Archive for September, 2010

Eating based on appetite; the new “normal”

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

A dear friend of mine, Frieda (we met in junior high school), is reading all of the A Weigh Out Empowerment Tools. She’s up to Week #20 and says she’s learning a lot, including the fact that she is not really an emotional eater. I just received an email from her that made that clear…and also made me chuckle. She wrote,

“My new favorite food item is chopped kale and watercress, I know I’m not normal. The kale has a salty taste to it .Oh, I am also having a serious relationship with mango….and I can buy 8 of them at Costco!!!!!! Will you address that in Week #40?”

Frieda, I know you’re not eating all 8 mangos at once, so I’ll address it right now. You’re eating what your appetite desires. How cool is that? I like to think THAT is the new “normal”.

Now that I’m not eating a lot of processed, chemical filled, nutrient-empty foods, I taste my food, too. Right now I’m totally into grape tomatoes with a little hummas…and fresh blueberries mixed with red seedless grapes. I often have a bowl right after dinner. Based on my appetite, some nights I find that to be a totally satisfying dessert. On another night, I might want a piece of chocolate cake…and that’s what my appetite wants. And I was an emotional eater, to say the least! With some work, even emotional eaters can change their relationship with food and can learn to eat healthfully, based on appetite and pleasure.

That’s what a former coaching client of mine, Tara, is doing these days. Here’s a note she wrote to me a while after she wrapped up our sessions.

“The most important thing you ever said to me in a session is,

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Practicing self-love

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

I am extremely fortunate to have many teachers in my life: the women I work with, my partner, son, daughter, and of course, my body.

Recently my daughter was preparing for school. I watched with keen awareness how she went about this task. Making lists, reviewing what she has and what she needs and wants.

She received a beautiful new laptop from her grandparents and she decided she wanted a beautiful case to match. She fell in love with a computer case she found on line that was pricey. I have learned the best way to gauge how much my daughter wants something is to tell her she has to pay for it herself. She approaches these decisions with more reflection and caution when she has to spend her own money. So, I informed her sweetly that she can use her gifted money for the case.

As my daughter labored over her decision

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‘Watching my weight’

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

This post was written by Rachel; a Member in the A Weigh Out Circle

A few months ago I recognized the need to for me to stop counting calories. I am done with ‘watching my weight’. I don’t weigh myself anymore. I don’t measure calories anymore. I learned two issues about myself when I did these things.

1- I felt like I didn’t trust myself. 2- I was focusing more on what I was eating then why I was eating.

So why do I eat? I eat to nourish myself and I eat to enjoy food. I also eat to feed my emotions. Sad? Eat. Angry? Eat. You know the drill; you may even do it too. Here’s what I know. I don’t eat to punish myself. When I eat to feed an emotion it is to get that emotion out of my head. Why? Because the emotion is too painful to deal with. When our children are in pain what do we do? We hug them and soothe them. When I’m in pain what do I do? I soothe myself with food. It’s a method I’ve been using for 30 years and by golly I believe it works! Well sort of…

After soothing myself with food I am usually beating myself up and I’m telling myself that I am too fat or I am too weak or I am just a bad person…blah blah blah. Enough!

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“Mike & Molly”;Can it be a funny love story without relying on fat jokes?

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

CBS just premiered a new fall sitcom called “Mike & Molly”. It appears to be the beginning of a love story between two people who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous Meeting (not like any OA meeting I ever attended in my early recovery days. No one ever clapped for weight loss at OA–that was reserved for Weight Watchers meetings!).

After watching the pilot, we know the show is heavily weighted with fat jokes. In one scene, while trying to flirt with Molly after a meeting, Mike leans on a table, it collapse under his weight and he dislocates a finger. Funny, huh! (There were so many fat jokes the website www.Movieline.com has actually started a weekly feature called the “Mike & Molly Fat Joke Tracker“. The website says it will list all the “tasteless disses…” made on each week’s show.)

At this point in size-ism history, is it possible to create a funny TV love story between two people who are fat and not have it be all about being fat? The two lead actors/main characters are very appealing! I liked them right away. It’s wonderful to finally see actress Melissa McCarthy in a lead role. For years she’s played the best friend sidekick (“Gilmore Girls”, “Samantha Who)”. What are the chances this CBS show will rise above the sophomoric humor and fat prejudice and still be a hit? My guess, slim to none (oops, does that sound like a fat joke)?

I hope the show’s creators prove me wrong! Please, prove me wrong!

Watch the pilot episode of “Mike & Molly” at www.cbs.com . New episodes, for as long as the show lasts, are on Monday at 9:30pm/8:30 (c).

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Are you stuck in the “diet” mentality?

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

It may be cliché by now to mention how unrealistic our culture’s standards for thinness have become – we’re all aware of skinny models who don’t represent what “real” women actually look like. Yet messages to be thin are often so insidious that you may not even realize how vulnerable you are to believing them. It takes a conscious effort to really think about what you’re hearing, and to decide if these messages are helpful to you. We’d like to share an example of a woman who is working hard to be more accepting of her body, and who was thrown for a loop by a comment from her colleague.

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Posted in An End to Emotional Eating & Desperate Dieting, Body Esteem, Healthful Eating | 1 Comment »

“Bad” food: a great distraction from feeling bad

Monday, September 20th, 2010

“Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.” ~ Robert Redford

Why is it that when we eat broccoli, we feel thin, virtuous, in control, and attractive? And when we eat cake, we feel fat, bad, out of control, and unattractive?

Is there something inherent in broccoli that literally causes us to feel thin or virtuous? The answer, of course, is no. We have to agree that these foods, in and of themselves, do not create these feelings.

So then it must be us. We must create these feelings. How does this work?

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Just one of those weeks…

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

The stress just didn’t let up this week. Between computer issues (anyone else get stressed when facing those?), managing the care for my ill 79 year old Mom (she’s in Boston in a nursing home, I’m in Cincinnati–made seven trips so far in a year), trying to get Rowe Furniture to fix up a broken couch (1 year of working on this), and pushing Cincinnati Bell to fix a phone line (said they’ve been out of some phone wire they needed for 3 weeks?)…it was quite a week!

In the past, dealing with just one of those issues would have driven me to emotional eating. Instead, yesterday, I

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Posted in An End to Emotional Eating & Desperate Dieting, Healthful Eating, Mindful Living | 2 Comments »

New Empowerment Forum is here!

Friday, September 17th, 2010

A Weigh Out’s new EMPOWERMENT FORUM has launched!!! Yes!

This FORUM replaces the old one that required a second login step (that was just too much work!)

Members—Login first…and then click on FORUM in the blue navigation bar above (or in the Members’ Portal or in the Member Links box that always appears to your right whenever you are logged in.)

If you have never used a forum before, posting is simple. Just choose a Forum, then a topic on the next page, and you’re all set. The page is set-up like Facebook; newest posts up top, older ones at the end. To add a new post to an existing discussion, simply click on “Reply to Post” (located at the top and bottom of each page). To comment on someone else’s post, look right above the post and click on “Quote and Reply”. Write your comments in the box that appears. Then look down to the bottom right for the “Post New Reply” button. You can also add a new discussion topic by Clicking on the button “Add a New Topic”.

Here’s a video tutorial that’ll show you how to set up your new profile.

Not yet a Member? You can see our Forum Topics by clicking on FORUM in the blue bar above. To see content, try a 21-Day Free Trial. Learn About Membership here.

Posted in An End to Emotional Eating & Desperate Dieting, Body Esteem, Changing our World!, Healthful Eating, Mindful Living, Weight Loss Surgery, Well Centered | No Comments »

Can a person really recover from binge or emotional eating or will they always have to be careful?

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

People can and do recover from binge and emotional eating. But that doesn’t mean that they will never overeat again! Consider these ideas:

When you ask if binge/emotional eaters will always have to be careful, that question implies that you have to “control” something about your eating. Usually, being “careful” means making sure you don’t eat certain foods or don’t eat “too much” of something. Instead, think about being mindful as you pay attention to your physical cues for hunger and satisfaction. This mindfulness is important for everyone – even “normal” eaters must be aware of when, what and how much they eat based on their hunger signals. And, even normal eaters overeater occasionally.

When you are in the midst of binge/emotional eating, you are eating for all

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Body hatred is learned

Monday, September 13th, 2010

“To be nobody but yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” ~E.E. Cummings

Body hatred is a learned behavior.

Have you ever met a baby who hated her body? Somewhere along the way, we learn to dislike, and even hate, our bodies. How did we learn this?

To answer that question, let’s consider:

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