"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

More on Rebellion

Can I ever say enough about how misguided rebellion shapes our eating in self-destructive ways? Too many disregulated eaters consider a rebellious attitude an attribute and are proud of their defiance and stubbornness. Flaunting the norm may promote entrepreneurship or creativity, but it has no place in the eating arena. Au contraire, it’s one of the major causes of unwanted eating.

Self-Love and Acceptance

I’ve been thinking about love. Not romantic love. Self-love. I hate to sound simplistic, but if we love something, we lavish caring on it and if we don’t, well, we it neglect or misuse it. Of course, there are gradients between treating yourself well and poorly, but if you love yourself wholeheartedly, you can’t continue to have a destructive relationship with food because self-love and self-trashing are mutually exclusive.

Looking Back

There’s a saying I once heard that goes something like this: We can’t fully evaluate the meaning of life events in the present, but must wait until its end to understand them. I vaguely recall that the concept had something to do with Western versus Eastern philosophy. The idea is that we get so caught up with what’s wrong with us and how to fix it right now, that we become engulfed by hopelessness and despair rather than take the long view of self-transformation to see where it will lead us.

Shame-shifting Behaviors

In the scary world of the supernatural, shape-shifters are entities which transform themselves from one thing to another. Shame can circle through life the same way: as soon as you get one aspect of self under control and start to feel proud, up pops another behavior that generates shame and brings you down. Shame-shifting won’t stop until you recognize that shame manifests what you basically feel/think about yourself.

Nothing Like Family--Not

Boy, a recent headline offering a celebrity’s take on the holidays has me going. It read: “Family is all we have.” Great perspective for all who have few or no family members alive or who live far away from them. Nice outlook for those who are surrounded by abusive or dysfunctional relatives. This is exactly the kind of misguided sentiment that generates unhealthy thinking, feeling and behavior, especially this time of the year, and drives people into potentially self-destructive eating situations.

Setting Intentions

As many of you already realize, one of the reasons you don’t consistently engage in behavior which will help you reach your eating or weight goals is that you don’t follow through with intentions--activities you want to do, successes you wish to achieve, goals you desire to reach. Some of you have difficulty establishing intentions, while others set, then forget, about them or allow themselves to be derailed.

Regulating Anger

Some time ago I was talking with a client about her tendency to sit on her anger until it ignites like fireworks. Difficulty with anger is another aspect of disregulation which people with eating problems often have, a manifestation of ineffective emotional management and acting in extremes. Learning to express anger appropriately takes practice, but it can make an amazing difference in your life.

React or Respond?

Although it’s not all you have, the moment is where the work is at regarding changing thoughts about and behaviors around eating. Hopefully, you’re engaged in ongoing information gathering about food, yourself, and the world to influences your choices at any given time and continually assessing whether you’ve been staying on course or straying from it. Even so, what you choose to do in the moment is what counts most.

Barriers to Exercise

Not a week goes by without someone I know commenting on disliking exercise. Although it’s likely that certain folks are born with more of an inclination to move their bodies, that's not the whole story. What’s important is to understand your story, you know, the one you tell yourself (and others) about why you don’t exercise.