Hope Is Not A Plan

While listening to an NPR program on changing our thoughts about death and dying, one of the experts interviewed encouraged listeners to become proactive in their lives, wisely admonishing that “hope is not a plan.” I couldn’t agree more. How often do I hear clients and Food and Feelings message board members express their hopes without strategies to transform them into reality. And how do you think that turns out? Without a plan, outcomes are generally poor, and disregulated eaters feel like failures. For example, say, you’ve been eating relatively “normally” for a couple of months and are about to visit your family for a week. In the past, when you’ve gone back home, you’ve fallen into unhealthy eating behaviors—snacking mindlessly, making mostly unhealthy food choices, and gobbling up everything on your plate. Rather than develop a plan to avoid these behaviors, you simply hope things will be different because you’ve been eating better.  Therefore, you don’t brainstorm solutions to potentially difficult eating situations ahead of time: bring along a book (like my RULES OF “NORMAL” EATING) to remind you of how you want to eat, write out pointers to guide you around food, figure out how to take time outs to be by yourself and reflect on how you’re feeling, talk to family members about how they can be helpful with your eating problems, or come up with ways to get support from other people who are also moving toward “norm...
Source: Normal Eating - Category: Eating Disorders Authors: Source Type: blogs