Laughter Helps

When was the last time you really laughed? Really had fun??


We live in a high-tech, fast-paced, high-tension world and we become like pressure cookers holding in emotion. If we do not release our feelings somehow, we build tension in our bodies and then race to the refrigerator for relief. You may notice that when you are feeling out of control around food it is because you are tense in some way. It is not when you feel relaxed and happy that you pounce on your food and cram it forcefully into your mouth. It is when you are looking for something to “take the edge off,” to help you cope with certain feelings or situations. Incorporating more opportunities for laughter and fun into your life can help you to develop a more positive attitude about life in general. This will help you to stay in control of your behavior more often and to cope more effectively with difficulties as they arise.

Sometimes we take life too seriously. Even a minor annoyance can assume huge proportions. It is helpful at times to back up, take a deep breath and ask yourself, “How important is this?” We may spend our day fretting and fuming over our negative circumstances and we totally miss the joy and beauty available in the present. You are the only one who suffers when you put your precious energy into harboring negative feelings about someone else. The other person is probably having a fine day and spending very little time concerned about how you are doing or feeling. If you allow negative thoughts about someone to ruin your day, you are giving that person your power. You give up the right to enjoy yourself and your life and you find yourself stewing about things in the past that you have absolutely no control over.

Be happy today! Find things to smile about and plan something fun to do! When you focus on the joyful aspects of each individual and situation, things change. You feel lighter, emotional eating will dramatically decrease and food recedes into the background. Try it and enjoy summer.

Also...just in from BBC, Australia! Listen today to this exciting podcast I produced with Victoria Hansen, Black Book Cooking. It is the first in a four part series covering vital aspects of The Taming of the Chew.
Podcast available now.

And remember to join me on Facebook today http://www.Facebook.com/drdeniselamothe. I would love to connect!

The Diet Industry: Friend or Foe?

Dieting is an obsession in our culture and the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. We are bombarded with messages to be thin and to try fad diet products, diet pills, and wraps that promise to “melt off pounds” while we do nothing. There are liquids that promise to provide balanced nutrition and to help us drop pounds at the same time. There are diet wafers, soft drinks and candies that promise to satisfy our needs while our inches disappear. There is always a new scheme coming along – some kind of product linked to some kind of magical promise. We all know on some level that these do not work. The idea of a quick solution to such a painful problem is alluring, however, and difficult to pass up. Instead of staying with our reasoning selves, we slide into denial and we buy yet another gimmick in a desperate attempt to end our battle with weight once and for all. As many of us know through painful experience, this ends in failure and emotional eating and our self-esteem suffers yet another blow.

We are urged to color our hair, hide our wrinkles, and cram our bulges into tight clothing until we can barely breathe. We cannot pass a magazine rack without being assaulted by messages that our bodies are not okay. Virtually every issue of any magazine written for women, will contain some kind of article on how to become younger, more beautiful, more slender, more something. The message is clear. We are never all right just as we are.

As with any industry, the diet industry only continues to grow if their products remain in demand. Have you ever thought about that? If diet products really did work, the industry would put itself out of business. Why then are millions of women and men buying more and more diet products? If diet products work and we become thin using them, then why do we need more and more of them? Why do more and more weight loss groups and organizations form? Why? These are important questions to think about. The more informed you are, the more you will be able to steer clear of false promises. You will save money, but, more importantly, you will protect yourself from further disappointment and shame.

What is "Normal Eating" Anyhow?

Normal eating is responding to physical cues that your body needs nourishment. It means eating until you are satisfied. Normal eating means eating foods you love and letting yourself have enough. It does not mean depriving yourself or stopping eating because you think you should. Normal eating means exercising some restraint and choosing foods that are good for your body but not limiting your diet so much that you miss out on special foods you might enjoy occasionally. Normal eating means granting yourself permission to eat at any time just because you feel like it, because you feel happy or sad or because you are celebrating or mourning. It means eating sometimes for absolutely no reason other than because you want to.

On some days, normal eating means eating three meals. On other days, it could mean having more or less than that. Normal eating does at times mean over-eating and at other times, under-eating. It means being flexible and it means trusting yourself and your body. Normal eating means letting your body adjust to the constant fluctuations in your moods, food choices and eating patterns. It means paying some attention to your eating, but it does not mean being rigid. It does not mean worrying about your food and body excessively. Thoughts about when and what to eat are necessary in order to feed yourself well but they should not take up the majority of your time and sometimes normal eating can mean taking care of yourself emotionally with an appropriate amount of food.

So, please enjoy your food and remember, sometimes it is OK to eat for emotional reasons as long as you know what you are doing and you're prepared to take care of yourself after.

Be well and warmest wishes, Dr. Denise

Food Prison - Let Me Out!

In my experience, people who don’t care about themselves or their lives do not come through my door struggling with emotional eating and food control issues. On the contrary, those who seek my services are generally intelligent, motivated, creative, and perfectionistic. For the most part, those who ask for help are energetic and resourceful, but much of their energy is tied up obsessing about food or weight. Because of their eating habits, their physical energy is often low and because of their poor self-esteem, their emotional energy is also affected.

I am convinced that within each of us there exists a center where we love ourselves, and harbor the desire to grow and to be creative. Our creativity may shine when we are writing, drawing, cooking, gardening, knitting or listening to a friend, for example. We want to reach out, to stretch ourselves beyond our familiar, daily routines but we often feel afraid or stuck. Being obsessed with body size and food keeps our energy tied up and this can provide us with an illusion of safety. We don’t have to confront our fears and move forward if we focus on winning this war we are raging against our bodies. Being obsessed with food is like being in a prison where we are both the jailer and the jailed. To break out of our self-imposed prisons we need to develop our spiritual selves. This is a vital part of the process of freeing ourselves to grow and to develop to our greatest potential.

Secondary Gains from Overeating

I often ask clients what they are getting out of their compulsive eating behavior. Most look at me as if I’m from another planet and insist that they get absolutely no benefits from eating compulsively or from being overweight. I can understand their surprised reactions, for how can an issue which feels so painful and all-consuming bring with it any advantages? Inevitably, when I suggest we talk about the possibility, people resist the idea. “How can this weight or this behavior bring me anything positive?” they ask. It seems too hard to think about, impossible to imagine. I often tell them the following story to illustrate my point:

Once I was working with a woman who had been steadily gaining weight since the birth of her first child. She was referred to me by her medical doctor when her weight began seriously taking its toll on her health. She was dangerously obese when we met and was becoming increasingly depressed and discouraged. We worked together for quite a while and, despite all of her best efforts and mine, she continued to put on more weight. Sporadically she would make attempts to take control of her eating but nothing was effective. One day, after several months of unsuccessful weight loss attempts, we began talking about her family situation and she disclosed to me that her husband and parents badly wanted another child/grandchild. Her first child, an extremely active little girl, kept her busy constantly and she strongly resisted the idea of adding to their family (and thus her workload). She feared her husband’s and parent’s anger and possible abandonment if she openly stated that she did not want another child to care for.

Soon she realized that her weight kept her from having to confront her family or deal with the issue at all. Her doctor had emphatically told her that having another child was far too dangerous an undertaking if she became pregnant at her current weight. Losing weight would mean confronting the issue and admitting the truth. Once she realized this she knew that she would never let go of her extra pounds until she figured out how to handle this matter directly.

Scenarios like this one happen frequently as part of the therapy process. People sometimes find out that their weight, their emotional eating and out-of-control behavior provides them with illusions of safety. If they are overweight, they can avoid the situations that they fear. They may think such thoughts as, “If I am heavy, no one will make advances towards me. If I am fat, I can’t possibly _______ (fill in the blank: go to school, ask for anything, be successful, take risks, compete with others, have a good relationship, etc.) If I am fat, I won’t be called upon to give my opinions or ideas. People won’t take me seriously and I won’t have to risk being wrong and feeling foolish. If I am overweight I may be excluded from good jobs where I will be expected to be responsible and competent (it is illegal, but it happens). If I am obese I can stay close to home – buses, planes, trains and subways have small seats so I can’t possibly travel.” This thinking provides an illusion of safety.

Being overweight is not simple and generally there are at least a few hidden, unconscious agendas behind the eating behavior. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and think for a few minutes about the advantages you get from being overweight. Then return to the present. Write those advantages down. Now note any other, more nurturing ways you can take care of yourself and your feelings and write these down. Next, choose one area where you would like to make a change. For example, if you have discovered that one advantage of overeating has been to numb feelings of grief, you might plan to talk with a friend about your loss. In this way, you allow your feelings to surface and find expression and you no longer need food to anesthetize yourself. You can do this exercise often as a way of checking in with yourself and changing your compulsive behavior.

You are making your unconscious conscious and only then can you make the changes you need to make. Send me a note and let me know what you find out! ( denisedeniselamothe.com ) I would love to heare from you!

Self Esteem and Emotional Eating

This is a great time to think about this because April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month. (Go to http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ for free tips each day and to register for my FREE teleseminar this Thursday!) Register NOW! I really want to have you there with me… Think about this: Low self-esteem is always present when we are trapped in a cycle of food abusive behavior. Why is it so hard to feel good about ourselves? Why do so many of us have such poor self-esteem? To answer this, we must examine what self-esteem is, how negative self-esteem develops and what we need to do to improve it. Self-esteem is not solid. It is fluid. Many people think of it as something that “just is.” You may have heard someone remark that they have high or low self-esteem and that is the end of it. Well, it really isn’t that way. Think of self-esteem as a river. Sometimes there is plenty of water in it and it flows freely. We may see sun sparkles reflected in it and it is quite beautiful. At other times, the water in our river may be quite low and we see mud, old tires and rusty things sticking up – not very attractive! Self-esteem is like this river. It is high at times, low at others. Water flows into the river through positive messages we receive from ourselves and from others. Water flows out, however, when we hear and absorb negative messages. Now think about this. When we were children, our parents expended a great deal of energy to take care of us. Since they had a limited amount of energy and wanted us to grow up doing the “right” things, they usually focused more attention on us when we were doing something wrong. If we were doing something unacceptable, that behavior had to be corrected. If we were not, there was no need to say anything to us. Now your self-esteem is your responsibility entirely. Please flood yourself with positive messages – about your competence and your worth. Celebrate the beautiful spirit you are and when negative messages slip into your mind, change the focus of your attention and give yourself positive thoughts. Think of thinks you feel good about. Count your blessings. Start a gratitude list. Hope to meet with you Thursday! Be well and honor Emotional overeating Awareness Month!

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!

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

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.

To Drink or Not to Drink

In his book Natural Health, Natural Medicine Andrew Weil, M.D. addresses alcohol use: “Heavy alcohol use puts us at risk of developing cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach, probably because alcohol irritates these tissues directly.” Weil also states that heavy drinkers are more likely to get liver cancer and that this danger is compounded if you also smoke tobacco. He recommends drinking moderately or minimally or not at all.


Besides the physiological dangers of alcohol use, there are psychological dangers as well. Many women report that after drinking, they feel out of control, are more likely to throw out their plans to eat sensibly and to binge. Alcohol weakens their resolve to restrict “forbidden” foods and drinking often precipitates weeks or months of “out of control” behavior. This behavior is accompanied by feelings of remorse, guilt and self-disgust which can lead the drinker to drink or eat even more in an attempt to “medicate” these negative feelings (classic emotional eating).


Harvey and Marilyn Diamond report in their work that alcohol impairs calcium absorption by affecting the liver’s ability to activate vitamin D which is important in the metabolism of calcium. Christiane Northrup, M.D. associates excess alcohol consumption with increased risk of breast cancer, menstrual irregularities, osteoporosis and birth defects. She also explains that “two drinks of alcohol per night effectively wipe out rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the type of sleep associated with dreaming.” She wisely points out that dreaming is part of our internal guidance system and wonders why anyone would choose to suppress that guidance with alcohol. Consensus of opinion appears to be that water is best and that alcohol offers no beneficial effects. You decide.

Life Changes and Emotional Eating

We are always evolving from one stage of life to another, from one body shape to another. We travel over time from babies to little girls or boys, to adolescents, to women and men, to elders. These life passages happen gradually and have profound effects on the ways we view and care for our physical bodies. Do you recall when you first noticed your body was maturing? How did you react to these changes? How did your feelings towards your body change over time? Were you fearful, excited, curious, anxious, or ashamed? Did you talk to anyone about the changes you were noticing or did you struggle with unanswered questions all by yourself?
Many women and men report that they felt confused and lonely through these life changes and most agree that certain life changes were a least somewhat disturbing to them (and most likely led them to eat to soothe their emotions). As we mature our bodies change but society tells us they should not. So, as our bodies change in natural ways throughout our lives, we may see ourselves in negative ways – as fat, unacceptable, unattractive. It is nearly impossible to feel good about ourselves and our bodies in this culture. Most of our bodies could never match those we are taught to view as ideal and even man and women who have achieved this look are often frightened that they will be unable to maintain their thin appearance over time. For a number of my clients, maintaining weight loss has proven far more difficult and stressful than achieving the weight loss in the first place.
It is no wonder that so many of us have been struggling with compulsive eating behaviors for years. Here are these bodies we received at birth behaving in ways that we have no control over. We cannot stop our bodies from developing any more than we can stop our hair from growing or the sun from coming up. Yet we punish our bodies for simply doing what they are supposed to do. We want to look different than we look – be taller, thinner, have curly hair or a different tone to our skin. Part of stopping compulsive eating behavior permanently means accepting each bodily change as a natural part of life and ourselves as exactly who we’re supposed to be. Change those negative, self punishing thoughts to positive, self-loving ones…. This will help!

Overeating is not all psychological either

Many of us, perhaps particularly in the profession of psychology, fail to realize that overeating is only partly psychological, that there is a strong physical component to our behavior. Our clients may think, and we may join them in thinking, that if we can only find that one old emotional wound that needs healing or that one major conflict to solve, eating issues will magically disappear, as if that knowledge and that process alone are powerful enough to put a stop at last to the years of food-abusive behaviors.
It is true that much research has been done on the effects of various foods on our emotions. What does it mean emotionally if we eat too much or too little salt or fat? What happens inside our body if we choose only refined foods instead of whole foods? We may wonder why we race around in search of potato chips or chocolate with such fervor: what is our body trying to tell us that we are unable or unwilling to hear? Where can we acquire the knowledge we need to figure this out? Here is a good reference for you. In their best selling book, Make the Connection, Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey offer clear explanations of some of the ways our body works. Some topics they address are: natural “set point” weight, water retention, ways we burn and store fat, metabolism, effects of different types of exercise and substances on our body and ways to manage compulsive eating behaviors and weight. Their presentation is clear and comprehensive and I highly recommend their book to learn more about these topics.

Self love, not emotional eating, is the answer

People who come to see me frequently report a sense of being alone in their struggle. As I have said before, we all have a strong need for connection – to feel loved, accepted, and cared about. Without the presence of these feelings, at least some of the time, life’s battles quickly become overwhelming and the task of treating ourselves with compassion, respect and nurturance seems impossible. It is then that we turn to sugar, salt and fat and try to soothe ourselves through emotional eating. We cannot count on others or on food to give us these good feelings. We must learn to give them to ourselves by finding the love, connection and energy we have deep inside. Our work is to learn to love ourselves.

Stopping emotional eating

To be your very best, naturally healthy, vibrant, beautiful self and to stop eating for emotional reasons, you must consider your total wellbeing. It is no longer possible for you to think in terms of calories in/calories out as your guide.

If you think self-destructive thoughts such as “I really am fat. I need to lose these ugly pounds” you will feel bad and you will attract more” bad feeling” thoughts. Then you are likely to get stuck in a loop of negative thinking leading to negative behaviors, extra pounds, increased worries, stronger efforts to diet, more deprivation, discouragement, guilt, shame and fear of gaining more and more weight. This can lead to depression, increased anxiety and eventual apathy. You are likely then to submerge yourself in sugar and simple carbohydrates to shield yourself from these painful feelings for the few moments, hours or days of relief that you know these substances can and reliably will provide.

Going on a new diet plan is likely to leave you more frustrated, discouraged and depressed than before. You know that fad diets won’t work. They cause weight gain.

Make friends with yourself. Don’t expect to be perfect all the time. Stop, relax and really give yourself what you truly want and desire. Once you accept who you are and become gentle and non-judgmental with yourself, you will be able to achieve your ideal weight and vibrant health. Each of you must figure out precisely your own ways to soothe yourself during difficult times.

You can take advantage of the Bach emotional eating support kit which contains three powerful remedies to help you learn to appreciate your body (Crab Apple), remain in control of your eating (Cherry Plum) and to stop repeating your same overeating mistakes over and over again (Chestnut Bud). For more information about this extremely helpful resource, visit www.emotionaleatinghelp.org.

Pause, breathe and substitute positive thoughts to turn around negative thinking. As you courageously shift your perspective in this way, you move quickly towards the life of radiant health and balance that you have longed for. Pay close attention to your feelings. They represent your internal guidance system (which is never wrong). When you identify what you are feeling you will know what to do every minute. If you make yourself number one and heed the messages your feelings are delivering through this system (as consistently as possible) you will move closer and closer to meeting your goals.

Remember that this is your life and your body to do with as you wish. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing, thinking about or telling you. Emotionally eating and keeping yourself murky and drugged with unhealthy foods will never bring you the happiness that you deserve. To be happy, healthy and whole is up to you and the time is NOW!

Make friends with your body

Over the years we often become so focused on weight and appearance that we lose touch with the magic of our own movement. Also, our bodies mirror our emotions and if we feel rigid and tense, our bodies will likewise constrict. Moving our bodies is necessary if we are going to take care of ourselves. Remember, to achieve and maintain a reasonable weight, we must change our focus from how we look to how we feel. If we don’t use our body, we can’t appreciate it. If we don’t appreciate it, we can’t love and accept it. If we don’t love and accept it, we will not take the steps necessary to nurture it.

For many of us the thought of making friends with our body is frightening and may sound impossible. It is not. Begin paying attention to the things about your body that you appreciate. Nothing is too little to note. For example, be happy if your eyes can see, your ears can hear, your feet can move and you can walk. We may not all have these abilities but we all can still find things to be grateful for. Appreciate yourself and start being your own friend. Emotional eating will fade into the background!

We need energy

Watching the winter Olympics in Vancouver reminds me of how essential it is that we feed ourselves well. We all need this – not just top athletes! Of course, food gives us energy and we need the right amount of the right nutrients for our body to function properly. We require nourishment throughout the day.

Often, however, we fool ourselves into thinking we need to eat when our body actually does not need more food. For example, when we are tired (i.e. when we need to sleep), we might think we need to eat food to energize our body. Although this may be the case at times, such as in a life or death situation, usually, for compulsive eaters, the food is being used to save us from experiencing our feelings. When we feel tired, angry, frustrated, anxious, bored, lonely, unappreciated or afraid, for example, food becomes a quick and easy way to seemingly perk us up and fill the void we are experiencing. It is easier to tear open a bag of chips or pull a chocolate bar out of the candy machine than it is to sit with those painful feelings.

Feelings of hunger are tricky and often have nothing to do with the fueling of our body. Our body doesn’t need excessive amounts of potato chips, chocolate or macaroni and cheese to function optimally, so when we tell ourselves we need them for energy, we are not telling ourselves the truth. Fats, sugar or caffeine may give us a temporary rush of energy – but this is short-lived, and masking discomfort will leave us feeling even more “tired” than before because we are not giving our body the nutrients it really needs to “energize.” So, when we choose sugars, fats or excess carbohydrates we may not be truly, physically hungry -- we are most likely eating for emotional reasons.

Cravings we experience deliver valuable messages to us about what we really feel and what we really need. Our job is to pay attention to these messages and to give ourselves what we really need at the time. Proper rest, a healthful diet, and a peaceful lifestyle give us energy – not junk foods. They may be what our Chew clamors for from time to time, but they are never what we really need.

Nurture yourself this week! warmly, Dr. Denise

From Dr Denise, Emotional Eating Expert -- Food: Reward or Punishment?

Food can be a reward or a punishment! When we were children we were most likely both rewarded and punished with food. Desserts were likely withheld until all of the vegetables had disappeared and you may have been given candy if you behaved. You may have been sent to bed without supper as a punishment or not allowed the ice cream or candy others received because you had been “bad.” For most, if not all of us, there are memories of food being used in these ways. Food is a powerful motivator. Behavior modification programs use candies, for example, to change difficult behaviors in children or in people who are learning impaired. Once the child or adult learns that he or she will receive a candy when they perform a specific behavior, they become motivated to perform that behavior again to receive another treat. It is extremely effective.

We have all been conditioned in this same way to some extent. If we learned as children that food is a reward, we may continue to use it in that way and the deprivation we experience on any diet plan may translate to us as punishment. If food was withheld from us when we were little to keep us in line, we may feel angry now when we experience any hunger. We may rebel against those who punished us then by eating even more now than we really want or need. Begin to notice how often you give yourself a “treat” as a reward. Notice how often you feel deprived and punished at times when you are restricting food.

Taking responsibility for what we put into our mouths means, in part, releasing some of our old beliefs about food. If we can appreciate food as neutral – not good or bad – we can begin making more thoughtful choices. Food is a powerful force in each of our lives. It is hard to untangle our present eating behaviors from the ways we viewed and experienced eating in our childhood years. It is helpful to recognize this and to begin paying attention to the ways you may be using food to reward yourself or how you may be experiencing even mild hunger as a punishment. If you realize your tendencies to do this, you will be less compelled to act on impulse, eat for emotional reasons and you can give yourself time to decide whether you really want to eat or not.

Dr. Denise, Emotional Overeating Expert -- Social reasons to overeat

Another common reason to overeat is connected to social situations we frequently face. It is impossible to be harmonious, balanced and content all the time in such situations or in life in general. If we feel too successful or unsuccessful, for example, we find ourselves off balance and anxious. Anytime things are a little too “good” or a little too “bad” we find ourselves racing to the refrigerator in search of something to help us find emotional balance. We mistakenly think food can provide this for us. It can not. It can only soothe us temporarily. Only we have the power to cope with our own assortment of feelings as we negotiate our way along our own life’s path

All this can be very confusing and discouraging. At times it is hard to keep our needs in the foreground and to nurture ourselves. Even in settings where opportunities to sabotage ourselves abound and our Chew is screaming for “treats,” we do not have to feel helpless and victimized. We don’t have to be emotional eaters! It may be hard for you to believe, but it is possible to feel under control even in the most food-focused situations.

Remind yourself to slow down, breathe and regroup. Take a quiet minute to reaffirm your commitment to yourself and your health. Remember that the goal is to create the most joyful, vibrant life. You can actively pursue that instead of reacting to everyone else and their comments and ideas. Your path is yours alone and no one else’s opinions need to affect you unless you allow them to.

Denise Lamothe, Emotional Eating Expert -- My New Year's Message to You

Happy New Year to you! If you are like most, you have made your commitment to change your lifestyle and to treat yourself in healthier ways than you have in the past. Perhaps you have the goal of getting rid of those extra pounds. Well, you can do it! But, and it’s a big but (not butt) because we live in a food focused environment.
Have you ever paid attention to how focused our culture is on food? Virtually every occasion we experience has food as a central theme. Think of Thanksgiving without turkey and pumpkin pie or Easter without candy eggs. How about Valentine’s Day with no chocolate, birthdays or weddings with no cake or even meetings without refreshment breaks? How often do we get together with friends without including food? We ask people to meet us for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. We invite them over for coffee or a drink. When was the last time someone asked you to get together just to spend time enjoying each other’s company? Food is everywhere and a part of nearly every occasion.
It is important for us to ask ourselves these questions. How can we take care of ourselves in this food-oriented culture? How can we socialize with friends, celebrate birthdays, go to fine restaurants and relax about it? How can we manage to enjoy ourselves, eat only some of what is offered and feel satisfied? How can we survive this constant exposure to food? If we eat too much, the result is anxiety and we will want to eat to medicate this feeling. If we eat too little, we feel deprived and set ourselves up to binge later. If we have weight to lose, we feel anxious about that and if we have lost the weight we wanted to lose, we feel anxious that we will gain it back. (Many women report that they find it much harder to maintain weight loss than to lose the weight in the first place.) So we eat because we have not lost weight and we eat because we have lost weight. What a dilemma! At either end of the scale, anxiety lurks and if we don’t know healthy ways to cope with the anxiety, we eat.
Focus your energy on taking gentle care of yourself. Make your resolution to be as self-loving and joyful as possible and do what you love. The rest will be ever so much easier to manage and emotional eating will recede into the background!

From Dr. Denise Lamothe, Emotional Eating Expert, THIS TIME I MEAN IT!

This year, instead of setting the frustrating, impossible to keep goals of daily exercise and deprivation dieting, try something new.

First I invite you to join me for an exciting webinar on January 3rd, 2:00 Eastern Standard time, 11 Pacific time. This is an exciting opportunity. I will join 3 colleagues and we will present a 1 1/2 hour seminar called "This Time I Mean It!" Please follow the link for details and I do hope you will join me. Not only will you have fun and get great information but you'll receive free gifts! Wow! What an opportunity! I'm sure you'll agree...

Meanwhile, here are a few tips for you as you move from "holiday (I didn't take the best care of myself)" mode to "joyous, vibrant health" mode...

First, instead of giving anything up, make your new year's resolution to become the healthiest and happiest you can be.

Find a flexible, healthy eating plan that appeals to you -- something you can live with long term.

Readjust your exercise goals. Instead of daily, how about three or four days a week?

Set your sights on long term improvement -- no quick fixes.

Try something new -- take an art classes, try a new activity or enroll in an enrichment course at your local college. Sign up for "ThisTime I mean It!" You will be able to ask your questions and to hear three different perspectives.

Use the Bach Flower Emotional Eating Support Kit to improve your body image, stay in control and stop repeating the same old mistakes.

Find a fun buddy (NOT a diet buddy) plan something fun each week to do together. You will have that to look forward to and take your mind off of your worries.

Stay positive. When things are getting you down, make a list of things you appreciate in your life. This can turn your mood around and eating won't be so compelling.

I send you warm wishes and much joy in 2010.