Time Management or Self-Management?

By Barbara M. LaRock

Would you like more time in your calendar and your life? What if changing the way you look at time could make a good life a great life? Think these concepts are impossible? Read on.

At one time or another, most of us have said, “There just isn’t enough time in the day” or “I can never accomplish all I want to both at work and at home”? This kind of thinking makes people see themselves as victims of their overcrowded, overwhelming and demanding schedules. They then sit back, complain and continue their self-defeating behaviors. You can, however, change your attitude about managing time by acknowledging and accepting your responsibility for managing yourself.

It goes without saying that everyone has the same amount of time in his or her day. It’s how you choose to “spend” that time that counts. The word “spend” is key. When you spend money, you choose what amount to pay out in order to get what you want/need. The same holds true for time. Each of us decides how much to spend to get what we want/need. Time is wasted when we don’t spend or invest it wisely. It’s up to each of us to decide what our personal and professional priorities are and then to honor those priorities. This is why effective management of time really is self-management.

Effective time/self-management begins with examining and knowing your own style. People who are structured, organized, good at identifying, setting and respecting priorities, and good at meeting deadlines find managing their time relatively easy. On the other hand, people who lack determination and discipline and who are reluctant to have structure and organization in their lives have a more difficult time managing themselves and their time. But, with resolve and practice, they can learn to get done more of the important things in their lives.

Here are a few tips to help you get started managing yourself and your time more effectively:

1. Keep in mind that you, not circumstances are in the driver’s seat.
2. Keep a daily log for one week of how you spend your time.
3. Assess your own style and attitudes about time. For instance, if you’re a morning person, schedule your most difficult tasks early when you are at your best.
4. Take 10 minutes at the end of each day to write down your top 5-6 priorities for the next day in order of their importance.
5. Make sure that before the end of your workday, you accomplish the top 5-6 priorities that you set for yourself. Let nothing pull you off track or intervene with this accomplishment.
6. Maintain a calendar, either written or electronic, so you don’t over schedule yourself.
7. Have a clear understanding of what is important to your family members and your associates.
8. Delegate what you can.
9. Every week, handle one unfinished task or project that has drained your energy.
10. Respect other people’s time
11. Learn to say no to anything that takes you away from respecting your priorities, and
12. Practice living with the guilt that may come from saying no. You will get better at it.

Remember that it’s up to you to manage yourself–and your time.

Barbara M. LaRock, M.Ed., offers life, leadership and career coaching as well as organizational training.  Her firm is located in Reston, VA.  Her background prior to coaching includes teaching, advising and mentoring students; designing and directing training programs for trade and professional associations; and organizational training involving presentation and facilitation of workshops and seminars. Barbara’s coaching specializes in life-related and career areas with her individual clients and provides them with encouragement, support and challenge as they focus on transition and change in their personal and professional lives. Her clients find more enjoyment in their everyday lives and become even more productive on the job. For more information, visit her web site Barbara LaRock.

Copyright 2010

No parts of this article or the article in its entirety may be reproduced without permission of the author.

Book Review: The Body Love Manual — How to Love the Body You Have as You Create the Body You Want

You might find it strange to think that you need a manual on loving your body, but in fact, there is a book written by Elizabeth “Lily” Hills called The Body Love Manual*, and that’s precisely what it sets out to do — teach you to love your body. Right now, go to a mirror, look yourself directly in the eye and say “I love my body.” How does that feel? When one person I know said those words out loud, she said she felt silly. Silly because nothing could be further from the truth for her, as I suspect is the case with most people. I don’t have any statistics on how many people dislike their bodies, but if I were to take a guess, I would probably say that most people range somewhere from a vague dislike to an intense hatred of their bodies. And our eating habits confirm that.

It seems like most of us are either on a diet, trying to create a body that we can feel happy with, or treating our body with complete disregard, filling it beyond capacity with foods that would make our body scream in pain if it could talk. And then, when we can’t stand to look in the mirror anymore, or feel totally out of control around food, we go on a diet. Again. But let’s face it — diets don’t work.

Ninety-five percent of people who go on a diet regain the weight lost, and often more, within five years. But how are we supposed to reconcile those statistics with things like “obesity epidemic” or “1 in 3 Americans are overweight” and “war on obesity”. If diets don’t work, how are we supposed to cure our country of unhealthy eating habits and an inactive lifestyle? Jamie Oliver thinks he has the answer with his Food Revolution. Michelle Obama hopes she has the answers in trying to eradicate childhood obesity by encouraging kids to get off the sofa and get outdoors. In both cases, the focus, ultimately, is about teaching people to live healthier lives — to choose apple slices instead of chips, grilled chicken instead of burgers, bike riding instead of Playstation. But together, both Obama and Oliver are only getting at half the problem — which is what people eat, and without addressing the other half — why people eat, they will never reach the long term success they both genuinely want and hope to achieve.

The concept of intuitive eating is gaining momentum and working towards that goal with the help of books like Intuitive Eating, and Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat will be far more effective than wagging the finger at people in an effort to get them to make better choices. The Body Love Manual takes intuitive eating one step further by guiding readers through a process of identifying what it is that keeps them so disconnected from the bodies, preventing them from listening to and properly nourishing their bodies. Though the subtitle of the book is How to Love the Body You Have as You Create the Body You Want, don’t be mistaken. This is not a diet book in disguise. The Body Love Manual is for anyone ready to put away dieting forever, deciding to become an intuitive eater, and challenging the thoughts and feelings that so far have preventing you from achieving that goal. Integral to this process is learning, as the title suggests, to love your body. As Hills points out, “The human body is tragically under-appreciated, neglected, and abused…The fact is that it is very hard to feel motivated to take care of something you don’t care about. Conversely, when you care deeply for and truly honor your body, you will be far more likely to make the healthier choices for it.”

The Body Love Manual should not be a quick read. It requires reflection and real emotional work. But ask yourself if you identify with this passage from the book:

“As the number I saw on my bathroom scale went up, my sense of self-worth plummeted. During this period of my life, it was rare for me to appreciate and value any of my other qualities … [which] became secondary in comparison to my weight.”

If you feel like you could have written those words yourself, then perhaps it is time to begin the work towards loving your body because “When your thoughts about yourself are respectful and appreciative, you will begin to attract more positive experiences of all kinds into your life.”

Though the Body Love Manual talks about achieving your ideal weight, you might begin to question what your “ideal weight” is and in fact you may find that you are already there, because your “ideal weight” should reflect a healthy lifestyle that is not measured by a number on the scale but by the feelings that come from your mind and body which will tell you when you’ve reached it.

*As required by FCC law, I am disclosing that The Body Love Manual was donated by the author for purposes of this review.

Living Beyond the Worst

By C.Reed Weber

Everyone has at least one Worst-Case Scenario tucked away and most of us live in fear of the day when that scenario — The Worst — will be played out. Maybe it involves a career choice, or perhaps loss of employment. It may involve family members or loved ones. It could be a single incident, or first in a chain of events that will bring you to your knees. It doesn’t really matter what you fear, the fear itself is enough to make you miserable.

But should The Worst happens, you may be surprised to discover life continues on. Birds sing. Clouds float. Children laugh. People cry. The Worst has happened, now what? What won’t happen is life will not stop. It may seem to you as if life should stop, but amazingly everything keeps going right along. The sun rises every morning and the stars shine every night. It may seem to you Clouds of Gloom rain everywhere you go, but soon you will realize only you are getting wet. Then you’ll find yourself in the position of being “outside” things for a time, but eventually you’ll be able to pick up the threads of your life and continue on. You will wake up. You will grocery shop. You will eat meals. You will talk with people. It happens very slowly, but as days pass you’ll find you are living again. Living is what you are supposed to be doing while you are tromping around on this planet!

My father once told me: “Be prepared for The Worst, but Live for the Best.” I think that sums it up nicely.

C.Reed Weber has been writing since she first discovered an unguarded pencil and continues today as a freelance journalist and grant writer. Living Beyond the Worst has been adapted from Happy Thoughts, a collection of email columns she wrote for friends and family during 2008-2009. Weber is currently working on developing Happy Thoughts into a book. You can purchase mini-volumes of Happy Thoughts from her Etsy site.

Review of Shmirshky — think inside the box

When I was first approached about reviewing the book Shmirshky — think inside the box, I was hesitant. Written by ‘E’, the book was presented as follows: “Shmirshky is about menopause – it’s hilarious, witty and full of love.” Menopause. Hum….. at 37 years old, I like to think I’m still have time before I have to think about menopause, and I preferred to keep my head in the sand when it came to the matter. But then I had to admit, that although I am hopefully at least a decade off before I have to face the dreaded M-word, it couldn’t hurt to have an idea of what I face down the road. And it never hurts to have an idea of what other people I know might be going through — people like my mom.

When Shmirshky arrived, I was instantly intrigued. No — intrigued is not the right word. Amused. As you can see, the cover of the book has an outline of hips with a … uh … fuzzy spot in the middle. As soon as I opened the book, I was drawn in to the humor and reality of the book. As already mentioned, Shmirshky refers to vagina, but it also refers to anyone who has a vagina. In contrast, we learn, an erlick is a penis and/or anyone who has a penis. You will find many other words defined in the book, such as premenopause, perimenopause, postmenopausal, and, of course, the biggest one of them all — menopause. Sure, you could find all of these things in dictionary, on a health web site, and of course Wikipedia. But what you won’t get in any of those places is a very real account of what it is like to go through all of the phases of menopause, and certainly not in the way E describes it.

The book Shmirshky came about when E found herself desperate for information on what to expect when going through these massive hormonal changes and kept coming up short. There were the standard, sterile, medical accounts of what could or would happen to her body, but most of them were probably written by men, and none of them represented a personal account leading her to feel quite alone in the process. Friends wouldn’t talk about it, relatives brushed over it, and finally E decided to take matters into her own hands, ready to “bust open the shmirshky cover-up and sound the alarm for others.”

In addition to a first-hand understanding of M, as the author calls menopause, E has a deep understanding of the female psyche, and how we cope — or avoid coping with such a monumental event in every woman’s life. As E says in Chapter 5, the big shmirshky cover-up, “It’s not that we don’t want to be honest with those we love, but rather that we aren’t honest with ourselves. We’re afraid of being less than: less than perfect, less than 100 percent functioning, less than able to juggle it all.” But we find out as we go through the book that we must come to terms with the fact that even if we can’t (nor shouldn’t be) perfect, or perform at 100 percent, or juggle it all, it doesn’t mean that we are less than anything, because we are still who we are.

In addition to telling it like it is, Shmirshky is full of good advice on how to handle M through each step in the process, from finding the right doctor and understanding all the tests and numbers that are thrown your way to taking the concept of self care to a new level. She reminds us that we are “brought up to be the caregivers, but we must learn how to take care of ourselves”. And by learning to take care of ourselves, no matter whether we are years away from menopause, right smack in the middle of menopause, or have long since left it behind, now is the time to “love and respect the old you, just as you embrace the new.”

Menopause can be a scary thing. As E says, “we spend most of our time wondering where our period is, when it’s going to come, and when it will go away. It’s less like a period and more like a question mark.” But going into the experience with the knowledge and humor found in this book, the process can be a little less intimidating. Ultimately, in the author’s words, if you have a vagina, or you know someone who does, then this book is for you.

Review of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat

It wasn’t that long ago that I decided I was ready to get off the diet roller coaster. But if you’ve spent a lifetime going on and off diets, obsessing about your weight, and swinging back and forth between counting every calorie and having an all-out food free-for-all like I have, then making the decision to end the cycle is only the beginning of the process. Sure you can decide you’ve had enough of counting calories, always feeling deprived, and so you just eat what you want, whenever you want, without considering the consequences. But chances are you, if you’ve been playing the diet game long enough, you probably have long lost the ability to listen to your body, and when you end up gaining weight as you no longer restrict every bite, you’re likely to feel bad about yourself, leading you to go on yet another diet.

Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat: How to Break Your Eat-Repent-Repeat Cycle by Michelle May, M.D., is a guide book for quitting dieting and (re)learning how to eat. Like other books on intuitive eating, Eat What You Love places a big emphasis on listening to your body. But simply deciding to listen to ones body after ignoring it for so long isn’t as easy as making the decision to do so. With each Chapter, author Michelle May outlines actionable steps you can take to stop controlling what you eat and start taking charge of what you eat. She also includes moments from her own journey towards becoming an intuitive eater, bringing a personal element to the book.

In Part 1 of Eat What You Love, May helps you recognize what type of eater you are. While you might think your poor relationship by food can be summed up by simple explanations like “I just enjoy food too much” what you might find while reading this book is that there are more underlying issues that lead you to ignore your body’s cues. Understanding your habits and learning the reasons behind your eating will enable you to use the tools provided in the book to help you “eat mindfully, live vibrantly.”

Once you’ve discovered the underlying issues behind your eating habits, Eat What You Love provides new strategies to deal with old feelings and situations that may trigger overeating. In fact, there is a whole chapter on self-care. Additionally, learning how to eat with purpose may awaken or heighten the sensations you get from the food you love, and give you whole new level of enjoyment of food. And you may even realize some of the foods you think you love actually don’t taste all that great when you pay close attention to what your body is telling you as you eat it. Your taste buds are the most sensitive when you are truly hungry, and as your hunger diminishes, so does your taste sensations. That first bite of chocolate cake may taste like a little slice of heaven but if you eat slowly, taking time to taste every bite, you might find that as you fill up, the flavor seems to fade.

After going through the process of learning to eat with intention, becoming more mindful of how your emotions come into play when making decisions about food and learning how to cope through means other than food, Eat What You Love moves onto the subject of exercise. As with food, May encourages you to focus more on how exercise makes you feel instead of seeing it as a chore or as redemption for your food sins, and in the vain of the title of the book suggests “do what you love, love what you do”. If you dread the monotony of walking on the treadmill, don’t do it. Instead find other ways to move that make you feel good, like dancing around the house, taking the dog for a walk outside, or even active play with the kids. Of course, you might also find that when you are focused on the way exercise makes your body and mind feel, it might renew love for activities you thought you no longer enjoyed. And for those who are interested, May spends some time talking about the physiology of exercise but breaks it down in layman’s terms to make the information accessible and meaningful.

May points out that “Every time you drastically decrease your caloric intake, you lose muscle, not just fat, if you aren’t exercising regularly. Once you abandon the diet and resume eating the way you previously did, you’ll quickly regain fat but not the muscle you lost. As a result, your metabolism will be even slower.” In addition to suggestions on ways to add enjoyable movement to your life, Eat What You Love offers specific weight-bearing exercises as well as stretches to increase flexibility — another important component of a healthy lifestyle.

The last section of the book is filled with menu ideas and recipes for foods that will feed and nourish your body while allowing you to love what you eat. Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat is a comprehensive resource to get you on track towards a healthy relationship with food and your body. It is not a quick fix diet solution. It does not present an easy way to lose weight under the guise of a healthy eating plan. Instead, if you are ready to do some emotional work, Eat What You Love will bring you to a place you thought you might never be able to find — a place where you don’t have to think about food all the time, but instead enjoy it thoroughly while staying in charge, and living your life in a healthy way.

Your exercise routine has fizzled out. Now what?

Ok, so we’re nearly two weeks into January, and I am wondering how many fitness resolutions are already out the window. As someone who loves being active, I’m all for goals that promote a more active lifestyle. But if you don’t get off on the right start, well-meaning intentions will only go so far in delivering you to the gym. Before you commit to getting fit, evaluate your motives, and make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. (Read What Motivates You to Move?) Once you’ve established that your goals come from a genuine desire for well being (rather than trying to reach an unattainable or unmaintainable body weight/shape/size), you still might get discouraged at what seems like a long road ahead of you. If your motivation has already petered out, here are a few suggestions to help spark the flame again.

Buy some new work out clothes. This may seem like a shallow approach, but if you feel self conscious in your over-sized holey sweats while everyone else is walking around in their Nike/Reebok/Adidas gear, you will look for every excuse not to go. While there is no limit to how much you can spend on fitness apparel, you don’t have to spend a lot on functional, yet fashionable clothing that will give you the freedom you need to move. I recently stocked up on Champion boot-cut fitted pants from Target, and while I was lucky enough to catch them on sale for $14.99, their regular price of $19.99 still can’t be beat. I also got a few tank tops with built in bras, like this Champion Racer Back Tank for $18.99. And speaking of bras, make sure you have a properly fitted bra that gives you the support you need. If you are uncomfortable because the girls are bouncing around too much, that will just add to your list of excuses to avoid moving. For extra support, check out the Ultimate Sport Bra from Lane Bryant. Old Navy is another great source for reasonably priced fitness clothes, and Junonia is a good source for plus-sized active wear. If you’re ready to spend a little more and want to check out some fun styles, try the newest brand from the Gap brand of stores, Athleta. While many of their price points are beyond what I’m willing to spend, I definitely love their styles and would enjoy heading to the gym in some of their cute tops. Whatever you do, find clothes that are comfortable to work out in but make you feel good too. You’d be surprised what a difference it can make.

Beating the Winter Blues

By Esther Kane, MSW

As a psychotherapist, this is my busiest time of year. Why? Because a lot of people are really bummed out and don’t understand why. They come to me feeling desperate in the hopes that I will help them get their “pep” back. Many are predisposed to seasonal depression, otherwise known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). This is a very common form of depression, which is only noticeable during those months where there is very little sunlight (like now!).

Symptoms of SAD

The symptoms of SAD commonly begin every year between September and November and continue until March or April. Symptoms often include a number of the following*:

• Sleep problems: Oversleeping and difficulty staying awake but, in some cases, disturbed sleep and early morning wakening
• Lethargy: Feeling of fatigue and inability to carry out normal routine
• Overeating: Craving for carbohydrates and sweet foods, usually resulting in weight gain
• Depression: Feelings of misery, guilt and loss of self-esteem, sometimes hopelessness and despair, sometimes apathy
• Social problems: Irritability and avoidance of social contact
• Anxiety: Tension and inability to tolerate stress
• Loss of libido: Decreased interest in sex and physical contact
• Mood changes: In some sufferers, extremes of mood and short periods of hypomania (overactivity) in spring and autumn.

If you identify readily with all or most of the above symptoms and you’ve experienced them every winter for at least three consecutive years, chances are you are suffering from SAD. Luckily, there can be great relief found from a variety of non-invasive modalities available. I will outline the methods that the majority of my clients struggling with SAD have found most helpful:

Light therapy

Recent research has shown that 85 percent of people diagnosed with SAD have been helped by light therapy.  This involves being exposed to very bright light (at least ten times the intensity of household lighting) first thing in the morning for 15-30 minutes every day.

Look into getting a special light used to treat SAD. The one I use and recommend constantly to my clients is called the “Litebook Elite”. It’s small, lightweight (8 oz), and durable.** The great thing about light therapy is that it is safe, has no side effects, and easy to use.

Regular Exercise

A 2001 study by  Duke University, in North Carolina, found exercise to be a more effective treatment for depression than anti-depressants, with fewer relapses and a higher recovery rate. Researchers say a chemical in the brain called serotonin may be the key. People suffering from depression have low levels of serotonin, and exercise can boost those levels.

Find an exercise routine you enjoy and can commit to at least three times a week. Make sure it’s active enough to get your heart-rate up and your blood pumping — this boosts serotonin levels and leaves you feeling more upbeat and positive.

Talk Therapy

Engaging in regular sessions with a psychotherapist who specializes in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to treat various forms of depression will give you the tools you need to re-train your brain from negative to positive thinking. When combined with other modalities of healing, this can provide much relief from SAD.

Practice lots of positive self-talk; much of depression is a result of what we say to ourselves. We need to learn to ‘think happy’: when we do this, the brain follows suit.

If you’d rather work on your own, I suggest you pick up a copy of David Burn’s classic self-help guide to overcoming depression, The Feeling Good Handbook. This is a wonderful resource and can be helpful to anyone who needs to change his or her thinking from negative to positive.

*adapted from The Seasonal Affective Disorder Association’s website.

** You can order a Litebook Elite by calling 1-877-723-5483. If you use my professional # (BC 0007) when you place your order, you’ll save twenty percent on the cost. I have registered myself with this company in order to make these lights more affordable to people.

Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counselor, is in full-time private practice as a psychotherapist in Courtenay, B.C. Esther has over a decade of experience counseling women and their loved ones with a multitude of presenting problems.Her main focus is helping women to become free of barriers which keep them stuck so that they can become all that they dream of being. To learn more about Esther’s services, please visit her website at EstherKane.com.

Talking with Jenni Schaefer, Author & Eating Disorder Activist

I admit it. Jenni Schaefer is one of my personal heroes. It’s not just because she’s battled with and recovered from an eating disorder. It’s not just because she travels around the country, talking about eating disorders and raising awareness on the most deadly of all mental disorders. It’s not just because she’s written and published two books. It’s not just because she is pursuing her dream of becoming a country singer. Perhaps it’s the culmination of all of these things, combined with her candidness and a comfort with herself that comes through in conversation, but each of her qualities are ones that I admire and feel inspired by. Jenni and I spoke for the second time after I finished her second book, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me, and through the course of our discussion, we covered topics both old and new, but each subject we touched on gave me another look at her perspective on herself and the world.

Before we dove into some of the questions I had for Jenni, I decided to be frank with her in regards to my first impression of her. To be honest, I can sometimes be skeptical when I hear someone say “I’ve learned to accept my body as it is” and when I look at them, I see a body which to me, represents our society’s ideal of being thin. Sure, I thought. That’s easy for you to say. You have a body that everyone else accepts too … what’s not to accept? These are the same thoughts I had when Jenni stood up to speak at a Congressional hearing on eating disorders. To me, she was thin, and I was envious of her flat stomach. When I shared these thoughts with Jenni, she was not the least bit surprised (or offended, as I feared) and she said that this subject is one frequently discussed at eating disorder conferences, saying that the “size and shape of a therapist is like the elephant in the room no one is talking about.” Eating disordered patients will definitely scrutinize the body of their therapist and it’s an issue that must be addressed. Jenni also personally related to my feelings as she put it into perspective for me.

“My ideal my body size with my eating disorder was many pounds lighter than I am now … The Jenni that was sick would have looked at Jenni today and say ‘wow you’ve really let yourself go.’ Jenni today looks at me and I actually love my body. My brain is now nourished and I can see I have a healthy body.” She also talked about the height of her eating disorder when she was severely bulimic and actually overweight by most doctors charts. That fact made it more difficult for her to seek the treatment she so desperately needed. She looked healthier compared to when she was anorexic, making it harder for others to understand the depth of her struggles. During this time, she looked at others with eating disorders, and thought she wasn’t thin enough to deserve help and get treatment. When she finally did seek treatment, one of the coping skills she learned early on was to look for similarities instead of looking for differences in other people.

“We will always find differences and use that to seperate us from the rest of the world which is what I used to do, or we can seek similarities and try to look at how we are all the same.” She then added this wonderful pearl of wisdom: “Eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes and recovered bodies also come in all shapes and sizes, and where I am recovered at my current body size, someone else might be recovered and actually be thinner than me, or heavier than me.”

If you read my previous interview with Jenni, you know that when I saw her at the hearing, she was wearing a black shirt which said “Recovered.” in white lettering (that wasn’t a typo — there is a period at the end of ‘Recovered’ in order to drive home the statement). This was an issue we discussed last time, but because of a recent blog post by Life Coach Andrea Owen entitled Can We Ever Fully Recover?, I felt the subject had to be explored further.

One of the things I really admire about Jenni is that she is very good about encouraging people to find the approach that best works for them. She asks the question “Does saying you are in recovery from an eating disorder keep you sick or keep you healthy?” For Jenni, always saying she was in recovery kept her sick, but she recognizes that for others, it keeps ED away.

“As long as I said I was in recovery, my eating disorder was waiting around the corner to get me. I really had to claim [recovery] for me and that’s what worked best for me.” She then added, “I am recovered from my eating disorder. I am not recovered from life. I still am constantly getting better at perfectionism. Of course I have a negative voice in my head. What’s different today is that negative voice is not surrounded around weight and food. My personal ED is gone. Does that mean I never have a bad body image experience? Do I never think anything bad about my body? Of course not, I live in America!”

But the negative voice Jenni hears from time to time is one that most of us deal with even without any history of an eating disorder, and Jenni refers to this voice as societal ED. Jenni recalled a chapter in Goodbye Ed, entitled The Worst Pick Up Line Ever, in which she describes an experience at her gym when a guy asks her “Are you here to lose weight too?” Her initial reaction was to ask herself why he would say that? But her therapist quickly reminded her that most women would have a negative reaction to his comment, and it isn’t necessarily the voice of an eating disorder. It was time to stop identifying herself with her eating disorder. When asked if she ever had moments when she questioned if life wouldn’t be better or wouldn’t she be happier at a lower weight, Jenni emphatically says no.

After writing two books about ED and traveling around the country raising awareness about eating disorders, Jenni is ready to focus on something new in her life — balance. While she enjoys talking about eating disorders and recovery, she is spending more time making room to talk about other things. In her own words, “I don’t want to always be defined by an illness I once had. Now that I’m recovered, I can do anything.”

Jenni has a variety of interests that have nothing to do with eating disorders, and those interests are leading her in new directions as she works more on her music (she has recorded two singles so far) and having fun. Being close to nature has become an important part of Jenni’s happiness and helps her feel grounded, so she tries to find activities that she can enjoy outside ranging from hitting the slopes to simply sitting outside reading a book. And speaking of books, she is already in research mode for her next one — and it’s not about ED! As she further explores the world of dating, finding new challenges and new experiences, she is realizing these are also experiences worth sharing. I for one can’t wait to read about them.

Review of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me by Jenni Schaefer

Jenni Schaefer’s first book, Life Without Ed chronicles her journey through the ups and downs of recovering from an eating disorder. At the book’s end, she declares herself truly free from the control of Ed (a common nickname for eating disorders). Now Jenni has written a follow up book entitled Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life.*

Before I go on to talk about specifics of the book … before I lose readers who think “I don’t have an eating disorder, so I won’t relate to this book” I want to point out something very important. This book is not just for people dealing with eating disorders. It’s for anyone who has spent their life obsessing about food, yo-yo dieting, hating their bodies, and otherwise doing anything related to food, even if it falls short of an eating disorder. This book is here to tell you too, in no uncertain terms, that you CAN find a life outside of your food and body obsessions.

When I interviewed Jenni earlier this year (you can read the interview here) she admitted that even after finishing her first book, Ed still occasionally made an appearance. In retrospect she sees herself then as being “significantly recovered” but not fully recovered. Goodbye Ed, Hello Me was written when she finally put a restraining order on Ed, forbidding him to ever enter into her life again. Goodbye Ed is about what life is and can be like after you are fully recovered (yes, you CAN fully recover!) from an eating disorder. It’s about, as the subtitle suggests, falling in love with life.

In the first chapter,  Happily Divorced, Jenni details some of her final battles with Ed, when she occasionally allowed her ‘ex’ to woo her once again. But with a support team and “tool box” in place, she finally cut him loose once and for all. What follows in the rest of the book is the story of how Jenni reclaimed her life from a vicious illness that nearly killed her.

Because her entire life had been dominated by a force greater than herself (or so she thought until she sought help), Jenni didn’t experience the normal milestones people have during their development. Sure she got her driver’s license. Yes, she graduated from high school and went on to college. But every thing she did was tinted as she viewed the world through the lens of her eating disorder. As a result, she avoided dating, minimized social contact with friends and family, and avoided pursuing dreams for fear of failure. In her own words, “my eating disorder had become my identity.”

After Ed was forever banished, Jenni had to take time to figure out who she was separate from Ed. It was time for her to regain herself, which sometimes was scary, and at other times, exhilarating. Of course, dating landed more on the side of ’scary’ since she never went through the full motions of dating during her adolescence, and in fact one chapter is entitled the Thirty-Two-Year-Old Adolescent. Learning how not to lose herself in a significant other in the same way she lost herself in her eating disorder was part of the dating process for Jenni, and one that was not without great pain when she walked away from an engagement for that very reason.

But it wasn’t just in dating that Jenni had to learn how to find herself. Practically born pursuing perfectionism, it was time for Jenni to work on letting go, allowing for mistakes, living and learning from them, and not losing herself in every task she undertakes. In every step she took that lead her away from Ed, she also had to walk away from the need to be perfect in everything she does.

Goodbye Ed is not just an account of Jenni’s life after Ed. It’s a guide for women (and men) who want to find themselves after kicking Ed to the curb or who just need the hope that its possible to do so, even if they haven’t divorced from Ed just yet. It is filled with tools that can be applied to any stage of recovery, and yet never once does she assert that the reader must do this or must do that in order to have a fulfilling life without Ed. Jenni is wonderful at relaying the tools that made her succesful in her recovery but frequently acknowledges that different approaches are for different people and encourages the reader to adapt their road to recovery accordingly.

Just like Life Without Ed was not just a book for people suffering from an Eating Disorder, Goodbye Ed provides inspiration for anyone wishing to bring out their best inner self, and shine gloriously without the constraints of food-obsession and a poor body image.

* Goodbye Ed, Hello Me was donated to me by The Center for Change, a residential treatment center for eating disorders.

Balancing Health AND Pleasure

by Nicole Ohebshalom

Life is full of choices that seem to have only black and white solutions.  Should you take a risk or observe? Does your child need more freedom or control?  Stay quiet or fight back?  Help someone or create a boundary? We are faced with dilemmas throughout the day.  We believe that we must choose one over the other to create a balance in ourselves and in our life, but instead we create tensions that lead to breakdowns.

In ancient tradition teachings, the tensions in life are not only a natural part of life, they are life.  The dynamic opposition is what gives birth to and sustains the changing and evolving creative essentials of our world.  We clearly see this interaction by the T’ai Chi’s swirling black-and-white circle. It shows us that without one part of the pair, the other cannot exist.  Both sides of the picture complete the circle of wholeness.  Without the dynamic interplay between these powerful pairs, there is only stagnation and narrow thinking.   One great lesson I have learned in life is we cannot ignore or chase away the tension of opposites, because its how the universe operates.  Our job is to learn how to flow with life and listen to our inner-pleasure balance compass.

Many of my clients find that when they don’t listen to their body and embrace both sides of the situation they create breakdowns instead of breakthroughs.  When we become out of balance, we feel lopsided, especially in our body.  The body sends us messages to help us get back into balance.  Recently, I had a client craving late night cookie dough ice cream.   I’m sure many have been there — I have!  What was occurring for my client was pressure in receiving a promotion especially in this economy.  The ice cream felt like a big old bear hug, a way she had learned to receive love, relax, and smooth over her feelings.  Now, she takes a bubble bath with a good book, she has fun playful tools at work, and can listen more to what her body wants to eat. I’m so excited for her; she is rocking her new promotion!  And she still eats her ice cream now and then, but with so much more pleasure!

When you learn to honor yourself then you are respecting, appreciating, and giving birth to your best self so you can give creatively and abundantly in ways that honor others.  At its core, using a pleasure balance compass gives us the inner-guidance in receiving and giving during our life challenges.

Ready to gain more understanding of this balance system?  Many of us believe that our duty is to give, give, give, which prevents us from living joyfully and giving fully.  For example, the earth must receive enough nutrients, sunshine, and water before it can produce a beautiful harvest.  Your body and mind need their own nutrition and self-love to support one another, connect with your soul, and create a beautiful life for you.

Finding the balance in life begins with these few questions: Do you love yourself enough to honor your body’s needs? Do you give yourself the nourishment, rest, and activity you deserve?  If you can give all this to yourself, as well as getting out of your mind and into your body then your body will make sure you find your balance.  Your body always has your back! You see this when you trust and learn to receive from her.  If you want to get in touch with your inner potential, you must also care for your body and listen to her wisdom.  Rabbi Nachman said, “Strengthen your body before you strengthen your soul.”

From society we have learned to push ourselves beyond our limits, we are giving on an empty tank when we should be receiving.  Honoring yourselves and connecting to your pleasure balance compass is going to call for adding into your life more playful activities.  It’s about asking yourself what you need, right now, in order for you to regain balance.  A conscious effort is needed to come back into balance by learning more of yourself and asking yourself: What do I need at this moment to create happiness?  Your happiness is your responsibility.

I asked this question to myself early today.  I was writing on the computer and I felt my body slumping and becoming tight.  In response my thoughts became narrow and nothing flowed.  To balance myself out I put the music on, let go of my mind and got into my body and just danced. It was so awesome! I feel free!  After 5 minutes, I was so into my body and happy that I could connect more to myself, the writing slowed smoothly, and my body was relaxed.  For myself, I know moving my body is key and a method to honor myself.  This doesn’t sound difficult, but it takes practice.  The change begins with watching yourself, getting to know yourself, and then translating that knowledge into action that is distinct to your needs.

Ask yourself throughout the day: Do you sacrifice the needs of your body because you are giving so much of yourself?  Do you ignore the warning signs that are trying to get you back into balance?  Do you think of your body as something you love and completely surrender to?

Nicole Ohebshalom is the owner of Radiant Living Wellness which offers programs to address weight and health concerns, increase energy levels, or simply to help clients eat better. A firm believer in the power of balance, Nicole is also a Kundalini Yoga Instructor. To learn more about Nicole and her services, visit Radiant Living Wellness.

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