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.

Willpower and the Power of Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Marsha Hudnall, MS, RD

Willpower could be a wonderful thing. If it really exists. I’m not convinced it does, at least as an effective force for many of us when it comes to eating.

To me, willpower is about the strength to do what we want in the face of some weighty temptation (pun not intended). Webster’s leaves out the temptation part and defines it just as energetic determination. But do we ever hear the word used when there’s not some enticement to do the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do?

Seems to me the issue then is about what we really want. Can it be what we really want if we’re so easily tempted to do the opposite?

I stumbled across an old article in Psychology Today that mentioned a study showing college students were able to work 11 minutes longer at a difficult task if they were allowed to sample from a nearby plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies rather than having to ignore them (or try to). The researchers concluded that resisting the cookies left the students with little self-discipline to focus on the task at hand. Their willpower to continue working waned quickly in the face of temptation.

The researchers also concluded we can build up our willpower “muscle” through frequent use. But I don’t see any proof of that mentioned in the article. My work with women struggling to avoid foods they think they must, but really don’t want to, doesn’t give me any proof either.

Instead of relying on willpower to help us accomplish what we want, I vote for spending time exploring what we think we want. In the case of eating well, at Green Mountain we find an approach that includes the cookies (or whatever food we think we can’t have) along with the basics of balanced eating makes willpower less of an issue. Perhaps some willpower is involved but only a small amount because the seduction of the temptation is seriously robbed of its power.

Does willpower play a significant role in your efforts at eating well?

In an effort to solve her own eating and weight struggles, Marsha took overachiever to a new level by obtaining her license as a registered dietitian and then a Master’s in nutrition and communication at Boston University. With pen, paper and computer in hand, Marsha became a published author and corporate consultant for several Fortune 500 food companies. When Marsha isn’t cooking up nutritious gourmet delights for her family, hiking or snowshoeing, she serves as online director for Green Mountain at Fox Run, which she owns along with her husband. Her self-described mission: Help women learn to enjoy eating and living well while achieving and maintaining healthy weights.

Mindfulness for Beginners

by Katie Goode, LMFT

There’s a lot of talk these days about Mindfulness… but what is it exactly, and why do I need to know anything about it?

Mindfulness is a way of being present in the moment. A lot of us spend time worrying about the future or feeling bad about the past, we don’t even realize that we aren’t experiencing what is actually happening.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone and reacted to what you believed they meant, instead of what they said? Most of us aren’t mind-readers, but we approach situations as though we are… “Well, 5 years ago you said … and it led to …” or “I don’t like the way I look /act/think so I interpret everything said about me to support that negative belief”

When we practice mindfulness we see things the way they actually occur. Things that might have upset us in the past, now have no effect on our emotions (or we might even be pleasantly surprised by all of the positive interactions we have).

Here’s an example a friend told me to show the effect of mindfulness:

My friend was walking up to a restaurant in 120 degree Arizona heat. He held the door open and a business man emerged and went on his way… My friend could have gotten irritated “why didn’t he say thank you? He didn’t even look at me. I didn’t have to hold the door for him…”  but instead, he asked himself what were the actual events:

- he held the door and a person walked out

He wouldn’t have been upset if a toddler walked out and didn’t thank him. Same event, different expectations.

This is a simple technique to develop a mindful approach:

Think about what is actually happening (or what actually happened) without defining the events. Use the 5 senses to help you do this:
What are 5 things you SAW?
What are 4 things you HEARD?
What are 3 things you FELT or TOUCHED?
What are 2 things you SMELLED?
What is 1 thing you TASTE?

If we do this with the restaurant story:
5 things he saw: light, movement, color, shapes, person
4 things he might have heard: cars, restaurant noises, birds, wind
3 things he touched: the door, the warmth of the sun, his clothes on his skin
2 things he smelled: food, cars
1 thing he tasted: his mouth

Give it a try…

Katie Goode is a Marriage and Family Therapist in practice in Irvine, CA, specializing in the treatment of Eating Disorders and Anxiety. Visit her at HolisticTherapyOC.com

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