Welcome to my blog
Ice Cream Cannot Give You Love
In compulsive eating, we are often attempting to create a cheap version of a feeling we want. We want ice cream to feel loved, we want bread to feel safe, we want chips to feel like life is exciting and has some meaning.
How to Stop Stress Eating
When we feel stressed, we are feeling an intense set of emotions that could vary from frustration to worry to hopelessness. When I work with people on stress eating, I always ask them to be specific about what they’re feeling.
Healing Overeating: Am I Betraying My Parents?
In seeking the truth about the deeper reasons you overeat, you are not hurting your parents. In striving to heal your heart, you are not betraying your parents. It is not possible to deeply and permanently heal without doing this step.
Fathers, Daughters and Body Image
Fathers with demands about how women should look can create body image issues in their daughters. There are many forms his expression of that demand can take.
The Fear of Hunger and How to Change
The fear of feeling hungry is a common experience for people with food addictions. There are reasons why this happens, and it is possible to work through it.
A Story: When I Snuck Candy and Got Abused
A story about a time I snuck candy when I was a kid and got abused as a result. Unfortunately, many parents react very negatively and unkindly to their child’s compulsive eating.
Feeling Emotions is a Part of Self-Love
Avoiding emotions is a harsh and unloving way to respond to yourself. Eating to suppress them is aggressive and traumatic. Feeling emotions starts feeling like what you do when you love yourself.
Emotional Eating and Denial About Childhood
When anyone has an issue with emotional eating, what that tells me is there is some level of denial about their childhood. Emotional eating does not come out of nowhere and is not due to a lack of willpower or discipline.
Shame About Eating Healthy While Overweight
When we have extra weight or compulsive eating issues, we can have a lot of shame when we share with other people that we want to eat healthy, or commit to eating vegan.
No One Is Broken, Binge Eating Can Heal
No human soul is broken beyond repair. Binge eating can be healed. You aren't permanently susceptible to food addictions. You aren't resigned to manage overeating for the rest of your life.
Being Overweight and Playing Small in Life
Having extra weight can be about feeling like we must play small and give others superiority.
Extra weight, and the overeating that can create it can be about a feeling like we must play small in life, and that we should feel inferior and make others feel superior.
Juice Cleansing and Food Addiction
Cleansing is a tool that those who struggle with overeating and binge eating can employ to assist them to deal with root causes. Here is how juice cleansing can help with food addiction.
Don’t Substitute Activities for Overeating
Often it is suggested that when you want to compulsively eat, to instead take a walk, or call a friend, or listen to a podcast, or knit or some other activity. Here’s why I don’t recommend this approach.
Overeating and Emotional Overwhelm
The real breakthroughs with healing binge eating happen when we allow ourselves to be completely overwhelmed by our emotions.
While we seek to control our emotional experience or how intense it becomes, we will remain compulsive with foods and drinks.
A Story About a Dad Who Overate
I had a client once who was a business owner and single father of two.
He had some health issues including pre-diabetes, and his weight was higher than he liked. He ate convenience food and fast food, almost exclusively.
Do You Judge Your Overeating?
Self-hate and judgement regarding our eating and our weight, is a learned response.
Many people with binge eating and eating disorders feel extreme levels of self-hatred and are absolutely brutal in their self-talk.
Thinking About Emotions vs. Feeling Emotions
Many people get to a point where they've made some progress, but then get stuck: they can talk about their childhood and feelings all day, and yet they still binge. Why?
We Think Food is Love, But it Isn’t!
Overeating isn’t real self-care and doesn’t stem from self-love. It is the result of a lack of self-love and self-care. Feeling our emotions - even the painful, uncomfortable and explosive ones - is self-love and self-care.
My Biggest Fear Was Not Being Skinny
I was completely consumed with the obsession to be thin and to stay thin, and the biggest terror I could conceive of was to not be able to maintain this thinness I had wanted all my life (spoiler alert, I didn't maintain it).
Competitive Mothers and Daughters with Weight Problems
When we don't understand this dynamic with our mothers, we will often self-sabotage our weight loss and gain it back.