Craving Sweets After a Meal
If you crave sweets after a meal, you’re not stuck in some kind of rut, but reacting to human biology. Perhaps understanding this process will help you be less hard on yourself about your cravings. And perhaps it will help you better manage your appetite.
According to Dr. Louis J. Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program (boy, do I hate the name of that program) at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, “The craving for sweets is primarily biological. However, the sweet that is preferred seems to be primarily a learned behavior, a function of one’s upbringing.” (Sarasota Herald-Tr...
Source: Normal Eating - January 31, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Enjoying Learning
I had a discussion with a client a while ago about how difficult it was for her to tolerate not knowing a subject and staying with learning until she knew enough to feel confident. Many of you have this experience with becoming a “normal” eater, wanting immediately to feel competent, smart and secure without going through the process that will produce these feelings. Remember, all any of us can do is start at the beginning.
Many people feel mild anxiety learning something new, whereas some people become wildly anxious. What a shame, because how do you suppose anxiety affects learning? Do you think it helps or hinder...
Source: Normal Eating - January 27, 2014 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
One More Time on Feeling Deserving
As I’ve written before, at the root of many troubled eaters’ food problems is the issue of not feeling deserving of health, happiness, success, etc. They are conflicted about whether or not they’re deserving of good things in life and, hence, behave sometimes as if they are and other times as if they aren’t. Let’s get this straight once and for all: everyone is deserving and you are no exception.
A person who feels deserving, never thinks about it. It’s simply something they are like green-eyed or brown-haired, witty or a artsy. They are because, well, they are. I know that sounds awfully simplistic, but the...
Source: Normal Eating - December 30, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Appetite and the Brain
I hesitate writing about some of the biology related to eating and weight because I don’t want readers to feel that their biology is fixed and a done deal. There are genetic and metabolic factors which strongly influence appetite and body size, but lifestyle still plays a large role in both. I blog about biology because I want readers to be well informed.
The article “Gut brain link tied to overeating” by Cristy Gelling (Science News, 10/5/13) describes how overeating can be, in part, caused by faulty communication between the gut and brain. Experiments on mice may lead to a strategy of repairing that faulty commu...
Source: Normal Eating - December 27, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Myths About Family
A client and I had a great session brainstorming myths about family, stemming from her realization that, though she binges far less than she used to, the times she does binge are often around holidays and family gatherings. If she could clear up the myths she’s been believing, she thought, she might be able to stop bingeing completely.
The myths we came up with, mostly from her dysfunctional family, are as follows:
We love each other and act lovingly toward each other.
We stick together, show each other loyalty, and have each other’s backs.
Belonging to family is what we aspire to.
Belonging to and being accep...
Source: Normal Eating - December 23, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Rules for "Normal" Holiday Eating
Here are my rules for “normal” holiday eating. Study them now and review every day through the holidays. Say them aloud. Carry them with you. Make them your bible.
1. Think of food as delicious and nutritious, nothing more. It has no value beyond these two attributes. It will neither solve your problems nor lift your mood.
2. Don’t restrict what you eat over the holidays. “Putting foods on a do-not-eat list only makes you crave them more, according to a Canadian study, and Israeli scientists found that having a little bit of sweets every day helped dieters shed 15 pounds more on average than those who didn’t ...
Source: Normal Eating - December 20, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Weight Loss Comes at the End of a Process
Sometimes I think I have more discussions with clients about weight than about eating. They tell me what happens when they weigh themselves, ask how often they should hop on the scale, explain that they want to stop but can’t help themselves, and just plain can’t seem to get weight off their minds. Does this sound like you?
Truth is, a focus on weight may actively prevent you from becoming a “normal” eater. Remember this: Weight loss comes at the end of the eating process. Many of you act as if it’s a determinant of what you “should” or “shouldn’t” eat. It is not. You know what happens when you weigh...
Source: Normal Eating - December 16, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Idea of Food
Clients keep teaching me more and more about dysfunctional eating. For instance, that it’s not really food that compulsive or emotional eaters want but the idea of what they wish/hope/perceive food will bring them. This is a crucial distinction.
Disregulated eaters turn to food to relax, unwind, kick back, let loose, de-stress, whatever you want to call it. This is what you’re seeking, what you erroneously perceive as the end result of eating or of eating particular kinds of foods. When we’re hungry, our bodies signal wanting food through rumbling bellies, hollowness in the chest, headaches, and light-headedness. ...
Source: Normal Eating - December 13, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Separation and Individuation
Over the decades, I’ve worked with scores of young adults who are trying to find their way in the world and make peace with food. Their issues often center around forging a new, comfortable adult identity and managing said identity around their families, which can be a highly stressful task. Well, no one ever said that growing up is easy.
Of course, the process of maturation goes far better when parents allow us to work out identity issues ourselves. That doesn’t mean leaving us to flounder, but for parents to be there as sounding boards and advice givers, but only upon request. Much of figuring out who we are and w...
Source: Normal Eating - December 9, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Find Happiness to Improve Your Health
This study involved 80 volunteers who had their blood drawn after being asked the frequency that they felt “hedonistic pleasure” and/or deriving a sense of purpose in life by contributing to their community. Researchers found that “the genes of the volunteers whose lives contained lots of pleasure but little meaning were priming cells to express high levels of inflammation—which is linked to cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease—and a weaker anti-viral response to infection.” Seeking short-term pleasure (and what is non-hunger eating but a fast high?) actually worked against their having good health. Alt...
Source: Normal Eating - December 6, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
More on Influences on Weight
Let’s move on, shall we, from believing that weight is based solely on what and how much we eat. Learning about other factors influencing weight can help take pressure off yourself for doing something “wrong” or for not doing enough of what’s “right.”
“Could bacteria be influencing your weight?” by Gina Kolata (Sarasota Herald Tribune, 9/6/13) tells us that gut bacteria “may help determine if a person is fat or thin.” The study involved mice and humans, in this case twins, one obese and one lean. Dr. Michael Fischbach of the University of California, though not involved in this twin study, called the...
Source: Normal Eating - December 2, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
No Need to be Perfect to be Lovable
I was Skyping with a client who mentioned feeling awful about herself because she was having difficulty in a college math class. Many people I treat have a similar reaction—not to math, but to letting not doing well in an activity sour their view of themselves. And, of course, feeling negatively about themselves often primes them for a binge.
Here’s how to think. You want to start from the premise that you are going to do some things well in life and some things poorly, that you have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else, and that your success or failure in an activity has nothing to do with your value as ...
Source: Normal Eating - November 29, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Stability and Self-care
A while ago I had a heartening discussion with a client who was finally able to keep her self-care consistent and was amazed at the difference it made in her eating and her life. Here are a few ideas we came up with that underlie her transformation, along with several metaphors that helped in maintaining her stability and consistency.
Talking about how often she’d felt “depleted” which would drive her to eat, she shared how she’d recently turned this situation around by making several changes at once. First, she refused to allow her spouse to constantly criticize and talk down to her. Second, she began taking ti...
Source: Normal Eating - November 25, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
A Lazy Gene--Say It Ain't So
I was chagrined to read a blurb in the August/September 2013 copy of the AARP Magazine about “laziness.” I recognize that folks have differing motivations and mixed feelings about being active, but I have always stood firmly against using the negative term “lazy” regarding people who don’t take care of their bodies. And I still do.
From the AARP article: “A new University of Missouri study shows that rats with sedentary parents are less motivated to run on an exercise wheel.” And, “After studying their brains, we found that running was less enjoyable for these rats than for those with active parents,” ...
Source: Normal Eating - November 22, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Food Industry and Your Bliss Point
I don’t know about you, but I get really, really angry when I read about how the food industry steers us toward eating high fat/sugar/salt food. The truth is that what seems like a conspiracy to tempt you with sweets and treats is actually a conspiracy. The best way to defend against being manipulated is to know the truth about the industry’s goals and methods—and to use your critical thinking skills to avoid being manipulated.
According to a review of SALT SUGAR FAT: HOW THE FOOD GIANTS HOOKED US by Michael Moss (Psychotherapy Networker, “The taste bud conspiracy” by Diane Cole, 7-8/2013), “The food industr...
Source: Normal Eating - November 18, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
