"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Expanding Into Life

Other than for work, since my recovery from binge-eating disorder and chronic dieting in the first half of my life, I really don’t like discussing food and weight very much. Maybe I hear enough about it from clients, but I think the rub is that food and eating, for the most part, are personal and individual subjects and not all that interesting. Does anyone really care what I ate for breakfast yesterday? Do I really care (other than professionally) what someone might eat at a dinner party tomorrow? Not so much.

Diet-think versus Health-think

One of the reasons clients have difficulty eating nutritious food is that it feels as if they’re dieting. Instead of thinking, “Hey, this is a yummy, healthful food for me to nourish my body,” they grumble inside about being stuck eating something low-cal or low-fat—again. You can see how this mindset would prevent you from making wise choices. Of course, you can’t change the eating until you change the beliefs behind it.

Fighting Food Compulsions

Members have been talking a great deal about what it takes to struggle in the moment to resist unwanted eating on my Food and Feelings message board (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings). There’s no easy formula that will make it happen, but understanding why you fail to struggle, struggle harder, or struggle until your rational self beats out disordered thinking will help you make better decisions.

Weight-loss Surgery

I don’t think I’ve blogged about weight-loss surgery before, or at least not in a long while, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I don’t have extensive medical knowledge about it. What I do have is experience with clients who have had bariatric surgery, but who still sought me out to resolve post-surgery eating problems. Although I’m not totally against it, I believe it should be an intervention of final resort. Here’s why.

Article Link

Here's a link to an article I wrote:  Intuitive Eating Article.  Feel free to comment here or on my Food and Feelings message board.

Best,
Karen R. Koenig

How Therapy Works

You may be wondering how therapy could help you and how it works. Here’s a snapshot of one of my cases, a client who recently ended therapy because she felt she’d made a great many changes and no longer needed our sessions. Specifically, she used to eat mindlessly, but now ate consciously most of the time. She used to turn to food to quell her feelings, but now explored and experienced them and saved eating for times that she was hungry. She used to obsess about losing weight, but now focused on eating “normally” and the pounds were coming off. Here’s how she succeeded.

The Stress Identity

Do you have an identity based on how much you do, how productive or successful you are, how well you care for others, or how stressed you feel? Sadly, too many people define themselves almost exclusively by how busy and selfless they are, and have enormous trouble giving up such an identity. If the description fits, it may be one of the major reasons you’re having difficulty with food.  Here’s why.

Decision Making

When you’re unsure of what to do about an issue or feel stuck in a dilemma, it can be extremely difficult to come to a final decision: Should you move to another city, leave a relationship, return to school, put a parent in a nursing home, buy a house, enter therapy, let your teenager go cross-country with friends, etc. Sometimes it seems as if a decision can gnaw at you day and night, yet you still never feel any closer to, well, closure. Here’s a sure-fire way to find your way through the maze of uncertainty.

YouTube Video on FOOD AND FEELINGS WORKBOOK

If you would like to see a brief video made by a woman talking about and reading from my FOOD AND FEELINGS WORKBOOK, go to YouTube - FOOD AND FEELINGS WORKBOOK.

Best,

Karen R. Koenig

Slow Down Eating

Need one more reason to s-l-o-w  d-o-w-n  y-o-u-r  e-a-t-i-n-g? According to the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, eating fast reduces the release of hormones which help regulate appetite. Makes sense. Eating quickly is a learned behavior. The natural way to eat is to chew thoroughly and taste food so that your body can respond to what and how much you’re eating.