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Organize Your Life for Success

Sep26

One of the most frustrating things about having a food addiction is never seeming to get what you want out of life. Too much emphasis on food and too little emphasis on you can create a vicious cycle.

Too much nothing, as the Peter, Paul & Mary song referred to it, can really mess with your head. It’s hard to get what you want if you don’t know what you want or how to get it.

Getting over a food addiction or losing weight can be a goal, but it doesn’t have to consume all your energy. And it doesn’t deserve to be your only goal.

If you want to overcome a food addiction, you have to have something that is important enough to you to choose it over your panic and helplessness when the food addiction threatens to sabotage your best efforts.

Emotional eating and food addictions are default behaviors we engage in when stress levels increase to the point that we don’t know what else to do but eat. At those times, no other choice matters.

To ensure our success, we need a plan of action that is already in place so that we can see that we have other choices and we know what those choices are in advance. Goals are the first step in that plan.

If you write down your goals and have a written plan to achieve them, then you are in good shape. However, if you are in the majority, you probably live day to day, without any real plan for getting the things you want out of life.

Most parents don’t teach their children about goal-setting and achievement strategies because they never learned it themselves. That can make for a very stressful lifestyle.

But fear not! Here is something that can really help you get your goals straight, and organize your life for success. It’s one of the best things I’ve found to simplify your life.

You learn how to focus on what you truly want to achieve, once you figure out what that is. And it teaches you how to figure it out.

I know from personal experience that most food addicts and emotional eaters have a problem with goal strategies. You have to set a goal before you can put a plan together. And you have to have a plan to reach your goals.

You just have to know how to set goals and achieve them, and you have to know what they mean to you in terms of priority. Not so easy for most people.

There are all kinds of successes, but they happen in stages, not all at once. Everything has its season. Only when the proper steps are taken in the proper order will success arrive at your doorstep.

So here’s something that will make you put that candy or cake or ice cream or red hot Cheetos back where you got them and take a break from your food addiction. This one’s for you.

Visit this website when you get a chance: www.simpleology.com . It’s awesome, and you’ll think you’re pretty awesome too when you see what you can do for yourself in just a few days.

And guess what?! Simpleology 101 is free. You’re going to love it! That’s today’s rescue remedy.

Good luck! And let me know how it goes.

Food Addicts, Don’t Forget The Love

Sep21

I was reading Darya Pino’s column in the Huffington Post yesterday. It focused on a book written by former FDA commissioner, Dr. David Kessler.

According to the article, Kessler’s book, The End of Overeating, outlines the basic steps of habit reversal and advocates, among other things, “developing positive associations with healthier foods while demonizing the hyperpalatable foods we have been conditioned to crave…”.

Dr. Kessler uses two terms, hypereating and hyperpalatable, that I had never heard before. At first sound, hypereating sounds like overeating, eating quickly, or an eating disorder that makes you eat faster than the rules allow.

Hyperpalatable foods can only be those very tasty, fat-, salt-, or sugar-laden foods that seem to be the first ones food addicts grab when an emotional trigger clicks.

I can’t in all fairness take exception to Dr. Kessler’s opinions and suggestions without reading his book in its entirety. Out of context, you can make the spoken or written word mean anything you want.

I’m not so sure, however, that  using the same techniques that make you loathe cigarettes work when it comes to comfort food. I am an ex-smoker and I will never feel about my comfort foods the way I feel about tobacco.

The article caught my attention so I decided to mention it here. To read the entire article, click here.

Not everybody who is fat has a food addiction, this is true. And no professional wants to label people without first categorizing them or their ailment.

Nevertheless, a food addict has a food addiction, or multiple ones depending on how you look at things, and that’s just the way it is.

Only someone who has a food addiction, or has had one and healed it can be an expert on how it feels, what it does to your life, and how you live with it while learning how to heal it.

I say “heal it” because a food addiction is caused by unresolved emotional trauma that stays with you until your heart heals and the pain is banished.

While the brain circuits may respond in similar ways to certain stimuli, the underlying cause of a food addiction is what must be discovered and understood in order for true healing to take place.

You can’t think your way out of a food addiction. Mind control and reprogramming will not succeed unless your goal is to ignore and forget.

True, food addicts may eat foods that aren’t good for them, and in unhealthy amounts. But understand that we are eating for comfort, for that moment of peace when the emotional, and sometimes physical, pain is gone.

We don’t eat to forget. We eat to be free, and we pay a high price for that moment of freedom.

The sooner we get to the bottom of what is causing the addiction, the sooner we can string together those moments of freedom until we have a life again.

No diet in the world will ever work until the heart is healed. There is only one way to heal the heart and that is with love.

Food Addiction and Obesity

Sep14

Everywhere you look there are men, women, and children who are overweight to the point of being obese. Obesity is a crisis in America.

But is everyone who is obese a food addict? Not necessarily. Remember that food addiction is caused by an unresolved emotional conflict that manifests itself in the form of compulsive eating.

The food addict eats because panic causes a hormonal imbalance in the body and there is an overwhelming urgency to eat as much and as fast as you can until the feeling goes away. Food is the drug of choice for the food addict.

A person can become obese by eating when bored, or just because something tastes really good so they just keep eating. Obesity for many is the result of habitual overeating for no particular reason.

It need not be connected with trauma, as it is in the case of a food addiction. It may be a case of consuming more calories than the body can burn as energy.

Emotional eating and food addiction can start when a person realizes that they are unable to lose a large amount of weight as quickly as they gained it.

Unable to deal with the excess fat and the humiliation that often accompanies it, emotional eating can easily become a coping mechanism.

When you’re fat, does it really matter to you if you have a food addiction? Do you care about your health? Or do you just want to not be fat anymore?

A person who knows why they eat compulsively may be in a better position than one who doesn’t know how they gained all that weight.

Food addicts are driven. When the addiction kicks in, we are on a mission. We eat uncontrollably for indefinite periods of time and then, as suddenly as it started, the urge just stops.

It’s kind of like a seizure. You know what’s going on but you can’t do anything about it. You just have to wait until it’s over.

Knowing what causes you to stuff yourself when something sets off an emotional trigger gives you a chance to deal with the emotion and possibly avoid the compulsive eating binge.

The more you can recognize what is happening when the panic feelings start to escalate, the more you will be able to confront the person or thing that is causing the panic.

When we can name our fear, it loses its power over us. Once you know what you’re dealing with, you can deal with it.

While not all food addicts are obese, and not all people who are obese are food addicts, the tables could certainly turn either way.

Perhaps the best way to confront your personal situation is by accepting yourself in your present state without judgment. Keep an open mind and heart.

Don’t label the symptoms. Identify the causes and go from there.

3 Ways for Food Addicts to Avoid Stress

Sep13

It’s common knowledge that stress causes people to behave in ways we otherwise might not if we were feeling calm and comfortable. For people with food addictions, stress can easily lead to emotional eating.

Of course, negative stress can trigger anger, fear, panic, and even physical pain. In any of those states, it’s easy for a food addiction to kick in.

How can you deal with negative stress?

1. You can avoid it sometimes, but not always.

2. You can do something that relieves the stress.

3. You can resolve the problem that is causing the stress, which is the best possible outcome.

Today, I would like to share with you some ways you can avoid stress. We can explore the other two ways of dealing with stress in a future blog.

Do these three things to help you avoid situations that might trigger your food addiction.

1. Only take on projects that are meaningful to you. Of course, you have to do things at work that you may not like and you have responsibilities at home that must be honored.

I am talking about choosing to do things that you don’t really care about just to impress or please someone else who doesn’t really care about you. If your heart’s not in it, don’t do it.

2. Plan and prepare your meals in advance and follow your plan. This will help set you up for success.  Eat when you need to eat. Don’t let others pull you away from your goal. Respect your health. It is more precious than you may realize.

3. Practice self-love and self-acceptance. Pamper yourself once every week. It can be something simple and free, like a bubble bath, a walk in the park, enjoying a sports outing, or spending time with a cherished friend.

You are the most important person in your life. Accepting yourself without putting conditions on that acceptance will cause you to feel loved, safe, and happy.

Food addictions are no match for a happy heart. As Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 Grammy-winning song suggests, “Don’t worry. Be happy”.