Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Don't forget! April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month!


April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month GET YOUR FREE TIPS! If you would like to receive a FREE tip a day during Emotional Overeating Awareness Month to help you reduce or stop emotional overeating, Click HERE and each day in April, you will find a special tip waiting in your mailbox! April is the month of rebirth and earth day. Make it your special month and let me help you make the important changes you have been waiting for...... IN ADDITION, I AM OFFERING A FREE CLASS JUST FOR YOU! Please join me for my first forty-five minute teleseminar to celebrate Emotional Overeating Awareness Month on Thursday April 7th at 12:00 EST. The Seminar is FREE and you will get loads of vital information to help you as you continue to Tame Your Chew. To register Click HERE. If you have friends who are struggling with this, they are welcome to join us and you may forward the link on to them. I am so excitied about this and look so forward to having you participate!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month

I am preparing my next book for publication (more about that soon) and many exciting things are happening and happening fast! I will be blogging a little more often to keep you all posted and learn what I can do to support you.

Back in 2004, I founded a special holiday during the month of April to raise awareness of emotional overeating as a vital issue in today's society. Every year I wanted people to keep it fresh in their mind. This year, once again, the month of April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month. For more information go to http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ . Throughout the month I will be focusing on this topic with speeches, classes and helpful hints to avoid emotional overeating.

Every day during April, I will email one useful tip, for a total of 30 great tips for you to use. If you'd like to receive them, sign up at http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ !We know now that most diets DO NOT work - in fact they CAUSE weight gain. They do this by enticing us with promises that are unrealistic. They say we will permanently shed pounds by depriving ourselves of food and consequently, fun. Then our bodies scream at us to feed them more because we do not feel satisfied. Chances are we have not eaten enough of the foods we require to have the energy and zest we need to meet the demands of each day.

Emotionally we may feel sad and discouraged about how we have deprived ourselves and make up for that by eating double or triple the amounts and eating much more often. We then gain any weight back that we may have lost and, as each pound tips the scale, our feelings of guilt and shame grow in proportion to our waistlines. Of course, this leads us to the refrigerator or cupboard for some little morsel to "take the edge off" our pain and we start spinning in this cycle of deprivation and emotional overeating to calm ourselves. We beat ourselves up, seek food for comfort and gain even more weight while trying even harder to be "good" (no, "perfect") dieters. These feverish attempts to diet and drop 20 pounds in a weekend only reinforce our failure and bring more and more self-deprecating feelings.

FREE CLASS JUST FOR YOU!
Please join me for my first forty-five minute teleseminar to celebrate Emotional Overeating Awareness Month on Thursday April 7th at 12:00 EST. The Seminar is FREE and you will get loads of vital information to help you as you continue to Tame Your Chew. To register visit http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ . If you have friends who are struggling with this, they are welcome to join us. Please forward this link to all your friends!

Remember emotional eating is always a way to take care of yourself. See how many healthy alternative ways to nurture and soothe yourself you can think of and use. Remember, the best way to halt emotional overeating is by taking the very best care of yourself. You deserve it!

And the challenge for you is to combat the strong desire to overeat to soothe your feelings. What are some healthier ways to cope with this situation? Read on for some ideas.As always I am here for you, Dr. Denise

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Teen Eating Disorders

A recent study, supported by The National Institute of Mental Health, reported in Med Page Today, http://www.medpagetoday.com/, highlights the seriousness of eating problems in adolescents in our country, finding that they have a rate of eating disorders only slightly less than that reported in adults. It is not surprising that young people are as affected as the pressures on them to look, act and be certain ways mount and food control is one way they may attempt to control themselves and their environment. Sugars and simple carbohydrates abound in the youth culture, are extremely addictive for most and often just as effective as drugs or alcohol at numbing feelings and helping one to escape from the realities and pressures of life.

In over twenty-five years of private practice I have been helping people, young and old, to overcome eating problems and the work is often discouraging and frustrating for all of them. I do understand this, having suffered with anorexia for a long while, bulimia for about seven years, binge eating disorder and extreme obesity – finally feeling at peace today about my body and food.

I have discovered that it is not about being thin. It is about feeling balanced and happy and enjoying life. It saddens me to see so many people spending their days thinking of how they can be smaller, fooling themselves into thinking that they will be happy “then.” The time to be happy is now but as long as your energy is directed at what you perceive as “wrong” about you, you can never appreciate all the wonderful things there are about yourself.

Understanding and overcoming over- (or under-) eating is complex but can be done. It requires that you question those messages that you are constantly bombarded with to be different. You may think you will garner approval if you do your best to please everyone else, but that will never work. You are the only one you need to listen to. You have the wisdom to decide what’s best for yourself. Several times a day, close your eyes, breathe and focus within yourself. Think about what you want, what you need at that moment and notice how you feel. Then ask yourself what you truly need at the moment. It may actually be to eat but chances are it is not.

Don’t beat yourself up for craving. That will never help! Sugars, fats and salt are highly addictive so be aware when you choose them that you are likely to want more. Make the best choices you can in all areas of your life. When you’re tired, rest. If you’re sad, cry. If you’re lonely, call a friend. Do not expect to behave perfectly. That is not the human way and if you set that impossible goal, you are guaranteed to fail. Above all else, nurture yourself with all the love and care you need and certainly deserve! As you do, your body will come to its ideal weight.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Be Comfortable and Breathe


For years, many of us have tried, usually with little or no success, to portray a certain image and we have been brainwashed into looking outside of ourselves to decide exactly what that image is. We have been told how to dress and how to feel about it. I recall being in seventh grade and feeling simultaneously excited and nervous about starting ballroom dancing classes. Shortly before the first lesson, my mother presented me with a garter belt, nylon stockings, a girdle and a long line bra. Imagine that! Seventh grade and already I had to fuss to hide every bulge and jiggle. My emotions, as I recall, were mixed. Partly I was excited to make my grand entrance into this mysterious grown up world and partly I was horrified. I remember the flesh of my thighs overflowing the tight little stocking tops and I remember smiling through my misery as I tried to look absolutely beautiful gliding across the dance floor. What was to be a magical, wonderful experience turned into a strained and difficult one. Did you ever find yourself in such a predicament? Were you ever dressed to match an image that didn’t quite fit? Did you ever eat to soothe those emotions?

We do not live in a culture where we are encouraged to be creative. We do not celebrate differences in body shapes, sizes and styles and we do not learn to love and appreciate our bodies as unique and beautiful no matter how large or small. Instead, for the majority of us, we are shown how to hide our curves and “flaws.” This is unfortunate. Our
self-esteem certainly suffers and we might go through our entire lives feeling unacceptable, inadequate, unattractive, constricted and ashamed.

A number of years ago I attended a women’s music festival in Michigan. Thousands of women attended the week-long event and no men were permitted on the festival land. The summer weather was deliciously warm most of the time and the majority of the women wore little, if any, clothing during the day. All ages were represented. There were little girls and elders, and there were women from many different countries. I saw women of all shapes, sizes and colors. These women walked freely about the land and appearance mattered little. I thought what a beautiful sight it was to see these women moving about freely, uninhibited by social expectations or clothing constraints.

Now I know we can’t all walk around without our clothes on. Nor would we want to. Buying clothes that please us is fun. We can choose colors and materials that we love and think of our own needs when we purchase clothing. We can dress for comfort and still look stylish. One of the reasons we may overeat is because we fall short in our vain attempts to look like the models we see. If we try to emulate these women, who are perpetually young and unrealistically thin, nearly all of us will fail. Please do not dress to look like or be someone else. Be yourself. Be comfortable and breathe. Choose what suits you.