Tag Archive | Emotional Eating

New Book for Food Addicts and Overeaters

Nov8

A new book by David Kessler, M.D. is being touted as one that will change forever the way we look at food.

Rodale Books publishes some of the finest books you will read in the field of health and well-being. I should know; I’ve read most of them.

Dr. Kessler’s new book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is certainly worth taking the time to read.

Besides having some great information for emotional eaters, overeaters, people with food addictions, and those whose eating has led to obesity, there are insights in Dr. Kessler’s book that you may not have found elsewhere.

Being heavy, overweight, or obese is very uncomfortable at a number of levels. It isn’t the goal of people with food addictions or problems with emotional eating to be as skinny as a stick, nor should it be.

Learning to manage the discomfort or just making peace with your size at the present moment can make life more livable.  The information in this book can help.

One chapter in the book, Chapter 11  in Part One, particularly caught my attention. It is titled “Emotions Make Food Memorable”.  The title alone speaks volumes.

I got a kick out of its being Chapter 11, a concept and term most often associated with bankruptcy and reorganization. How appropriate to think of a food addiction as bankrupting your health and reorganization as a rescue remedy.

I encourage you to buy the book or get it at the Library. It’s just under $14 on Amazon and only about 250 pages without the acknowledgments, index, etc.

Like food, don’t try to digest it all at once. Read a little each day, or at night before you go to bed. Then write about what you learned in your journal.

As with any other resource, keep an open mind. Don’t accept or reject the ideas. Just use what you can and let the rest go, no judgments.  Maybe it will be meaningful to you later, maybe not. Who cares?

Find something–a phrase, a line, a paragraph–that will inspire you to action today. One action each day to take you in the direction of your goal. That’s 365 actions a year. One day at a time.

Let me know how it goes.

Food Addict Searches for Candy As The Votes Are Tallied

Nov7

My goodness! That health care vote was intense. I was on the side of the nays and we lost by 5 votes. But only 5 votes.

Since I pay for my own health insurance, under the new health care plan, I would have to pay $5300 a year plus $2000 out-of-pocket expenses for a “qualified plan” the details of which have yet to be determined.

If I declined to pay, I would be fined $5000. That’s not the kind of stress a person with a food addiction needs to be subjected to, so off to the cupboard to search for candy.

Comfort food doesn’t really comfort a food addict when stress grips you at the heart like this issue grips me. If you don’t understand why the bill upsets me, click here.

Where did I hide those candy corns? The sugar temporarily counteracts the insulin war that is going on inside my body until my blood sugar balances out and the addictive urge suddenly disappears.

Some people don’t take governmental issues too seriously. But this issue is near and dear to my heart, so I let people know about it. They can make up their own mind.

Maybe a tootsie roll fell down between the couch cushions on Halloween. I don’t feel like baking anything. There must be a piece of candy somewhere in this house.

Why don’t more Americans know what’s going on in their own country? My European friends ask me that frequently. So I work to gain as much information and insight as I can, and share it when the opportunity presents itself.

My health is the most important asset I have, and I aim to take care of it. That means taking action, learning what I need to know to keep stress levels down and carry on an everyday productive life.

Emotional eating is more common these days perhaps because there are more things to get emotional about. When unexpected outcomes occur–sounds benign, doesn’t it–we become agitated and “emotional”.

Food is convenient, easy, and it works. That is, when you can find the treats your triggers are demanding.

Sometimes, you just have to accept yourself the way you are, make the best of all situations, and hang in there until the food addiction tendency goes away.

Maybe this new health care plan should include weekly massages, forced vacations of 3 weeks a year minimum for all workers except executives who would naturally get more.

Hey, and how about relaxing and fun activities that aren’t labeled “exercise”? And all foods containing more than 5 grams of saturated fats in one serving could be removed from supermarket shelves.

Preventive health care means having a plan. Plan to be healthy. Plan to be relaxed. Plan to heat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re no longer hungry.  Plan to enjoy life more.

It was only 5 votes, so there’s more work ahead. So no more stress for tonight. If I have to live with a few extra pounds for a while, I can live with that. Sometimes it just goes down that way.

Thanks for listening to my rant. Now I’m going to take a nice, relaxing bath, forget about those five lousy votes, and have a Ricola cough drop, apparently the only candy I have in the house.

Aging and Food Addictions

Nov3

When you think of a person with a food addiction, what do you see in your mind’s eye? Someone, perhaps a girl or young woman, who eats a lot of chips and other snacks, has a weight problem, and doesn’t fit in?

Do you see someone who is in their teens, twenties or thirties who is fat, friendless, and has emotional problems?

Do you always think of a person with a food addiction as female? An obese person? A young person?

If you  search on YouTube for videos about food addiction and emotional eating, you will see that the majority are young women sharing their stories. There are some men too, but mostly women. And most are under 40 years old.

But food addictions don’t magically disappear when a person reaches a certain age. In fact, as I’ve gotten older, it gets more challenging.

The older we get, the more information is stored in our brains, like a hard drive that is never erased. We can hide some of the data, or forget where it’s filed, but it is still there to slow down the machine and inhibit peak performance.

Not all food addicts are obese, although most are overweight. “Safe” weight keeps you from exposing yourself to the circumstances that led to the emotional trauma that resulted in a food addiction.

Maybe it was isolation, sexual or physical abuse, or emotional abuse. Whatever the case, victimization is lurking in the background, always threatening you with embarrassment, humiliation, and loss.

Who wants to go up against that day after day? It’s too depressing to think about. And as you get older, it doesn’t always get better. But it can get better if you’re willing to keep working on it.

Aging works it magic on the human body, and although it may seem to take much away, it gives something to. You get feistier, more courageous, and most of all, more honest.

And that’s the rescue remedy for today. Don’t sugarcoat it any more. Be honest with yourself. Then you can be honest with others.

You may not be able to lose the weight, or maybe you will. You can move. Dance, work in the garden, take a cruise, go for a walk, be a good neighbor, resolve to be happy.

If you’ve been fighting a food addiction most of your life, then you’ve been missing some really great fun. Make up for lost time.

Aging happens. Big deal. Trying to prove to people who don’t care about you that you can be someone you don’t want to be doing stuff you hate to do gets old when you do.

So start living.  Get honest and get real.  Have some fun. It’s your turn now.