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Health & Compulsive Eating: How to Get Through the Holidays, Part 1
Happy Holidays! Holidays bring mixed feelings for many people who struggle with eating and weight. Many of us look forward to the holidays in some ways, but simultaneously feel worry (or even dread!) about the possibility of overeating, junk food, and how it will affect our weight. By exploring why we go off the deep end, and what’s behind that behavior, we can prevent a great deal of stress and suffering during the holidays (and any time of year). So, let’s dive in!
How Anger and Compulsive Eating Are Related
This quote rings true. Suppressed emotions cause problems. One problem they can cause is compulsive eating. We overeat, compulsively eat, or eat too much junk food because we are trying to avoid, suppress or minimize an emotion in that moment. And so, in the process of healing compulsive eating, we all have to face these emotions we have been avoiding, and often haven’t been aware we even have. If these emotions are ones we have wanted to avoid so much that we use food to suppress them, we can imagine they’re not going to be easy ones for us to feel. These emotions can include sadness, grief, fear, pain, loneliness, insecurity, unworthiness, sorrow–anything really. And they can be about “big” things or “little” things. And they can be about the past, the present, or the future.
David Rainoshek Interviews Me About Juice Cleansing
One of my mentors in plant-based nutrition and juice cleansing is the amazing David Rainoshek, M.A. whom I studied with to becomig a Juice Feasting Coach. David hosts the website JuiceFeast.com and is a great friend.
My 8-Year Vegan Anniversary!
Well, it’s almost over, but this month marks 8 years eating vegan for me! In honor of this anniversary, I decided to ask all of you via Facebook and Twitter if you had any questions for me. I received some great questions and am looking forward to answering them, Q&A style, right now!
Tips For Managing Social Situations While Juice Cleansing
In our world, food is virtually inseparable from socializing. Food is everywhere and it’s almost always a part of every social situation we are part of. So if you’re considering a juice cleanse, you’re bound to wonder how you will get through it without either offending people because you aren’t eating or boarding up your house and taking shelter as a juicy hermit until you’re done with your juice cleanse. And for many of my Juice Feasters who embark on cleanses several weeks or months in length, that’s a long time to stay in recluse. I’ve covered a few aspects of this in previous blog posts. I talked about how to talk with people about the fact that you’re doing a cleanse in the post Telling Unsupportive People That You’re Cleansing, and I addressed why you must value yourself and your desire to change your health in Why You Deserve To Change Your Diet. Our relationships and interactions with others around diet and cleansing are big topics, so I’ll just cover a few angles of this here.
Your Career Might Be Making You a Compulsive Eater
“When I’m at work, I can’t help but eat the doughnuts and cookies people bring.” “I get so stressed at work that I eat to get through it.” “When I get home from a long day at work, I’m so stressed and tired and I end up eating a lot at night.” and sometimes people say, “I eat much better on days off.”
These are common things I hear from my clients when they describe the terrain of their compulsive eating patterns. Of course, not everyone who compulsively eats does so in relation to their work or career, but a great percentage do — enough to make me want to write a blog post about it.
My March Juice Cleanse, Days 5-7
Greetings, blog readers! I have finished my Juice Cleanse, which I decided to just have be one week this time around. I am feeling physically amazing as always happens when you drink a lot of green juice, and am very glad to have this spring cleaning. I’m looking at this lovely spring bouquet in my window. It’s sunny outside and nearly 50 degrees!
Days 5-7 were great and fine. Physically, there is not much to say other than that I felt fantastic and productive – I almost always feel even more productive and efficient on Juice Cleanses than otherwise – and grateful for the bounty which allows me to make fresh juice!
Myths About Healing Compulsive Eating
Throughout my years of healing my own relationship with food and letting go of compulsive eating, and also talking with many, many people on their own journeys doing the same, I’ve identified some common myths about healing compulsive eating. These were myths that I believed and many people with whom I work also believe(d).
Juice Cleansing Isn’t Just For Your Body
Juice cleansing is most well-known for its physical benefits. People report endless benefits, including increased energy, better sleep, clearer skin, weight loss, digestive improvement, minimized pain and aches, and so much more. Today I’d like to talk about the benefits beyond the physical benefits that juice cleansing can bring us.
I want to do this for two reasons. The first is that I’d love to illustrate possibilities that can happen during juice cleansing which you might find exciting, so that you might consider adding non-physical goals to your intentions for juice cleansing. The second has to do with the misconception that cleansing is inherently or necessarily superficial, which comes from those who are simply unaware that juice cleansing does not have to be only about the physical, nor is it even mostly about the physical for many people.
Eating in the Dark
During my recent trip to Montreal, Sarah and I went to an internationally famous restaurant called O.Noir. At O.Noir, diners eat in complete darkness. I mean complete darkness — the kind where you can’t see your own hand if you wave it 5 inches from your face. According to O.Noir’s website, there are multiple purposes for this experience. One is that when you can’t see your food, the people with whom you’re dining, or anyone around you, you tune in more than ever to the taste and aromas of food. Additionally, it gives one a beginning understanding of what it is like to be blind. All of the wait staff are legally blind, and serve as guides to sighted folks who visit.
When We Heal Compulsive Eating
When I was a junior in high school, I had a Government teacher that looked like a brunette version of Keith Urban. He was a kind-hearted jokester, was smart, and overall a favorite teacher. All of the students respected him, yet we all thought he was super cool, as is usually goes with favorite teachers, and he somehow transformed the subject of Government into one of the most fun and fascinating courses I took.
Why You Deserve To Change Your Diet
In my recent blog post, I wrote about how to talk to people who are not supportive of your cleansing. This week, I want to take things a little deeper, or perhaps, back-track a little. The post was based on what I tell my clients who are doing Juice Feasts and who are concerned about the less-than-supportive friends, coworkers and loved ones they may encounter. By the time my clients come to me for coaching, they may still feel nervous about telling people around them that they are changing their diet or doing a cleanse, but it is not enough to keep them from moving forward and making the changes.
Guest Post: Josefin’s 7-day Juice Feast
“You are doing a what!?”
This question is one I have now answered about ten billion times this past week, and is exactly what I would have asked myself a year ago. “A Juice Feast” is the correct answer, and was something I had never heard of before my host family in Florida introduced me to their juicer during a visit last summer. Back then I didn’t really buy the concept of not eating, which goes against everything I had learned about health growing up in Sweden.
Guest Post: Emily’s 21-day Juice Feast
What I most took away from my 21-day Juice Feast was the principle of balance. Having wrestled with a tendency to vacillate between extremes in lifestyle, diet, emotion, and thought, I longed for a sense of peace and wellness. While to many people the idea of living on juice for 3 weeks could seem extreme, I found that what it unearthed in me was a deeper sense of what it meant to find equilibrium and calm.
My Fall 2012 Juice Feast – Days 6-9
I am finished with my Fall Juice Feast! The last couple days were stellar and delicious in so many ways. I feel more harmonious in my body, and I love to emerge out of the Juice Feast on the other end with that feeling. It is always my intention to carry over all I learned about myself and my body and all that I experienced into my “normal” eating mode.
Do Your Beliefs Lead To Compulsive Eating?
Anyone with compulsive eating tendencies has at least a couple strong beliefs about how they relate with food. These beliefs usually go something like this: (some are ones I used to believe about myself, too!)
Free Download: My Interview with Olympic Medalist Catherine Garceau
Available for FREE DOWNLOAD NOW:
My interview with Olympic Medalist Catherine Garceau on raw food nutrition, spirituality, athleticism and emotional eating! It was so much fun and we got into some really dynamic conversations and topics!
My Journey of Emotional Eating – The Long Version
As I said I would, here is a summary of my journey with emotional eating. That way, when I begin to write about practices and insights which have helped me to heal, you’ll know where I’m coming from 🙂 I know it’s long…
Somehow, I never learned to eat when I was hungry or stop when I was full, even as a child. Also, as young as 1st grade, I noticed thinness in other girls and desired to be thinner myself. I’m not sure where either of these issues (eating + body image) originated, since I had a very positive childhood and was very loved by my family, and my brothers, both close to my age, have neither of these issues. However, I did adore Disney princesses and Barbies, so pop culture could definitely be an origin. Whatever the reason, I had been a compulsive eater since I was a child.
Emotional Eating: An Update
It’s been a few months since I wrote about this process of mine. I’m in an interesting place. I’m eating more out of hunger than I have ever before, but I am still using food compulsively and emotionally pretty often.
I’m finding myself becoming tiresome of using food and finding it doesn’t play the roles it used to as adequately. The thought and attraction to eat generally gives way to a bit of a melancholy realization that just having eaten really didn’t do much for me. I find myself wondering, ‘Well, what was the point of that?’ This is odd for me because historically food has had major power in my life to change how I’m feeling.
Baskin’ Among the Aspens
Hello everyone! Thank you for your patience with my infrequent posts this week! On Thursday, I returned home to Park City, Utah (no, I’m not Mormon). Not where I grew up, but I went to high school there, and my family still lives there.
It’s been quite a profound vacation, for sure.