Eating Disorders

We often hear “emotional eating experts” encourage women to “feel their feelings” instead of “numb out” with food. Which is somewhat sound advice, as there is no doubt in my mind that getting in touch with your emotions is incredibly important for reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not you eat over them — I encourage my clients to feel their feelings whether they eat while doing so or not.  That being said,   thinking we can live a life without coping mechanisms is totally unrealistic — it goes against our biological instincts to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  You will experience discomfort for the rest of your life, and you will reach for some kind of coping mechanism to deal with at least a …

So the first question that usually comes out of people’s mouths when I say the phrase “normal eating,” is something along the lines of “what does ‘normal’ eating even mean?” Like, most of us “get” that there are people in the world who don’t really think about food, and just eat what they want, and naturally end up eating an “appropriate” amount food without really trying, because they don’t really care about food that much to begin with.  but we don’t understand how. “What are they doing that I’m not?!” “I don’t understand people like that!” It took me a really long time to understand and emulate “normal eaters,” and that’s because I was approaching “trying to be normal” in all the…

People often ask me, do you really never eat emotionally anymore? To which I usually reply something along the lines of, “of course not, everyone eats emotionally sometimes…and anyone who tells you differently is either lying OR pretty f’ing crazy around food (read: restrictive).” As my friend Wendy Shanker once said, “there are only 6 people who eat food righteously as fuel, and all six of them are Kenyan Marathon runners.” More on that here… Lately, however, I’ve been re-framing my answer to this question, because at this point in my eating career, I don’t really categorize my behaviors as either “emotional” or “for physical hunger” in my mind anymore. The truth is, my food choices are rarely, if ever, either “emotional” or “physical.” …

Here’s the thing about the diet-binge cycle that nobody talks about…it’s not dieting, in a vacuum, that triggers it.  It’s wanting to control your weight, that triggers the dieting (in various forms), that triggers it. Every time I ask a client, “why is it so scary to let go of controlling your food?” the answer is invariably, “I’m afraid I’ll gain weight.” Duh. Fear of weight gain controls us. Fear of weight gain is why “it’s so hard to let go,” or “I’m not there yet,” Fear of weight gain backs us up against a wall and says “you don’t have a choice in this matter,” Get thin or die.  When you let yourself be controlled by your fear of …

Sweets drive you crazy? Can’t have one bite of ice cream without eating the whole pint? Maybe it’s chips? Peanut Butter? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Feel free to get weird. And let me tell you a little something about your favorite “addictive” foods. The only time you will ever feel “out of control” around a specific food, is when you’re trying to control it to begin with. Somewhere, somehow, you are judging, shaming, or limiting yourself around that food. You are calling it “bad.” You are wishing you didn’t want it. You are worrying you will lose control, gain weight, get caught. You are handing that food power over you, by fearing it. If you don’t believe me, try naming one food that “drives you crazy…

Most of my clients think that emotional eating is a curse. That it’s an unfortunate defect they’ve been blighted with, and they were dealt a bad hand in life when it comes to food and weight. “Poor me! I’m sick of this! Will this food problem ever not torment me?!” Or something along those lines. But here’s my take on it… I’m not sure emotional eating is a bad thing. In fact, I think it might be my guardian angel.  I know this is the part where you think I’m a crazy person, but hang on a sec. Emotional eating is an attempt to deal with a tough problem, feeling, or situation we don’t otherwise know how to deal with, and often don’t even …

The only time a person EVER “falls off a wagon” is when there’s a wagon to fall off of;  a set of rules, ideals, or beliefs around food that we let determine how we feel about ourselves. “I was sooo good with food yesterday, and today, I SUCK.” sound familiar? and I’m guessing that when you go into the place of “I suck,” when you “fall off the wagon,” you fall hard. Like knee-deep-in-brownie-batter-hard.  Not fun, and so avoidable.  If you want to make peace with food, and stop shame-eating cookies in the middle of the night, Ask yourself, what “wagons” am I trying not to fall off of? Where am I judging my performance with food?  …

Dear Isabel, I’ve tried to start weaning myself off of certain foods that I’ve learned may be negatively impacting my digestion—not for weight loss, but for my digestive health. That being said, I’m having a hard time, and fear I may be falling back into restrict-binge-type cycling. Am I just biting myself in the foot for doing this? Honestly, it really depends.  I absolutely believe that people who are recovering from diet-binge cycling (or restrict/binge cycling) can learn to eliminate certain foods for health reasons (e.g. allergies, etc.) BUT doing so effectively without falling into old patterns or diet-mentality requires an enormous amount of honesty with yourself about what’s motivating your choices.  Here are some important questions/comments to consider …