EDNOS: The Eating Disorder You Haven’t Heard Of

When I received the diagnosis of Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified two years ago, I had a very mixed reaction. On the one hand, the label didn’t seem to fit. Me? With an eating disorder? I wasn’t underweight, and in fact was technically on the edge of being overweight. I had intentionally thrown up from time to time, but certainly was not bulimic. I had tried starving myself periodically in an attempt to get my weight under control, but I definitely wasn’t anorexic. At the most I considered myself a chronic dieter, or someone who at times could be a little obsessed with healthy eating and exercise. I could agree that my eating was very disordered but to identify myself as someone with an eating disorder made me squirm in my seat a bit. (For more on the differences between disorders and disordered eating, read Disordered Eating or Eating Disorder?)

On the other hand, after hearing my therapist tell me I had an eating disorder, I felt relief. After all, I was there to get help, and if I could label my problem, perhaps the solution would come more easily. I was ready to silence the voice in my head that made me obsess over my body and food 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and if giving that voice the name ED (for Eating Disorder) would help, I was willing to accept it.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is February 21-27 this year, which seems like a good opportunity to bring attention to this lesser known sibling of Anorexia and Bulimia. Everyone knows about Anorexia and Bulimia, but EDNOS, which has only recently begun to receive recognition in the mental health community can be as equally dangerous and life consuming as its better known counterparts.

So what does Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified mean? Well, the short answer is a “category [of] disorders of eating that do not meet the criteria of a specific eating disorder,” according to the most recently updated version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Ultimately, the definition is more anecdotal which explains why it is often harder to identify, though according to the publication Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 50 percent of individuals who present for treatment of an eating disorder receive the diagnosis of EDNOS which effects 4 to 6 percent of the general population.*

While many of the criteria for EDNOS may closely mimic anorexia or bulimia, some behaviors are less obvious, and in fact, within our diet and body-obsessed culture, can appear perfectly normal. What may look to an outsider as just another diet involving close monitoring of caloric intake as well as exercise, may in fact become — if not already — an unhealthy and unnatural way to control weight based on an intense drive to be thin combined with an unrealistic body image. On the flip side, EDNOS also includes the sub-category of Binge Eating Disorder (BED) which is often overlooked as a simple lack of willpower and/or self control. Regardless of wherever a patient lies in the spectrum of EDNOS, it is important to realize that the emotional trauma suffered as a result of the disorder is equal to that of Anorexia and Bulimia, and should not be seen as anything less than a serious illness.

The introduction of EDNOS as an accepted diagnosis “gives a voice to sufferers who don’t fit into the narrow diagnostic categories of Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating Disorder” said Shannon Cutts, author of ANA: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back, and founder of Mentor Connect, a community of people in recovery from eating and related disorders.

Cutts, who herself suffered from Anorexia, Bulimia and EDNOS feels grateful for the recognition of EDNOS, and encourages sufferers to seek help. “If you know that your symptoms, thoughts, and behaviors are affecting your quality of life, then you both need and deserve help. Use your voice and ask for help. Do not assume you are the only one who “doesn’t fit” into a category and therefore you don’t deserve help. There are many people who suffer from EDNOS and you help not just yourself but everyone who suffers from it when you demand the care you deserve. Search out a medical professional who is familiar with eating disorders rather than struggling to educate an unsympathetic doctor or therapist. Be your own health care advocate. You know better than anyone else when you are struggling and need help. Eating disorders kill, and just because your symptoms don’t fall into the three most commonly-recognized categories does not mean they are not equally deadly.”

The health complications that arise from eating disorders are extensive, and include low blood pressure, slower heart rate, a decrease in bone density, a disruption in hormones, sometimes leading to infertility, and more. Even more alarming is the fact that eating disorders have the highest rate of death among any mental disorder — just one episode of bingeing and purging can cause an electrolyte imbalance causing sudden death. That is why it is so important to recognize that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, and present themselves in a variety of ways.

Is there treatment for EDNOS? Though whole rehabilitation centers have risen to address the problems specific to Anorexia, Bulimia, and even Binge Eating Disorder, there is help for other non specified eating disorders. The effort to overcome any eating disorder is extensive and should not be downplayed. Most of the times, the help of a mental health professional is necessary, and the journey through recovery is never quick and painless. But when you consider the alternative of living a life plagued by self loathing, fear of food, and serious health risks, including a premature death, the effort is one that must be undertaken to break free and live a full and happy life.

As for my own journey, to be honest, it’s an ongoing process. Sometimes it’s two steps forward, one step back. But as Jenni Schaefer, author of Life Without Ed, and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me likes to say, fall down seven times, stand up eight.

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.

Waking Up at Your Plate

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.

4 Steps To Ending Emotional Eating

by Nicole Ohebshalom

One late night while working Boston’s needle exchange van I realized the early stages of drug addiction is no different than the sugar or coffee cycle many of us succumb to in our daily lives. This particular evening a young man walked into the van, and we talked about his drug use and life in the gay community. He had just come out about his sexual orientation without any support and used drugs to mask his fears.

As we spoke further, it surfaced that many of his fears were tied to him giving into his every temptation. He wanted to feel comfortable in his skin but had a certain pleasure tolerance that diminished any positive thoughts about himself. At this point, many of us look to the outside to heal and grow in life instead of looking and loving within ourselves. What happens at this point when we reach for a heroine needle or the cookie jar? We reach our pleasure tolerance, or our happiness quota and, the addiction cycle begins.

For many people food is an addiction, just like a drug. We receive the same cycle of highs, lows, and reasons for cravings. Many of you can relate to the subtlety of sugar cravings in the office setting. When stressed, you open up that drawer of hidden chocolate bars and the cycle begins.

Have you had a time in your life when you were eating very healthy and exercising? You’d think to yourself, “I’ve got this down!” then out of nowhere you grab a few cookies and weeks later you notice your healthy lifestyle has vanished! This is because the way we eat is the way we live. Our interaction with food is an interesting insight to how we live our lives.

We’re all born with a certain amount of happiness, but this is not our comfort zone because we aren’t always happy or comfortable with our life and ourselves. This has been keeping you from connecting to the love you want, enjoying the relaxing lifestyle you want, realizing your desires and inspiration, or savoring the yummy stimulation from a meal.

Guilt is a major quality that has been preventing you from enjoying your meals and life. We feel guilty for indulging in too much food, sex, power, and money. We can experience guilt when we’re going through change and becoming happier in life. But you shouldn’t feel guilty for having it all. It’s your moral prerogative to have it all and be happy about it. Give those self-conflicting voices about pleasure a rest.

When you let yourself feel good, you feel better about life and thereby are more open to connecting with yourself and feeling balanced. Creating a new way of enjoying eating can be intimidating because it’s new and requires courage and fearless love for yourself. Remember: change can be scary but it’s the only way to grow and achieve happiness. Ask yourself: What would it be like if you got on board with your eating or body changes? How can you celebrate them?

Follow these steps for increasing your happiness tolerance and end the cycle of emotional eating!

Step 1: Write down the reasons behind your emotional eating. Sometimes, just seeing them on paper makes it easier to get a handle on the problem. Take one week and keep a food journal. Write down absolutely everything that you eat, as well as making a note about your mood at that exact time. By taking this step, you’ll be able to target which foods you turn to when you are in different moods.

Step 2: Connect with your desires. Who do you want to be? What do you want in life? What do you enjoy and dislike in your daily life? Being in tune with your desires helps you understand your true self and optimize life satisfaction. Have you written down your desires? Be true to what opens your unique, fun, and happy heart. Embodying these desires by writing them down will allow you to connect to and trust yourself. Next time you think negative body or food thoughts, come back to your desires. Ask yourself what is your stand– what will create happiness in your life?

Step 3: Make a list of things you are grateful for while experiencing this change in food and body image mentality. Put it up on your fridge and look at it to remind you of all the wonderful things in your life. This will help you stay on track, even though the change might be difficult at first. Remember, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel!

Step 4: Say YES to something that you would not normally say yes too. See if you enjoy any activity that you normally would not include in your routine.

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.

Conquering the “Worry Monster”

by Esther Kane

I recently had the incredible experience of being on national television. I appeared on CTV’s Canada AM for a full three-plus minutes talking about Orthorexia — a type of eating disorder which is defined as the “obsession with healthy eating”. The reason I want to share this experience with you is because I know a lot of you struggle with anxiety in its many different guises — social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and phobias of various descriptions. Every day in my practice, I work with at least one person who is recovering from some anxiety issue and I am so grateful to be able to give her the tools she needs in order to lessen the often, debilitating symptoms of this particular affliction.

 I too, suffer from anxiety in many forms. It is my hope that sharing my experience of conquering one fear in particular will both inspire and encourage you to conquer some of yours.

My worst fear happens to be public speaking. So you can imagine the absolute dread and horror I felt upon being asked to appear LIVE on national television! However, as a psychotherapist who helps other women work through their fears and come out the other side, I felt it was my duty to walk the talk and be an example of someone who meets her fears head-on, blows a ’raspberry’ in their face and forges on into the unknown.

 So even though I was absolutely terrified of going on television — I spent at least two nights writhing in bed unable to sleep because of all the horrible things I imagined would go wrong — I decided I would do it not matter how scared I was.

I had approximately one month to prepare for my television debut, and it meant flying to Toronto from my cosy, safe little home on the West coast.  Oh, I should also mention here that flying is my other worst fear. Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to that part either.

 Now, I’d like to share with you the tools I used to lessen my fear and force myself to do something that terrified me in hopes that these same tools will help you accomplish things you now feel are impossible.

ESTHER’S FIVE TOP TOOLS FOR OVERCOMING ANXIETY

1. Always think about the bigger picture.

In other words, remind yourself why you would put yourself through hell in the first place. In my case, I reminded myself constantly that the purpose for going on television was to help people who struggle with disordered eating and to reach a much wider audience than I can seeing one client at a time in a small town.

2. Remind yourself of what you can look forward to after the scary event is over.

Here, I imagined how proud I’d be of myself for going through my fear and coming out the other side, as well as the fact that once I had been on TV, I could do it again without as much fear and this would bring wonderful career opportunities.

3. Give yourself a pat on the back for achieving your goal.

I did this literally in the cab right after I finished the interview and silently said to myself, “Way to go, girl!” This made me grin from ear to ear as I allowed myself to soak in what I had accomplished. It was such a sweet feeling and I am so glad I made it through my fear in order to have that lovely experience of ‘revelling’ in the feeling of accomplishment.

4. Write down all of the things you are worried will go wrong and challenge each one.

This is an incredibly powerful tool for exorcising those ‘worry monsters’ once and for all. For example, one of my fears was that I would be so anxious while being interviewed that I would forget everything I had prepared to talk about and that I would either sit there looking dumbfounded at the interviewer or else blab on about things that weren’t directly related to what she was asking me. So I wrote this fear down and then next to it, wrote out all the reasons why this most likely would not occur. To give you an idea, one of my comebacks to this fear was, “This is a topic I know about from years of personal and professional experience and even if I forget what I had planned to say, I still know enough about it to come across as an expert in this area.”

5. Have fun!

I like to remind myself, as well my clients, that life is not an endurance test. We’re supposed to enjoy the ride and have fun in many of the things we do. We don’t have to take life so seriously. Anxious people, I find, take life much too seriously and this creates tension in the body. When we start to loosen up and play more, we automatically relax. So before I went on TV, I looked in the bathroom mirror and smiled and yelled out, “I’m so excited! This is going to be a hoot!” And while I was faking it at the time, it eventually did turn into excitement and I had a lot of fun.

When you take a risk that you find scary but is incredibly rewarding, send me an email with the story and I may just put it in an up-coming article to empower and inspire other women!  (It can be anonymous if you wish).  Send your story to: esther@estherkane.com

Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counselor, is the author of the book and audio program, “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide To Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies” and “Dump That Chump”, and “What Your Mama Can’t or Won’t Teach You”.  Sign up for her free monthly e-zine, Women’s Community Counsellor, to uplift and inspire women at: http://www.estherkane.com.

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