and plummet following a break-up (think ex-husband Nick Lachey, John Mayer and now Tony Romo). To her, boasting a newer svelte figure is the best revenge, even better than sidling up with another Hollywood hunk. Simpson is a big fan of Harley Pasternak, creator of the 5-Factor Diet, a 5-week diet plan that is popular amongst celebs and includes noshing on five mini-meals throughout the day, made with just five ingredients in just five minutes.

So even though the celebs might have access to the best personal trainers and chefs, they are in many ways not that much different from the rest of us when it comes to our reactions to stress. Whether stress sends you to the kitchen or to the gym, it is an interesting lesson to observe how you deal with it and it’s even more interesting to note how our bodies become a direct reflection of the current state of our lives. Emotional, over- or under-eating may not be the healthiest response to stress, but if in cases like Simpson’s where it spurs you to hit the gym and eat your green veggies, then maybe there is a silver lining in every dark cloud.

Photo via WBDO.com

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To Eat or Not to Eat: How Celebrities Deal with Stress

Once a back-up dancer for Micheal Jackson, Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani, K-Fed used to sport a well-toned and fit physique. But perhaps it is the constant pressure of being mobbed by paparazzi, the agonizing battle over the custody of his two sons or his role as a full-time parent, Kevin has gained considerable weight in the past few months.

If this is the case then maybe Kevin, just like millions of Americans, has from time to time given in to the emotionality of eating. As anyone who has ever inhaled a pint of Ben & Jerry’s after being delivered unsettling news or tossed back an entire back of potato chips in one sitting without much awareness of taste and quantity, emotional eating is a relentless cycle of turning to food for comfort without being present to the feelings of satiety or satisfaction. And while eating issues are typically considered female-oriented, even men turn to food for reasons other than physical hunger.

Let’s hope for the sake of his own health and as a role model to his sons, that K-Fed sees these pictures of himself and begins to make some small changes to what he eats and how much he eats.

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Is K-Fed’s Weight Gain a Sign of Emotional Eating?

I will never forget when I was 13, I was astonished how my uncle stayed so thin and he never finished what was on his plate. I remember saying to him, “How do you know when you are full?” He replied, “I eat until I am satisfied and then stop.” I remember thinking, “What are you talking about?” I have never understood that concept and I still don’t. I am a member of the “Clean Plate Club.” I feel like I have been out of touch with my body for a very long time, about 30 years since I was 13 when my mother passed away.

By overeating enough at the right times I could go to sleep or just “veg” out in front of the TV with food. As I got into my mid-20s I noticed that I had a lot of gas and was going to the bathroom a lot. Years went by and I was never able to correlate what was going on with my body in relation to what I was eating. At some point I just surrendered and said to myself, “This is just the way my body is.” Meanwhile I was struggling with food and always feeling hungry.

In 1999, after I found a 12-step group for compulsive eaters, I learned a new way of eating and started eating three meals a day. That is where my work began in relation to my eating issues. I stopped eating white sugar and white flour. That is also when I learned about eating different vegetables.

Stay tuned as Rob will continue discussing his weight loss journey in Part 2 of his Listening to My Body series.

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Achieving Health by Listening to My Body, Part I

You’re not alone. In fact, most Americans engage in some sort of mindless eating, each meal, every snack, each day.

Author and food psychologist, Brian Wansink Ph.D. talks about how blurry our perception has become in choosing what we eat, how much we eat and when we eat. In his book, Mindless Eating, Wansink helps undue a bit of the guilt that ensues after eating too much.

He helps you dig a bit deeper into the psychology of eating so that you can have a more firm understanding of why deep-dish pizza with extra cheese and mushrooms is your favorite comfort food, or why your Kellogg’s strawberry-frosted Pop-Tarts taste better than the generic brand even though the ingredients are identical.

Mindless Eating also unveils fascinating evidence on the food marketing industry. For instance, Wansink openly discusses how food suppliers package and process foods just so that we’ll eat them and eat more and more of them. He also talks about what colors inspire us to eat, which colors promote satiety and how certain movies enable us to eat the WHOLE tub of popcorn, even the unpopped kernels.

What Mindless Eating openly breaks down the psychological effects of eating from our own personal relationship to food and portion size to the food industry’s manipulation of our food senses. While this book is not a set-in-stone diet plan, Wansink does help you overcome food pitfalls such as avoiding Diet Danger Zones that trigger a food binge and  shows you how to erase 100-200 calories from your daily intake without feeling deprived.

The more we understand that our food behaviors and our health are not held in a vacuum, the more we can become better armed to make more mindful and wiser eating choices that will result in a happier and healthier self. If you’re at all interested in learning more about the dynamics of eating, Mindless Eating will not disappoint.

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Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

Many families use food to distract one from or heal negative emotions such as sadness, loneliness, hurt, and even boredom. Many of my family members admit to using food to love and care for each other, trying to meet both physical and emotional needs. How often do we express gratitude and caring during holidays with gifts of food? Is it any wonder that we use food as a drug to effect both our physical and emotional states?How your family used food to comfort you will impact the foods that you crave in specific situations. Chicken soup when ill is pretty common. I have memories of making Rice Krispie treats with my grandmother on a fairly regular basis; when she was ill, I found myself with that craving. Other foods may be paired with family traditions or holiday celebrations.

The Food and Brand laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also found gender differences in the comfort foods we crave. According to the lab director, men are comforted more by foods that are prepared for them like meals and baked goods, allowing themselves to be both fed and nurtured. Perhaps this is why it is said that the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach and no one can cook like momma did.

Women, on the other hand, seem to prefer foods with more convenience, particularly sweets. Especially when stressed, sugary foods can give a quick boost of energy to help you navigate a stressor and think more quickly. Also, women often deny themselves sweets, so indulging in them can feel like a nice thing to do for oneself.

As we approach the holidays, being cognizant of which foods have emotional pairings for you individually, can help you prepare yourself for those cravings.

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Comfort Foods Are Diet Saboteurs

Overcome emotional overeating by managing inappropriate reactions to stress; solving problems rather than dwelling on them; changing self-defeating thoughts, since more often than not, feelings follow thoughts; gaining closure on unfinished emotional business; and learning new ways to cope without resorting to food

“Overcome emotional overeating.” Emotional overeating is using food to help you cope with difficult feelings or situations, or using comfort food or food ‘drugs’ to make you feel better.

“Managing inappropriate reactions to stress.” Food is not the right reaction to stress, but not eating isn’t an appropriate reaction either. The best response to a stressful situation is to utilize relaxation techniques and get yourself to the best state from which to address the issue.

“Solving problems rather than dwelling on them.” There are two important parts to this statement. It does you no good to dwell on a situation that may occur (worry) because it may not. When a negative situation does arise, don’t live there; find what you can do to make the situation better for yourself and do it. At times, you may be able to completely resolve the issue; at other times, you can resolve yourself to survive it.

“Changing self-defeating thoughts, since more often than not, feelings follow thoughts.” To utilize REBT, you need to first become aware of your thoughts and feelings, learn the difference between them, and dispute your irrational thoughts to come to a more helpful truth.

“Gaining closure on unfinished emotional business.” We all have unfinished emotional business to varying degrees, and we are all aware of it to varying degrees as well. None of us have arrived; no one is fully actualized, so we all have room for growth. I believe the concern here is in the extent to which it is interfering with your daily living and adding to your stress. Food and weight can be used to avoid many issues. Dr. Phil is instructing, instead, to face these head on until you can find some peace. At times, this requires the help of a professional coach or therapist. Utilize all resources available to you to discover as much peace as possible.

“Learning new ways to cope.” There are numerous options available to you to help you cope in a way that is helpful and in line with your goals. Common suggestions include seeking support, exercising, journaling, and meditating.

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Healing Feelings from Dr. Phil’s Keys to Weight Loss

The majority of first dates include food. Men buy food on dates to demonstrate that they can provide, and it gives us something to do with our nervous hands, a reason to pause and consider what you will say while your mouth is full, and something to look at to avoid eye contact. The majority of our social contacts include food in some form.  We share food to nurture one another; it is a way to say ‘I care about you, your comfort, and your health’. Also, as we mentioned, food is a powerful drug that can impact us physically and emotionally. The emotional aspects, seem to be Dr. Phil’s primary concern in how food may be misused. It’s when we start using food as a drug or a filler than it becomes a problem; that’s when our calories become empty.

According to Dr. Phil’s quiz Are You An Emotional Eater, I would venture that nearly all of us at least have “room for improvement”. Personally, I think there is a balance and you can still make smart choices without limiting yourself socially or completely ignoring your body’s cravings. Even chocolate has researched benefits on mood, but eating a tub of rocky road is not going to be helpful in the short term or the long term.

However, in general, we need to over-learn something new before we can find the workable balance. You have to create healthy habits before you can find exceptions. The problem that Dr. Phil is highlighting is when food is your main (or only) coping technique.

Rather than eating when sad, lonely, uncomfortable, or anxious, consider these tried and true coping skills:

Seek Support – find a friend or confidant and share your stressors or just find something to laugh about.

Journaling – even if no one else is available, you can always take a deeper look at your own thoughts, and maybe talk yourself into a new state of mind, by writing down what you are thinking and what is bothering you.

Exercise – Research has shown that nothing relieves stress more than physical exercise. When you exercise, your brain secretes several nuerochemicals, including serotonin, which may be the reason you are craving chocolate in the first place, endorphins, which have an opiate-like effect of pain-relief and mood elevation, dopamine, and norepinephine. Symptoms of depression, anxiety, impulsivity, aggression, and increased appetite have been linked to deficiencies of these neurochemicals.

Positive distraction – If you’re stressed, take a break and watch a movie or take a bath or do something else to take care of yourself or take your mind off of what is bothering you.

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Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat