Welcome to my blog
How to Break the Habit of the "Clean Plate Club"
Do you have the habit from your childhood around the “clean plate club”? Do you feel you have to finish everything on your plate? Do you get anxiety around waste or around the money you associate with food left uneaten? Here are 5 tips to break this habit.
Food Addiction and the Truth of Your Childhood
You developed compulsive eating as a child because you were not allowed to know the truth of your childhood. They didn't allow you to see what was really going on, understand it, nor have feelings about it.
Food Addiction and Emotions You’re Afraid Of
Your emotions that you’re afraid you won’t survive are the very ones that, if you feel them, will heal your overeating. It's the feelings where you think "I can't go there" or "I can't handle those ones" which are the very ones you most need to go into to heal.
The Manipulation of the “Clean Plate Club”
The "clean plate club" and the "children are starving elsewhere" tactics are ones many people grew up with, and they were very damaging. Some parents shame their children by saying that children who are starving to death would love to have this food.
My Overeating and Guilt About My Mother
I felt guilty at even the thought of questioning my relationship with my mother. For most of my life, I thought that my "dad stuff" was the sole root of my issues. After all, Dad left, Mom stayed.
Going Back to Old Habits After a Juice Cleanse
You'll eventually go back to old habits if you juice cleanse without addressing the emotional causes of compulsive eating while on the cleanse.
Understanding Your Emotions Isn’t Necessary to Heal Overeating
It is not necessary to understand your emotions before you feel them. Insisting on understanding our emotions before we feel and experience them slows the healing of overeating.
Grief and Binge Eating
We are afraid that our sadness will swallow us if we start feeling it. We're afraid it will create depression. We think that if we open that floodgate, we will drown in it. But these are fears that are not actually true.
Food Addiction and Being a Cycle-Breaker
Have you felt, or been judged to be, too sensitive? A “troublemaker”? Too dramatic? Do you see patterns in your family that bother you?
Intuitive Eating and Your Breath
If you're a compulsive eater, you probably inhale your food. You likely don't breathe much. Changing the pattern of how we eat can really help us to heal overeating. When we slow down, breathe, chew, and are present with ourselves, it's a way to show love to ourselves.
I Thought Rejection Was My Fault
A belief that I was taught is that if a man rejects me, it's always because I’m not attractive enough. This has been a significant component of my eating issues and body image issues.
What Would You Give Up to Heal Binge Eating?
If you had to lose your family, your religion, your job or your partner in order to fully heal food addiction and come home to yourself, would you be willing to love yourself that much?
Overeating, Emotions and God’s Help
Healing food addiction is hard and there's no need to sugar coat it. When you feel you can’t cope with the emotions that are under your compulsive eating, ask God to be with you as you feel. You’re not alone.
Observing Feelings and Healing Emotional Eating
Observing emotions does not get the emotions into movement. The only thing that gets our emotions from stagnation and being stuck and into movement is experiencing the emotion.
Healing Food Addiction: Less Crystals and More Crying
It’s not more meditation and crystals and bubble baths that you need, it’s more feeling messy emotions that you need. Healing overeating is not achieved through traditional self-care practices. It can never be healed if you're always trying to rise above or "observe" your emotions.
The Right and Wrong Reasons to Juice Cleanse
Whether a juice cleanse is a good idea for you is all about motivation. Are you doing it from self-love or from harsh feelings? In my work with clients, I have some whom I encourage to do a juice cleanse, and others that I discourage from doing one, depending on their unique situation is and why they want to cleanse.
You Don’t Need Accountability to Heal Overeating
"You just need accountability!" How often have you been told this when trying to heal compulsive eating? How often have you said it to yourself? Here’s why it’s not the answer.
Worried About Overeating and the Holidays? Take a Breath.
You may be worried about overeating during the holidays. Can you slow down, take a breath, relax and come back into your body? Dissociation, or going out of the body, is a way we distance ourselves from the turmoil we're feeling.
Restricting Food Can Also Be Compulsive
It is not only overeating that can be an addiction; restricting eating can be, too. We often talk about eating too much as a compulsion, but we don't talk as much about the fact that eating too little can be just as much of a compulsion.
Eliminating Foods from Self-Hate vs. Self-Love
Should you stop eating sugar? Should you reduce gluten Should you put parameters around your diet? Can you heal from binge eating if you have any parameters? What about your physical health, don't we need to limit certain things?