Posts Tagged Emotional Eating
Seeking Solace in Chocolate
One of the joys of understanding anxiety and disordered eating behaviors is that I can now analyze the “whys.”
Before I just did stuff and didn’t know why I was doing it. That drove me insane because everyone always says, “there’s always a trigger; if hunger isn’t the problem, food isn’t the solution.”
Logically, I know this. But sometimes, chocolate IS the solution!
I don’t mean to imply it should be … just that sometimes, for me, it is. (more…)
10 comments April 23, 2009
Au Revoir: Tossing Triggers
What's your trigger?
Other times I can enjoy a small handful now and then and be done with them …
And other times, I can’t get them in the trash quickly enough.
I hate to be wasteful, and I realize how awful it is to throw out food (why buy it in the first place?!). But I liken “what is a trigger food” to how sometimes my IBS (which has been much better the past five years on WW) can flare up from eating, say, tomato sauce one day, and the next day I’ll be fine with it …
In other words, what might be a trigger today might definitely not be tomorrow. And it’s nearly impossible to predict, which makes playing “defense” hard. (more…)
17 comments January 27, 2009
“Eat With Dignity”
Image credit: www.radisson.com
Three words that say so much, yet took me so long to “get.”
I’ve seen this phrase on my Weight Watchers message boards a million times, and never really understood what it meant until a friend explained her interpretation to me.
She was talking about her tendency to binge and my tendency to chew-and-spit, and how neither behavior is an example of “eating with dignity” and in fact is the very opposite; we’re not dignifying our bodies or our minds when we engage in such behaviors.
Learning to eat with dignity basically means eating with a purpose, filling our bodies with nutritious things we’re proud of, in the amounts we’re not ashamed to be seen eating.
It doesn’t mean extremes (starving or bingeing/purging).
And it doesn’t matter if you’re eating a PB&J in your car on the way to your third meeting of the day, or sitting down to a fancy five-course meal.
It’s such a simple concept but for people with disordered eating issues–or even eating disorders–it’s not that easy to remember or to practice regularly. (more…)
18 comments August 13, 2008
What My “Fat” Wants to Tell Me
Depending on the time of the month, my reading repertoire at the gym expands from my usual subscription magazines I bring from home (Fitness, Shape, Self, Cooking Light, Women’s Health) to magazines I find there, such as Yoga Journal, Body & Soul, Women’s Day and Good Housekeeping.
This morning I came across an article worth sharing in the (now-ancient) March 2008 edition of Good Housekeeping, written by emotional eating expert Geneen Roth, author of seven books and numerous published works.
Titled “The Cookie Burglar: Stop Binge Eating”, the article resonated with me so much that I just had to share it here.
Her premise is that we binge for a reason, and if it was all bad, we wouldn’t do it. In some way or another, we get something positive from bingeing, even if we don’t see it that way.
As Roth says, “… if it weren’t helping you in some fundamental way, you’d stop. Regardless of how it may appear, what we do really does make sense. Our actions — especially with food — are inherently sane. In fact, they are expressions of our brilliance at getting our needs met. “
So though it sounds counter-intuitive to wanting to lose weight, bingeing sometimes helps us–perhaps it helps us combat boredom, or avoid intimacy (if I’m fat no one will want me). And until we listen to what our “fat” is telling us, how the bingeing is “helping,” she argues, we won’t be able stop the vicious cycle. (more…)
28 comments July 29, 2008
