"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

What's in Food

On the road to “normal” eating, how much should you think about nutrition and how can that focus feed (excuse the pun) into your eating problems? Does trying to eat healthily most of the time make you feel as if you’re on a diet and push your restriction button? How much attention should you pay to possibly toxic ingredients in food? How can you balance how food affects your health and not fall into obsessing about its purity?  

Despair versus Overdoing

In the ongoing struggle eaters have with disregulation, few issues loom larger than sustaining motivation and effort. This happens in many areas: You regularly under- or overdo, bounce back and forth between one extreme and the other and, more often than not, end up where you started.  Ever wonder why?

Toxins in Food

When you’re overeating, you’re often caught up in rebellion, emotional avoidance, denial, or all-or-nothing thinking, so how often do you consider what food is doing to your body? Never mind how many calories it has—or hasn’t. Calorie-free or not, the point is whether a food is a healthy or unhealthy option because of how its ingredients will affect you in the long run. Focusing on the nasty things that toxins can do to your health is one way to help you make better choices.

Self-Empowerment

I write a lot about feeling helpless around food and lacking inner conviction that says, “I can do this. I can change my eating.” At the core of this problem is that many of you feel powerless to change much of your life—partners, jobs, friends, etc. Well, yesterday I went to a spirited political rally where people were about nothing but change. By rallying, these folks were not only fighting to make things better, but were empowering themselves. What does politics have to do with healing food problems? Lots.

The Meaning of Food Cravings

What is the meaning of a food craving? Science has disproven the idea that craving always means nutrient deficiency—a lack of potassium drawing you to a banana or an iron deficiency driving you to order a sirloin. It can be confusing when you feel an urge to eat—whether you crave something specific like Betty Crocker brownies or have a yen for pasta—to know how to react. To follow the urge or not, that is the question.

Letter From a Client to Her Mother

This is the first time I’ve used blog space for anything other than my own writing. I was so moved by a letter a client wrote (but did not send) to her mother that I want to share it in the hope that it will help you as much to read it as it helped my client to write it. It’s a powerful declaration of selfhood based on a great deal of introspection and hard work. When you’re done reading, try writing your own letter (without sending it) to someone who has hurt you or with whom you’ve never shared your authentic feelings. It works!

Stress and Carbs

Just when we think we have our heads on straight about the dangers of carbs, we get thrown a curve ball. Like the September 2008 article in Mind, Mood, & Memory published by Massachusetts General Hospital entitled “A Carbohydrate Cure for Stress.” Carbs a cure for stress? Hmm. That’s sure food for thought! I thought that carbs in response to stress were the devil in disguise.

Effortful Study

Ever wonder why some people succeed in overcoming their eating problems and others don’t? Ever question why people you know have changed their behavior around food while you’re still struggling? Thanks to a posting on Linda Moran’s Diet Survivors message board at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dietsurvivors, there’s evidence which points to at least one major key to success: the concept of effortful study.

Right and Wrong Motivations

Often my understanding of the complicated dynamics of eating and weight grows out of my work with clients. I’m usually a step ahead of them, but not always. Sometimes I’m stumped until together we come up with answers that explain a client’s chronic self-harming behavior. This happened recently when I realized why certain unhealthy motivations for losing weight don’t work in the long run and, in fact, hinder progress.