Teleclasses to start this Thursday!!!

It’s not too late! Please register today for my “Appetite Connection” four teleclasses series – only $30!!!

Hurry though because we start this Thursday, the 28th. To register click here.
If you can’t make it, register anyway and you will be able to download all of the classes to listen to at your convenience…

I would really love to have you join me... You can also send questions ahead of time and I will address tham on the call. Hope to connect with you Thursday!!!

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!

Springtime and Overeating

First of all, thank yous to all of you who participated in my very first teleseminar last week. It was a great experience and I appreciate your letting me know how helpful it was… (We will be posting a link to the recording on http://www.emotionalovereatingawareness.com/ soon. The four teleclasses series I told you about that will address how to stop overeating will begin April 28th and information will be available soon. Check my website for the latest news and I will also keep you posted via this blog..

For now, let’s enjoy springtime! After months of hibernation, it is finally springtime! Flowers are bursting out of their underground winter hiding places and there are many compelling reasons to be out of doors. Raking, mowing, weeding, feeding bending and lifting all may exhaust us physically and this end-of-the day tiredness can be misinterpreted for hunger. Food gives us energy and we need the right amount of the right nutrients for our body to function properly. Often, however, we fool ourselves into thinking we need to eat when our body actually does not need more food. This is likely to happen when we are tired.

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 many of us, food is not what we really need. We may really need to sleep or soak in a warm bubble bath. When we are tired, we are more emotionally vulnerable. We may find ourselves eating 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 grab a chocolate bar 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.

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 Appetite clamors for from time to time, but they are never what we really need.

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

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.