WOULD YOU LIKE TO STOP EMOTIONAL EATING?

In honor of Emotional Overeating Awareness Month, it is valuable to review the following article. April is a fantastic time to think about your own eating patterns. Emotional eating is a lifestyle for many and causes weight gain, frustration, guilt and shame. We may be soothing painful feelings or mindlessly snacking and we become disconnected from physical hunger.

You can manage your stress in other ways -- take a walk, talk with a friend or take a warm bath for example. You must consider your total wellbeing. If you think self-destructive thoughts about your appearance then you are likely enter a loop of negative thinking leading to negative behaviors, increased weight and worries, deprivation, guilt, shame and fear. This can lead to depression, increased anxiety and eventual apathy. You may submerge yourself in unhealthy food to shield yourself from these painful feelings because you know from experience that these substances will reliably provide a few minutes of relief.

You are eating for emotional, not physical, reasons and you set yourself up to fail at meeting your goals. Once you accept yourself and become gentle with yourself, you will make progress toward reaching your ideal weight, vibrant health and balance. Each of you must figure out precisely your own ways to soothe yourself during difficult times. Pause, breathe and substitute positive thoughts to turn your negative thinking around.

Pay close attention to your feelings. As I describe in great detail in my latest book, The Appetite Connection, they represent your internal guidance system (which is never wrong). When you identify what you are feeling you will know what to do. If you make yourself number one and heed the messages your feelings are delivering through this system you will move closer to your goals.

This is your life and your body and emotional eating will never bring you the happiness that you deserve. To be happy, healthy and whole is up to you and the time is NOW!

many blessings! Dr. Denise

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

April is Emotional Overeating Awareness Month

People often ask me what diet they should go on to lose the most weight in the fastest way. Here is my answer: “Diets actually cause weight gain and for many reasons too numerous to go into here. I suggest you visit http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ as April is Emotional Overeating Awareness month. There is an article there on emotional eating which may help. I also urge you up for the Chew Tamer's Journey which comes out a few times a year. This has lots of info to help you understand weight issues. Additionally, I suggest you visit my site http://www.deniselamothe.com/ and go to the archive of old newsletters (no charge for any of these resources). Also every week I post on my (really your blog) blog on www.chewtamers.blogspot.com about weight management issues. Then, of course, I suggest you read The Taming of the Chew for an in depth understanding of eating issues from physical, emotional, social and spiritual perspectives. It may sound like a lot but as you look into these resources, you will gain a very different understanding of what you're going through. Also, there is another fantastic resource at http://www.emotionaleatinghelp.org/. If you just try to find the "right" diet, you will always fail. There is so much more to it than that. So, begin educating yourself and soon you will make healthy, permanent changes....”
My very best wishes, Dr. Denise