Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Holiday Eating

There's nothing like the holidays to tweak your eating. My early memories of holidays involve special foods that my mom only made once a year, and usually only for company. If it was my job to put out appetizers, then I would always sneak bites here and there, being careful to hide any evidence of my eating. What I liked even better was clearing the table after the meal. As I carried the last of the potatoes or chocolate cake back to the kitchen I would secretly eat more of these "bad" foods - dishes I had to take tiny portions of during the meal, under my mother's watchful eye.

Even long time followers of the mindful eating/non-diet approach often find this time of year particularly challenging. It's also a wonderful time to notice what comes up. Holiday foods can bring up feelings of deprivation (I can only have this at Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hanukah...). Stressful family dynamics that lay dormant from January 5th through November 20th can suddenly emerge. Holidays can bring up old, unresolved hurts. And often the new year can lead to fears about the future or regrets about the past.

All told, it's the perfect recipe for emotional eating.

If you've been using food to self-soothe or distract yourself from uncomfortable emotions this holiday season, please don't beat yourself up or promise to go on another punishing diet or exercise program. Instead, see what it would feel like to be as kind to yourself as you would be with a dear friend. There is a reason you've turned to food, even if you don't know exactly what that reason is. Punishing yourself will only make you hurt more - and need to reach to food again to feel better.

If possible, gently observe (or recall) the events and emotions that have been present for you during this time. What feelings, thoughts or words did you have to stuff? If you could have soothed yourself with words, hugs, or tenderness, what would have helped?

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Results Not Typical

I'm sitting at home, vegging in front of the TV. Queen Latifah is doing her latest Jenny Craig commercial - sharing her happiness at being a "size active." I wish the message really was that we can all be proud of ourselves, active, healthy and happy regardless of size. But standing next to Q.L. is a much thinner woman - we get to see her "before" and "after" pictures - showing that she's lost a significant amount of weight. And in the corner of the screen in small letters reads the caption: Results not typical.

All diets - Jenny's included have a 90% failure rate at the 3-year mark. There are so many reasons for this. Some of it is plain old biology - each of us has a natural weight coded into our DNA - and our natural weight may not be thin.

I know this is a hard one to accept for a lot of people. The messages we get repeatedly (so often that we are actually brainwashed into believing) tell us that we are all meant to be thin. If we are fat - it's a sign of something wrong that must be fixed. So, we turn to diets, to pills, to gyms, to coaches, to hypnosis - anything we think will "fix" us.

Sometimes, fatness is just a normal body type. Other times, there is an emotional component - we may "hunger" for something, but we are not physically hungry. This hunger is even felt in the body. The belly and heart have the largest clusters of neurons outside the brain - which is why we have "gut feelings," and "heartfelt moments."

Often we are hungry for soothing, understanding, connection, support, acceptance. What's crazy-making is that by going on a diet, you are basically saying to yourself, "I'm not acceptable, or lovable, or worthwhile as I am." If you hunger for unconditional love and acceptance, then the diet is a set up for failure.

If you eat to soothe, but you are getting the unsettling message that you're not okay as you are - then you'll need to do something to soothe that unsettled feeling. You may be able to calm yourself with exercise, stress reduction, or some kind of distraction for a while. But eventually you will probably turn to the thing that works best and fastest - food. This is one reason why 90% of dieters regain all the weight they lose.

What to do? Stop dieting - throwing money and energy away on pills and programs that are destined to fail. Work toward accepting yourself as you are right now. This is hard. Repetition and emotional intensity have brainwashed you into believing that fat is ugly, undesirable and unhealthy. However, more and more people have found ways to re-educate themselves and redefine beauty. Books like Zaftig and Fat!So?, movies like Too Beautiful for You, Hairspray and Real Women Have Curves can help provide a "counter-chorus" to the never-ending media messages about thinness.

Focus on health, rather than weight loss. Exercise comfortably and move your body in ways that feel good. You don't have to "burn" any part of yourself to be active and get your heart-rate up. Consult your MD or a professional trainer who is not going to push you to lose weight for safe ways to incorporate movement into your life. Pat Lyons and Kelly Bliss both offer books and internet support for exercise at every size.

Upgrade nutritional content rather than downgrading calories. Eat organically if you can afford it. Eat more whole foods and less processed or refined foods. Talk with a doctor or nutritionist who follows the non-diet approach to health. Google "fat positive" and explore the links for more support.

Accepting who you really are inside and out is a daunting task for many of us. You may have spent a lifetime making yourself a "fixer-upper" project. Self acceptance may mean remembering and mourning the painful times you've been shamed or rejected. It may mean learning to protect yourself from well-meaning others who continue to say rude, shaming things about you or your body. It may mean seeking out people who can and will truly love you just as you are.

When you create the safety of self acceptance, then you can have real results - results that ARE typical include - more laughter, more love, and more freedom to enjoy life.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Eating is not a Moral Issue

How often have you heard someone (maybe yourself) say, "I was so bad today, I ate a bag of cookies." Or conversely, "I've been good all day, I only had 1200 calories."

When we make food about goodness or badness, we take away our power to really know and understand our RELATIONSHIP with food, our bodies, and ultimately ourselves.

When we are "good," we give ourselves approval, possibly rewards, and perhaps, unconsciously allow ourselves to bathe in the invisible approval of a parent or other authority figure. When we are "bad" we shame and blame ourselves, punish ourselves, and bathe in imagined rejection or disapproval.

This whole process - whether "good" or "bad" really serves to distance us from the important question... Am I hungry?

If you are hungry, but not eating (or not eating enough) in order to be "good," then you are abandoning yourself - punishing yourself for past eating or potential future eating.

If you are not hungry, but are eating, then maybe you're not just being "bad." Maybe you are feeling empty, hungry for love, sleep, time, freedom...

When you make food a moral issue, you never allow yourself to get to the heart of the problem. Instead you get consumed with feelings of shame or avoidance of shame.

So for a day (longer if you like), try legalizing food. Eat when you're hungry. Eat what you're craving. And if you eat more than your body is hungry for, use that experience as an opportunity to be CURIOUS rather than ashamed. "I wonder what I'm really hungry for," will open you up to a kinder, more nurturing relationship with yourself. And if you're hungry for more kindness and nurturing, then this process may lessen the times when you eat to fill emotional emptiness!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Taking Ourselves Lightly

My last post is, yes, silly, but I really think we have a lot to learn about being happy, following our hearts, living in the moment, and accepting ourselves - from our animal friends.

On my own journey from emotional eating, I started out with a belief that my happiness was wrapped up in my looks. If I met the cultural criteria: thin, young, sexy, I could feel good about myself.

But there was always a catch. Either I wasn't thin enough, or I was thin enough, but knew I couldn't sustain myself on a diet for too much longer. And soon enough, youth would be gone.

Allowing myself to judge and be judged by these criteria meant my happiness and freedom had to endlessly be earned. In the movie biz, they say, "you're only as good as you're last picture." In the diet biz, you're only as good as you're last weigh-in.

Living this way is crazy. And what is it we're actually earning? What I discovered, was that I didn't really like having friends and lovers who would judge me based on my appearance. It was like having an anvil hanging over my head, held in place by a very thin thread.

When I realized it was not my weight that was causing my insecurity (which was there whether I was thin or fat), but my own self-judgment, that's when my life finally began to change.

While it's not easy to shift the painful, negative thoughts and emotions that come with self-judgment, it is possible (and preferential to living under the anvil!).

So take a lesson from your favorite 4-legged friend. You really are lovable, just as you are this minute. You are good enough. You don't have to earn friendship, affection, kindness or respect. You just have to start giving these things to yourself, unconditionally and in abundance. As your self-treatment changes, you will teach others, by example, how to treat you. Those who are too entrenched in their own judgment will fall away. It's okay to let them go. You deserve better.

The Feline Diet

My cats have no problem with their bodies. They display them shamelessly, give themselves endless tongue baths, and when they want affection, nudge themselves right under my laptop, book, etc., and assume (rightfully) that it is now "their turn."

My cats also have no problem with food. Despite the lack of opposable thumbs, they eat whenever they want, whatever they want. They don't worry about empty calories or getting enough vegetables. They are not ashamed to play with their food - especially if it's still moving.

After many years of careful observation, I have noticed that my cats do follow some rules about eating and exercise. Since my cats have the best self esteem of anyone I know, I think maybe we could benefit from their diet. So here it is:

  1. Never eat anything unless you're in the mood for it. Unless you happen to be really, really hungry. Then eat the smallest amount that will get you through till something better is served.
  2. Eat the exact same thing for 3 - 5 days. Then don't eat it again for 3 - 5 weeks (if ever).
  3. Play with your food.
  4. As soon as you smell chicken, stop what you're doing and sing an opera aria until you get a bite.
  5. As soon as you smell fish, be really nice to the person making it until they give you some. Then, ignore them as before.
  6. Eat chicken skin. It's the best part. If there's any more, have more. Feel free to lick the plate unashamedly.
  7. Take a long sponge bath after every meal or snack.
  8. Take a long nap after every sponge bath.

Exercise:
  1. Sprint for 30 seconds after you poop.
  2. Stretch whenever you shift from one activity to another.
  3. Stretch or take an immediate sponge bath whenever you do something embarrassing.
  4. Stretch whenever you've been napping for more than 30 minutes (then nap some more).
  5. Jump off impossibly high things. If it's the middle of the night, jump onto something terribly loud and crashy.
  6. Jump onto incredibly high things. If you miss, see step 3.
  7. Knead things.
  8. Chase invisible beings.
  9. Crouch low to the ground and stalk prey.
  10. Pounce when you find something good. If in mid pounce you discover you were mistaken, become completely dorky for about ten seconds and do a Jerry Lewis imitation. Then go back to step 3.
  11. When you find a sunny spot, position yourself square in the middle of it and roll around on your back. Then nap till the sun moves.
  12. Feel free to nap between (or in the middle of) any exercise.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

The Disease of Dieting

When I lose the weight, then I'll...

If I exercise 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, I'll burn an extra...

I can eat 3 ounces of chicken, 1/2 an apple, and 1 cup of skim...

In 16 weeks I should be a size...

Are these the kinds of thoughts rolling around your head? If they are then you've got diet-itis. Diet-itis is a severely under-diagnosed disease marked by compulsive counting and planning for when you get thinner.

This disease goes undiagnosed because in our culture, thinness is seen as a desireable goal - one to attain at almost any cost.

What are the costs of diet-itis?

  • The primary cost is terrible anxiety. All of the counting and planning is really a way to distract themselves from the fear of gaining weight and all that that fear symbolizes (rejection, abandonment, judgment...).
  • Another cost is loss of time. People spend so much time counting, weighing, measuring, planning, fantasizing, and comparing, that they don't ever get to live in the moment.
  • Along with the loss of time, is the loss of living fully. Since permission to live fully is contingent on being a certain weight or size, pleasure, fun, relationships, careers and all kinds of experiences are off limits for people with this disease.
  • In the most severe cases, people develop eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder - in which the feelings of shame, chaos and anxiety turn into eating behaviors of severe control or loss of control.


If you (or someone you love) has diet-itis, be kind, gentle and patient. Remember that under the compulsion to restrict food or burn calories lies the fear of being judged and rejected.

While it seems like the way out is to comply with social values and lose weight, this only compounds the problem. Instead, the way out is to develop an unconditionally accepting "inner ally." A part of the self that NEVER judges or rejects, but provides compassion and kindness for the pain, fear and shame.

For help developing this inner ally, therapy and hypnosis are invaluable. Another amazing resource are the Rememberings and Celebrations cards offered by Robyn Posin at www.forthelittleonesinside.com.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Have you seen "How to Look Good Naked"?

When I first heard about this show, I felt a mixture of hope and trepidation. Would this really be a show about self acceptance? Or would it be an excuse to further shame women? Much to my relief, the first episode was kind and supportive.

As a therapist, I loved how the host, Carson, helped Layla see herself through the eyes of others - as a real, normal woman. So much of what we need to feel good about ourselves is a "reality check." And in a world where we park ourselves in front of a box of actresses and models who are abnormally thin, tucked, lifted and airbrushed, it's hard to know what normal (and beautiful) really is.

While the transformation from shame to self-acceptance happened way faster than I see in my clients, the process is the same. We need to transform our inner critic into an ally. One great way to do this is by confronting the distortions our inner critic holds about our bodies. We tend to see ourselves as less attractive than others see us. And for some reason, we convince ourselves that our distortions are correct - that others are just "being nice."

We live in a distorted culture - one that tells us we must have thin, smooth, muscled, long limbed bodies in order to be lovable and/or successful. This is completely false. We need love - unconditional, supportive, kind, respectful love. We need to know we are entitled to be our best selves no matter our size, shape, age, etc.

Thanks to Carson and to Lifetime for creating and airing this show. Now, let's see if they can ditch the diet commercials!!!