"Normal" Eating

Authenticity

Being authentic may be a foreign concept to many disordered eaters.  You may not understand exactly what the term means, not know how to be genuine, or find it difficult to connect to your deepest emotions . (A great read on the subject is The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, a psychology classic.) You may wonder if you have to be authentic all the time and if the word applies to actions as well as emotions.

A person is authentic when they are in touch with their true feelings. Being authentic means connecting to your feelings on a deep level, acknowledging what is up for you in the moment, and not chasing that feeling away. Examples of being inauthentic include denying feeling hurt to yourself or others, doing something you adamantly don’t want to do or that isn’t in your best interest only to please others, convincing yourself to feel one thing when you feel another, and covering up genuine emotional reactions because you believe you are wrong in having them.

Infants illustrate authentic feelings very well. When a baby is in distress, it cries. It doesn’t worry about what people will think of its outburst, if anyone will be hurt or upset by its crying, or even whether crying will make it less likely that its needs (for food, a new diaper, or human presence) will be met. Baby just wails away as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. And, in truth, it is. Being authentic means being natural and eliminating the artifices that society places on us. Of course, we can only be this natural as infants, that is, until we realize that what we are feeling may be causing us to behave in ways that are unacceptable. This happens early in childhood when, through obvious and subtle ways, we learn that not everything we feel and do is pleasing to others.

When childhood caretakers cause us to believe that our feelings are not natural, that what is going on inside us is not okay, we start to become inauthentic. Not only do we try to hide our emotions from our caretakers (eg, make believe we’re fine when we’re not, try to please them at the expense of ourselves); worse, we suppress our genuine feelings in the hopes that they’ll go away. This is the process that gets us into trouble. By getting used to denying authentic feeling to yourself, you begin to lose touch with what is real and natural, and after a while, your reaction to authenticity starts to feel more real than your initial (authentic) feeling.

Learning to be authentic after decades of covering up emotions is a difficult and painful process, but it is the only way (the only way) to be a “normal” eater. 

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

What's on Your Radar?

When you see another person, a friend or a stranger, is their weight or appearance the first thing (perhaps the only thing) you notice? Do you automatically assess how they look or calculate their weight? Perhaps you have such a knee-jerk reaction that you’re unaware that you judge each and every person’s size, clothes, posture, or hair. Or maybe you know you give them the eye test and assume that’s what everyone does.

The truth is that what we notice about others (and ourselves) is unique to us. Although you might flinch at a clothing faux pas, someone else might either be unaware of or fail to think much of it. We see what we are programmed to see. For example, you and your friends might be gazing at a ship full of passengers on deck steaming into dock. One of you might wistfully think of a romantic cruise she wants to take, another might be enthralled by the panoramic scenery of puffy clouds and sinking sun, while another might fear that the ship is moving too fast and will come crashing into the dock. You, on the other hand, might be checking out the disembarking passengers, mentally ticking off their size, shape, and appearance.

If you are fixated on looks, you probably learned this behavior in childhood. Maybe you had a parent or relative, particularly one of your same gender, that was always fussing with their (or your) appearance. Or perhaps they engaged in a running criticism of your hair, outfit, weight, posture, etc. so that you learned to pay attention to these details because you wanted to please them. You became vigilante because it was in your best interest to be acutely aware of how you looked to avoid disapproval, and you made the assumption that everyone will scrutinize your looks and be critical.

This assumption is flat out wrong. While many individuals are weight, appearance and style conscious, many are not. Looking at you, they see and value different things than you do. They might be impressed with your intelligence, sense of humor, quiet wisdom, ease with people, success, or creativity. Depending on their childhood, they’ll focus on what is most meaningful to them. To greater or lesser extent, they may be aware of your looks, but not necessarily in a judgmental way. If they were not trained to focus on appearance, they may not even register yours. It depends what’s on their radar screen.

If you are someone who automatically zooms into how others’ look, try to realize that your fixation is not universal. If you want to grow healthier, remind yourself that your perception is learned, and put your energy into changing your focus.  Practice defocusing on looks (yours and everyone one else’s) and see what happens.

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

How Culture Affects Eating and Weight

Although growing up in a family that contributes to or reinforces unhealthy attitudes toward eating and weight is enough to set you on the path of destructive eating, cultural factors also play a part in shaping you. Understanding these values is part of the process of changing how you think and feel about food and your body. By culture, I mean not only American society, but also the specific ethnic culture in which you were raised.

We live in a highly competitive society in which the norm is to look around and compare yourself to everyone else. If you fall into the trap of constantly evaluating your body according to others, it seems natural to buy into society’s judgment that you’re bad for being fat and good for being thin.  Americans also prize individualism, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, toughing it alone, and succeeding on your own. Adhering to that kind of thinking makes it hard, if not impossible, to get the help you need for eating and other problems.

American culture strongly values success, suggesting that if you don’t achieve your weight goals, you must be a failure. Along with success comes our obsession with external beauty and rewards. Chasing a superficial ideal such as thinness rather than putting energy into developing authenticity and deeper aspects of self is typically American and an ultimately meaningless endeavor. Overvaluing externals and things material makes what we have seem more important than who we are. 

There are also ethnic values and mores to consider. If you come from a culture that puts family above the individual, you may try to conform and blend in at the expense of your emotional and physical needs. If your culture says that men and women are not equal, you may have an uphill battle asserting yourself as a woman and, as a man, not allowing yourself to be vulnerable and “needy.” Obviously, if your culture makes a big deal of eating, implying that food is love, you will have a hard time separating the two and following the rules of “normal” eating. Moreover, you may feel in a bind if your culture’s perception of ideal weight clashes with that of American society.

There is no right way to view culture and make adjustments that are healthy for you, but it’s important to at least recognize how societal influences shape you. When you recognize their affect, you can then make decisions about what values you’re willing to adhere to and which ones to let go. Remember, the goal is to be true to yourself and find your own way, which means thinking for yourself about food and your body. 

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

What Are You Willing to Give Up to End Your Eating Disorder?

In this fix-it-quick, make-it-happen-overnight culture, it’s hard to grasp the fact that in order to overcome your eating disorder, you will have to give up doing things (often many things) the way you are doing them now. Some of the surrender will involve thinking, that is, letting go of unhealthy perceptions and assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones. Other kinds of giving up relate to behaviors, food- and otherwise. It’s natural to want to hold on to what is familiar, but you won’t recover from dysfunctional eating by clinging to the same old same old.

What are you willing to give up to get healthy? You may be able to get away with small sacrifices—eating while watching TV, weighing yourself daily, checking out a colleagues’ candy dish every day on the way to the bathroom, or browsing through magazines looking at skinny models and celebrities. But it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get much mileage through minor changes like these. It’s more probable that you’ll have to engage in major upheaval or accrue many, many such minor changes to make headway in becoming a “normal” eater.

By major changes I mean having a vastly different relationship with yourself and other people. Stopping your self-talk that insists there are good and bad foods and that thin is more lovable than fat, renouncing the ideal of ultra-thinness once and for all, experiencing painful, unfamiliar emotions, asserting your needs, and refusing to accept less than you are worth in this life. If your friends talk incessantly about dieting, you may need to stop hanging out with them and/or find new companions. If your mother refuses to cease making negative comments on your weight or eating, you may have to confront her, set firmer limits, or even (if you don’t live at home) cut everything but emergency communication until you are healed. Not that it’s easy, but you may need to leave a job that’s making you so stressed that you abuse food, or a marriage, or even a community that is contributing to your self-destructive thinking and habits.

Many people say that they would give anything to be a comfortable weight, but most won’t. There is comfort in familiarity—the new devil is scarier than the old one—and it takes a gigantic amount of ongoing effort and courage to change, even to make the relatively minor lifestyle modifications mentioned above. To be different, it takes self-reflection, near constant vigilance, and the ability to tolerate discomfort.  If you are going to move past eating dysfunction, you must be willing to break new ground. If you are not willing to give up the old, how will you ever make room for the new? 

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

The Big Event

Attending an event when you’re feeling crummy about your body can be highly stressful. You may refuse to go, waver back and forth on a decision, engage in a shopping frenzy to find the exact right thing to wear, or say yes and be filled with dread. The occasion might be a wedding, anniversary, birthday party, or some other family gathering that’s bound to include all the relatives. Or a high school or college reunion or get together with a group of colleagues or old friends.

The big worry is how you'll be judged if you’re above average size or if you've lost a major amount of weight and regained it. You feel badly about yourself because you believe that people will think badly of you because of your largeness. This belief is partially accurate in that there may be people at the event who are judgmental or obsessed with thinness who will think unkind thoughts or even say unkind words about (or to) you. However, this belief is also a product of your own negative judgment about your body size. Such perceptions are the result of a culture that exalts skinny and despises fat.

Whether or not to attend an event depends on how badly you want to go and how much work you can do on your thinking to make it enjoyable. Sometimes you may want to pass because you don’t care very much for some or many (or all!) of the attendees and would only push yourself because it’s expected of you. In this case, it can be easy to focus on your weight/size rather than acknowledge your negative feelings about the folks who’ll be there. Other times you sorely want to go, but are ashamed, can’t stand looking at yourself, and believe that others will feel similarly.

In these cases, your work is not on your body, but on your beliefs. Events like this give you a chance to examine your belief system and make sure that all your thoughts are rational. For example, you might think: Everyone will be so disappointed that I’m fat, There’ll be gossip about my weight gain, I’m too ashamed of my body to go, People will make comments to me about my body and I won’t know what to say. The next step is to reframe each of these beliefs to make them rational: It doesn’t matter if people are disappointed in my weight, Gossip about my weight gain can’t hurt me, I refuse to be ashamed of my body, I can handle comments about my weight appropriately.

Remember that other people’s thoughts and words only pack a powerful punch if you let them. Whether or not you have a good time at an event has little to do with your weight. Instead, it has everything to do with how you think about it and value yourself.

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

Change Is In The Moment

Most people who contact me through my books, workshops or therapy practice have no idea what they will have to go through to become “normal” eaters. I hate giving them the news that it's a Herculean job to heal dysfunctional eating and that for many folks it will require lifelong effort because of their genetics, biology, and previous experience. However, I’ve never met anyone who’s done the work and succeeded who isn’t happier and who doesn’t strongly believe it’s been worth the work.

Which brings me to the topic of change in the moment. Too often I hear of elaborate plans that disordered eaters have to modify their behavior. They make lists of things to do instead of eating or obsessing about food, read constantly on the subject, join groups and message boards, and take workshops. Perhaps they believe that the more input they get, they faster they’ll heal. While I heartily encourage all these activities, they are no substitute for acting differently in the moment of choice. I’ve written blogs before on struggling and want to underscore that it’s struggle in and of itself that creates change. If you never read another word on transforming your eating, you could still do it by acting in your long-term self-interest rather than impulsively when faced with eating decisions. Every other activity helps prepare you to do the right thing when you have a choice.

Choice points are where change is at. If you are not prepared to be intensely uncomfortable to stop abusing food, you might as well throw in the towel right now. Choice point moments—to eat or not to eat—are the most important times of your day and the ones that deserve your most focused attention. Giving in to old, unhealthy behaviors because it’s easier will take you farther away from your eating goals and reinforce destructive habits. Suffering through the discomfort of doing something a new, healthier way will bring you closer to “normal” eating. There is no short-cut, detour, or alternate route to eating health.

Make sure that your mindset includes the belief that every single food decision you make counts. In fact, be certain you understand that it is precisely these moments that count more than anything else—more than preparing to make a healthy choice and having compassion when you make an unhealthy one, both of which are helpful and essential. If you don’t have at least a few uncomfortable moments regarding food every day, consider that you may not be working hard enough to create change. Over time, as you eat more “normally” you’ll have less discomfort because new behaviors will be ingrained, but in the meantime, suffer on!   

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

Putting Yourself First

I just returned from a wonderful time (professionally and personally) at the Lake Austin Spa Resort in Austin, Texas where I’d been invited to do two workshops on eating. Although the resort caters to both genders, unsurprisingly, only females showed up to hear me. During the workshops, it became clear that many women believed they had to be away from work and family to take care of themselves, and I was struck (once again) by how hard it is for women to put themselves first. I got the impression that many of these women felt they could do so only when they were out of their home environment.

For example, discussion arose over what and when to eat if you have a husband to feed. Eyes rolled when I suggested that women ask their spouses to be more flexible about eating times; snickers erupted when I proposed that husbands consider making it easier for their wives to eat “normally” by not being so rigid. These women had difficulty imagining putting their feeding needs before those of their husbands, implying that the men wouldn’t get it or comply and would regard their requests as unreasonable. I had to laugh—and may have even mentioned my vision to the group—picturing a flock of men sitting around debating whether they could impose on their wives to change the dinner schedule. Can you even imagine this happening? Of course not—most men would state their needs and be done with it. They wouldn’t swallow their wishes or fear that their requests would be ignored; they’d assume that a spouse would want to help them out.

Of course, women putting others’ needs before their own is no news. Interestingly, my male clients and students also have difficulty taking care of their own needs and not neglecting themselves. In fact there is a high correlation between eating problems and the inability to nurture or take care of oneself emotionally and physically. Although it’s understandable that we need to get away once in a while to renew and recharge, we all should be able to nurture and give ourselves good care every day of our lives. Self-care should be as ingrained as breathing.

So, if you are a woman working on becoming a “normal” eater and believe that making changes in your dinner schedule or menu would help you accomplish your goal, think like a man, and let your husband (and family, friends, and coworkers, as well) know what isn’t working for you and what you think might work better. You are not being pushy or overbearing. You are taking care of yourself. Remember, one of the key ingredients in becoming a “normal” eater is effective self care, which includes learning to express your reasonable and appropriate needs and ensuring that they get met.   

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

Sweet Silence

Many posts on the message boards I advise on (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dietsurvivors) lament situations in which family members insist they are being caring and supportive, but instead are unsympathetic, critical, and even unkind to the person with an eating or weight problem. You can recognize when people are being hurtful by paying attention to your emotional reaction to their words, not to their stated intentions. In such instances, it’s all too easy to get into an argument or abuse food. The truth is that sometimes the only way to stay sane is to keep silent, a difficult task. When we are silent, inner turmoil builds, others up the ante to provoke us into responding, and we feel an intense desire to defend ourselves. The choice seems to be engaging in unhealthy dialogue or swallowing our misery and taking it on the chin.

There is another kind of reaction that you might think of as sweet silence. It doesn’t come from holding your tongue because you’re afraid to speak up or from a frustrating inability to get your point across. It’s not about what is being said by another person, but an internal conviction that it’s okay not to respond. I frequently tell clients and students who insist that can’t not become embroiled in arguments and debates that common decency only truly requires that we respond to another person’s questions. What I mean is that it is polite to answer a question, but that there is no need to respond to a statement. For example, if someone asks, “Why are you eating that junk food?” it is reasonable to reply (unless, of course, you’ve repeatedly asked this person not to comment about your eating and they willfully ignore your requests). However, if someone states, “You shouldn’t be eating junk food,” I see no reason why you need to say anything because they’ve asked you nothing.

That is where sweet silence comes in. It is sweet because it comes from a place in yourself that is taking care of you. Sweet silence says you know your limits, that you are under no obligation to please anyone but yourself, that you will not purposely engage in any activity that will upset you, that it’s time for other people to be a little uncomfortable while you look out for numero uno. And, to be sure, other people will get uncomfortable when you don’t respond to their comments. But better them being  distressed than you! After a while your sweet silence will give others the message to move on to another topic or simply leave you alone. Initially sweet silence will feel awkward, but gradually it will leave you with a sense of peace and inner control. And that peace and control will make it easier to not abuse food.   

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses.

Being Fat and Feeling Fat

Once again, I’m grateful for the messages boards of Diet Survivors (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dietsurvivors) and Food and Feelings (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings) for giving me ideas for my blogs, this time on the difference between feeling fat and being fat.

As a person with disordered eating and/or distorted body image, when you feel fat, you’re describing eating or believing you’ve eaten too much, being bloated or stuffed, and/or experiencing your clothes as tight, making it seem as if you are too large for them. Feeling fat does not necessarily correspond with weight or being fat. At 102 pounds, you can feel fat from “normal” eating, overeating or wearing clothes that are too small. Yes, feeling fat, a subjective, internal experience, can be associated with being fat, an external one. However, as a nonfat person, you don’t have the actual sensations of carrying around excess weight, being judged, stared at, stigmatized, or discriminated against because of your size. What you experience is an emotional reaction to physical sensations of eating or too tight clothing, a response you can change.

People who are fat cannot simply will away their weight. They can try to accept and respect their bodies, shrug off negative judgments and comments, attempt to lose weight, and get on with life. But changing their thinking will not change their actual weight. If you only feel fat, you can transform your reaction by changing your beliefs. In a sense, you do a disservice to people who struggle with carrying around excess weight by complaining about feeling fat when you’re not. Being uncomfortable from overeating is nothing like not getting a job or being ostracized because of your size.

In our fat-phobic, thin-obsessed culture, it’s natural to confuse issues about weight and body. But, living as a fat person is very distinct from living as a thin or average weight person, so let’s put things into perspective here. If you are someone who often feels fat after eating or when your clothes are restrictive, it’s time to start changing your perception of the situation. Instead of thinking you’re fat, how ‘bout labeling what’s really going on—maybe you’ve overeaten, but maybe you’ve simply eaten “normally”; your belly is full and has stretched and swollen up because it has food in it; clothes that are snug will loosen in a few hours; and feeling full does not automatically make you fat.

Ditch the phrase “feel fat,” name the experience for exactly what it is, and you’ll start to break the negative association you have with weight. Remember, full is not fat!

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses.