Weigh This Instead!

Strategies for Emotional and Binge Eating Recovery Blog

« Newer Posts

Big and beautiful

Posted by Leave a Comment

I was awestruck by the beauty and strength of a woman this week.  She was not the epitome of a beauty in our American culture.  Her beauty was of a deeper, stronger type.

She stood nearly 6’ tall with large bone structure and body mass.  She was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt not of the latest fashion.  Her thick, wavy, and un-styled hair was swept back in a long braid.  And her body was wrapped in a colorfully patterned garment that supported not one but two children.  She carried a boy on her back, and held a girl on the front of her body. 

I admit I could not take my eyes off this woman and her children.  I felt compelled to approach her, ask her some questions and share my feelings and thoughts with her.  Some of you may be responding the way my children do when they see me readying myself to share my feelings with a stranger.  “You can’t do that!  You don’t know her. She may not want to talk to you.  How can you impose on her like that?”  I will tell you what I tell them.  This is easy for me to do.  I love to connect to my truths and share them and so I did.

Read More >>
Members' Login located in the right sidebar, then click on Emotional Eating Blog in Member Links
Not Yet a Member:
Click here, learn about Free Trial

Emptying my dishwasher stops emotional eating

Posted by 2 Comments

Yup, choosing to take my clean dishes out of the dishwasher and put them away helps me reduce emotional eating. Let me explain why that’s so.

For much of my adult life I would run the dishwasher and then wouldn’t make the effort to put the clean dishes back in the cabinets. It just felt like too much effort. Then, when I needed a clean plate I would just take it right from the dishwasher. 

But then new dirty dishes would just pile up in the sink…couldn’t put them in the dishwasher because there were clean dishes in there. And when it was time to make dinner, the pan I needed to make my favorite shrimp and vegetable dish was under dirty dishes.

Then I had an excuse to order a large pepperoni pizza!  Busted!

I busted myself. I looked at my true intentions when I chose NOT to empty the dishwasher? I knew what would likely happen if I didn’t.  I’d certainly had enough experience with this to recognize my patterns.

Rather than judging myself for all the times in the past when I had maneuvered myself into “having” to order a big pizza, I instead decided to get unflinchingly honest about my true intentions. If I choose not to empty the dishwasher I am unconscioulsy or maybe even consciously setting myself up to not eat as healthfully as I walk around saying I want to eat.

Today, when I see the green light indicating my dishes are clean, I empty the dishwasher with a big smile on my face (I know, sounds goofy, but I do). I do it because when I make the conscious effort to put my clean dishes away I am telling myself that I am planning to eat healthfully today and I am backing it up with my behavior. And that feels really good! This is in integrity with the way I want to live. I am matching what I say I want with the actions that will support me getting there. 

With practice (not always perfection), I have come to trust my own word.  When I live intentionally and in integrity, my risk of emotional eating drops significantly. When I live intentionally I don’t have to go “mindless” with food to shut down feelings of regret and self-loathing…

Who knew emptying the dishwasher would end up at the top if my “Self-Care” List? It can be the little choices that make a big difference!

______________________________

Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in emotional and binge eating issues. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com

How do I learn not to be afraid of certain foods?

Posted by Leave a Comment

We get hit with so many messages about “good” food and “bad” food, it can be difficult to keep things in perspective, and perspective is our best ally.

The human body is extremely capable of sorting what we eat, utilizing what it needs and discarding what it doesn’t. It’s important to examine our beliefs about what tends to be labeled “bad”,

For example, high fat foods tend to be labeled in this way, but let’s look at the evidence.

Read More >>
Members' Login located in the right sidebar, then click on Emotional Eating Blog in Member Links
Not Yet a Member:
Click here, learn about Free Trial

I’ve never been a fan of mimes

Posted by Leave a Comment

Emotional Eating Mime

______________________________

Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in emotional and binge eating issues. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com

What are the biggest barriers to people giving up diets?

Posted by Leave a Comment

We’ve been thinking a lot lately about why it is so hard for people to let go of diets, even when they understand intellectually that diets don’t work, and they won’t work. When The Diet Survivor’s Handbook first came out, we did an interview on the topic of diet addiction, and we thought we’d share some of these ideas with you. Depending on where you are in your journey to kick the diet habit, these musings may help you understand the challenges you face. Or, if you’ve already quit dieting, you might want to think about why others in your life hang on to dieting, even when their experience – and the research – confirms that about 98% of diets fail in the long-run.

In the most general sense, an addiction exists when there is an

Read More >>
Members' Login located in the right sidebar, then click on Emotional Eating Blog in Member Links
Not Yet a Member:
Click here, learn about Free Trial

A Weigh Out’s Core Beliefs about Emotional Eating

Posted by Leave a Comment
  1. We believe healthy people come in all shapes and sizes.
  2. Diets don’t work for Emotional Eaters. Diets only address the symptom, the weight…not the underlying problem, emotional eating or the use of food to manage mood, to stuff down feelings.
  3. People use ”food thoughts”, food, and/or dieting behaviors to take care of emotional needs. When you fill your head with a food (or diet) thought, you temporarily push all other thoughts or feelings from your present consciousness. When we’re bored, stressed, angry or lonely, even when some of us get excited…to avoid the intensity of feeling, we obsess about food instead. Emotional overeating happens on a continuum. At the far end of that continuum, this can become a person’s primary coping strategy…a person’s only way to self-comfort and regulate their moods.
  4. We recognize and respect the power of food when it is used as a coping strategy. It works…for a little while…then we feel like our best friend has betrayed us.
  5. We respect the resilience of people who have come to use food to take care of their emotional needs. They have likely made it through some pretty difficult emotional times, by having food at their side.
  6. We understand that emotional eating impacts a person’s ability to live their life to the fullest and to achieve desired physical and emotional health.
  7. We honor the pain that results when this coping strategy seemingly takes on a life of its own…and robs a person of theirs.
  8. We believe change occurs when the problem is approached with new insight in these arenas…emotional, physical, nutritional, and spiritual health.
  9. We know, from experience, that working through the feelings that drive a person to eat can be a painful process…but, that process is nowhere near as painful as staying stuck in the problem.
  10. We trust that with support and new understanding a person can come to view change as a relief…and as an attainable choice. We know it takes courage to ask for help!

______________________________

Ellen Shuman is a Life Coach who specializes in emotional and binge eating issues. She is the founder of A Weigh Out & Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment, Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2012 · Lifestyle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in