Free-telesummit: Love Your Mind, Love Your Body
Take advantage of this free telesummit and sign up right now: Love Your Mind, Love Your Body.
It starts today and includes many experts like me advising you how to treat yourself well and take the best care of yourself. As this is a major problem for most of you, you don't want to miss the free advice you'll get. It's easy to register and runs this week, 11-18. And check out their free gifts, including a tip sheet on eating and life for women over 40 from me.
Best,
Karen R. Koenig
www.karenrkoenig.com
(Source: Normal Eating)
Source: Normal Eating - November 18, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
You Have the Power
Many of my clients and Food and Feelings message board members turn to food when they feel powerless, especially vis a vis their parents. That’s because they ironically yearn for and spend time trying to gain power—the ability to get things done—that they already have (and have had for years).
For sure, when we’re children, we’re seriously powerless. We can’t reach the top of the dresser, go places by ourselves, or get to run the show. Not only are we too physically small and weak to have much leverage, but we don’t have a completely formed, functional brain (that doesn’t happen until our late 20s!). So ...
Source: Normal Eating - November 15, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Book Review: WELLNESS, NOT WEIGHT
WELLNESS, NOT WEIGHT—HEALTH AT
EVERY SIZE AND MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING, an anthology edited by Ellen Glovsky,
PhD, RD, LDN, is the rare book whose audience is both disregulated eaters and
their treatment providers. I’m proud to have a chapter from my FOOD AND
FEELINGS WORKBOOK included in it, and am glad to have this opportunity to tell
you how comprehensive and useful this anthology is.
As Glovsky explains in the
introduction, the book is divided into three parts. Part One includes an
overview of its main concepts: the mindful, non-diet approach for resolving
eating problems; the Health at Every Size (HAES...
Source: Normal Eating - November 11, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Exercise Calms You Down
When we think of exercise, what
comes to mind is usually its benefits to body organs such as the circulatory
system. But, did you know that exercise is just what the doctor ordered when it
comes to reducing anxiety? It’s true. Next time you’re upset and have the urge
to eat, move your body instead. Here’s why.
Scientists have long known that
exercise combats anxiety, but not exactly how that process works—until now.
According to “How exercise calms the brain” (THE WEEK, 7/26/13), “physical
activity creates excitable new neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain
that regulates emotion, think...
Source: Normal Eating - November 8, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Does Eating Solve Your Problelms?
Many disregulated eaters have
convinced themselves that eating solves their problems, or at least extinguishes
the distress they have about their problems. Really? I’m of the opinion that
eating to solve problems only causes more of them.
I’m not saying that when you were a
child eating didn’t make you feel better emotionally. Back then when you
overate, binged or snacked in secret, you might have felt comforted without the
guilt, shame or disappointment in yourself that you feel today when you engage
in these behaviors. When your problem was, “I’m in emotional pain and I have no
other way of soothin...
Source: Normal Eating - November 4, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Oh, No, The Tongue Patch Diet
One of my favorite sayings is, “You
can’t see the picture when you’re inside the frame.” It means that sometimes
you need distance and objectivity to see yourself clearly and realistically. Nowhere
is this more true than in an obsession with losing weight.
Take “The Tongue Patch Diet,” which
I learned about in a segment of 20/20.
Silly-sounding, it’s truly horrifying.
The segment followed two young women who had a doctor sew a rough plastic patch
atop their tongues to make it painful and impossible to eat. Body mutilation,
anyone? The back-story was that one woman wanted to fit into her skinny je...
Source: Normal Eating - November 1, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Creativity and Binge Eating
You may have read the title of this
blog and thought I meant to pair creativity with “cooking” not “bingeing.” But
the way creativity relates to a binge is exactly my focus, because much of what
you get out of it is what you’re seeking in your wild food sprees.
In “Creativity—A Bright Light in
Your Golden Years” by Walker Meade (Better
Living, 7/13), Alice Flaherty, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard
Medical School, says the creative drive results “from an interaction of the
frontal lobes, the temporal lobes, and dopamine from the limbic system.” Although
you may think that folks a...
Source: Normal Eating - October 28, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
The Story of One Man's Permanent Lifestyle Change
I was interviewed a while ago by
Stanley F. Bronstein who radically changed his eating and lifestyle to become
happier, healthier, and more fit. His story is inspiring. Hear his interview of
me at Karen interview and learn more about him at SuperChangeYourLife.
As you know, I don’t focus much on
weight, but part of Stanley’s transformation was losing and keeping off more
than 130 pounds and getting into an exercise regime he enjoys. His blood
pressure dropped from 180/90 to 100/50 and I bet many of his “lab numbers”
improved as well. Stanley says his problem was that he wasn’t willing to make
the nece...
Source: Normal Eating - October 25, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Eat-i-o-syncracies
Let’s face it, we all have our own eat-i-o-syncracies,
our unique eating habits that are not only particular to us but sometimes
downright peculiar. That’s okay. They’re nothing to be ashamed of and even may make
eating more pleasurable. They sure do for me.
This subject came up when I was
talking with a client who’s trying her darndest to eat vegan. I know how
difficult that can be, as my husband enjoys following a mostly vegetarian
regimen. First off, that means he often eats foods that others don’t (tempeh
anyone?) and doesn’t eat foods that they do (such as turkey at Thanksgiving).
Second, he...
Source: Normal Eating - October 21, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
How to Get Treated with Respect
Not being treated with respect by a
boss, spouse, partner, colleague, parent, child, co-worker, or whomever may
drive you to seek comfort in food. If you want respect, you must act in ways
that make crystal clear that you will settle for nothing less. Here’s how.
If someone is determined to be
mean, critical, shaming, hurtful and disrespectful, there’s often nothing you
can do about it. But more often than not, you hold the power to command respect
and don’t use it. Think of the times you’ve repeatedly been spoken to rudely and
not called someone on it, have failed to stand up for yourself when a defens...
Source: Normal Eating - October 18, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Happiness and Eating
“The happiness of pursuit” by
Jeffrey Kluger (TIME MAGAZINE, 7/8-15/13) is not about eating per se, but started
me musing about food and our often driven pursuit of it.
The article describes how Americans
tap into the “happiness industry.” Two relevant ways are “‘pills’ (the TIME
poll found that 25% of American women and 5% of men say they are taking
antidepressants) and ‘food’(48% of women and 44% of men admit to eating to
improve their mood).” Almost half the country engages in emotional eating!
Most of you know that neurotransmitters
manage our moods. Kluger tells us, “Serotonin an...
Source: Normal Eating - October 14, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
No Need to Trust Your Appetite
So many disregulated eaters want
desperately to trust their appetite. However, focusing on trusting it per se is nothing but a red herring. Rather than trust
it, you need only to follow it
because it knows what it’s doing whether you trust it or not.
Say, you’re driving and get a flat,
so you open your trunk to get out a tire iron. To fix your flat, do you need to
trust the tire iron or use it to loosen the lug nuts? I’d say, those nuts
aren’t budging unless you put that iron into action. Maybe you think the tire
iron is old and rusted and won't work. Doubt makes no difference. Trusting or believing isn...
Source: Normal Eating - October 11, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Finding Purpose
Reading an article about vets
finding a way out of post-war depression, anxiety, and PTSD, I got to thinking about
disregulated eaters’ fanatic absorption in food and weight obsessions and how they
would benefit from finding a greater purpose in order to be done with that
obsession. You don’t want your tombstone to read, “Spent a lifetime struggling
to eat ‘normally’ and lose weight,” do you?
Believe me, I understand the pain
of compulsive eating and being or feeling overweight. But it cannot remain the
be all and end all of life as some of you have made it. Although I encourage
you to read my book...
Source: Normal Eating - October 7, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Life's Non-negotiables
Disregulated eaters do best when
they have some, but not too much, structure. We all need a certain amount of
routine, and discovering what is absolutely necessary and what you can do
without will help you feel more stable, centered and satisfied. Toward that end,
it pays to know what activities or behaviors are non-negotiable in your life,
that is, which ones are so crucial to your well-being that you refuse to live
without them.
Here are some things that are
non-negotiable to people: finding a date or mate who loves nature or staying
active, attending parent-teacher conferences or a child’s school performa...
Source: Normal Eating - October 4, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
Need and Greed
I got to thinking about greed, need
and eating while reading a novel in which a psychologist character explains to a
patient, “Of course, you were greedy.
You were a child, you’re supposed to be greedy. Parents are there to fill your needs. That’s the whole point of parents.” Do you have
difficulty differentiating need and greed when it comes to food and other
things in life? Do you understand why that is?
According to the dictionary, greed
is excessive wanting, a wish for more than your share and what you deserve. Children,
especially very young ones, can’t possibly know what they deserve or require. W...
Source: Normal Eating - September 30, 2013 Category: Eating Disorders Authors: eatnormalnow Source Type: blogs
