"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Hormones as Diet Wreckers

You know how it is after you’ve been dieting and even have lost some weight. You’re feeling so good about yourself—til you’re feeling bad because you’re back into abusing food. It’s time to stop blaming yourself and to recognize that biology may be at work stoking your hunger. That’s why eating disorder experts keep insisting that diets don’t work long-term. So, if you must assign blame, try your hormones.

The Importance of Chewing

One of the simplest steps you can take to eat more mindfully is to chew your food more thoroughly. I'm not talking radical behavioral change or doing a 180 in your thinking. Just doing more of what you’re already doing—chomp, chomp, chomp.

The Obesity Gene

I wonder how many of you read the title of this blog and immediately groaned, “That’s probably me, alright.” Although it’s true that many overeaters carry a gene that makes them more inclined to obesity, your bummed-out response may not be as warranted as you think. Remember that weight is a bio-psycho-social issue.

Your Brain and Gratification

Over the years I’ve blogged on frustration tolerance and delaying gratification from the behavioral perspective. Now science tells us that specific parts of the brain influence our ability to defer pleasure (or not). In particular, research conclusions on spending versus saving tell us a lot about our eating patterns and their bio-psycho-social origins.

Truth Versus Our Stories

One major hurdle for disregulated eaters who’ve struggled with food for a long time is believing in recovery. Perhaps you believe there’s a truth that says you won’t or can’t have a positive relationship with food and eat “normally.” What you don’t realize is that this so-called truth is only a story that you tell yourself over and over.

Book Review: THE COMPASS OF PLEASURE

For those of you who aren’t satisfied with simply working on changing your eating habits, but also want to understand the biology behind some of them, I recommend David J. Linden’s THE COMPASS OF PLEASURE—HOW OUR BRAINS MAKE FATTY FOODS, ORGASM, EXERCISE, MARIJUANA, GENEROSITY, VODKA, LEARNING, AND GAMBLING FEEL SO GOOD. It deals with some difficult concepts, but I found it enlightening and relatively readable if I was willing to read slowly and sometimes go through a passage more than once.

Thanks From Your Wild Child

I’ve blogged often about the wild child in you that’s been getting its way around food—the part that’s entitled, defiant, demanding, uncaring about consequence, and who lives only in the moment. But there’s another part of the wild child that knows she’s out of her league around food and desperately, more than anything in the world, wants the loving, nurturing, compassionate, caring part of you to reign her in and be in charge.

What's Normal

Many disregulated eaters grow up in dysfunctional families and, therefore, lack understanding of what constitutes normal behavior and feelings—you may do whatever your parents did or exactly the opposite and be confused about what is mentally healthy or unhealthy. This uncertainty limits your life skill effectiveness and makes it harder to improve your relationship with food. So, here are some guidelines for emotional health.

Life, Not Drama

I was having lunch with a friend who is also a therapist a while back. We shared professional chit chat, but mostly we talked about how are our private lives were going—the latest developments in some ongoing family situations and how we were bearing up. She really got my attention when she said quite casually, “I wish clients saw the ups and downs of life as just that, rather than as exceptional high drama.” How true, I thought, how could our lives be any other way.

Reconnecting to Your Eating Problem

While reading an article entitled Therapists and climate change by Garry Cooper (PSYCHOTHERAPY NETWORKER, 10-11/2011), I was amazed at the parallels that occur between repairing and protecting our natural world and attending to appetite. Turns out that both share similar psychological dynamics.