"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Sugar Questions Yet Again

A while ago, a client asked me what I thought about whether or not sugar is addictive, and I said I wasn’t sure. Then I read yet another article about sugar which said that it hadn’t been proven addictive. A confusing issue, one which has a direct impact on our thinking, and often our behavior, around sugar-laden foods. I blog on this subject to help you decide how you want to make choices about them.

Release

If you binge-eat, it may be due to your emotional rigidity. You believe there’s an absolute right or wrong way to do things, hold yourself to ridiculously high standards, and strive relentlessly for perfection. You find it difficult to recognize or exist in a gray area or see a middle ground in most aspects of life. You lack the flexibility and fluidity that enables you to bend with the wind and roll with the tide. What you often seek in binge-eating is release of inner tension, pure and simple.

Rapid Resolution Therapy

I took a workshop in Rapid Resolution Therapy (RRT) which is designed to put the past behind you, especially if you’re a trauma survivor. I’m blogging about RRT to alert you to its existence, not to promote it. After a one-day seminar, I claim to be neither an expert nor to know enough about it to say that it is reliable, effective clinical treatment. However, disclaimer aside, it’s worthwhile to understand the principles behind it.

Shoulds

I know that I harp alot on eliminating the word “should"—along with must, ought, have to, and need to—from your vocabulary. This advice is not fanciful or arbitrary. The use of such words is an indication of immature thinking, harmful not only to reaching your eating and weight goals but to your self-image and well-being. Here’s why.

More on Food and Mood

I know that some of you are having quite a time wrenching yourselves away from dieting. You may desperately want to lose weight quickly, feel hopeless that “normal” eating will ever get you there, be scared to trust yourselves, or not want to put in yet more effort to harness your natural appetite in order to manage your weight. Although I’m anti diet, this blog is for those of you who are struggling to give it up, even as you inch toward employing the principles of eating more “normally.”

Control versus Controlling

I get some of my best ideas for blogs from counseling clients. For example, one day in a session with an anxious client who tries her hardest to control what will happen in the future, we got to talking about whether by giving up excessive control she was letting go of all control. My take is that you can stop being controlling—of the future and the present—without relinquishing control over your life.

Food on the Brain

Here’s a question I received when I asked readers to email me topics to blog about: How to get food off the brain. A trying issue with relevance to both under- and overeaters. As you well know, an obsession with food and weight can lead to highly disregulated eating and ruin the quality of your life. So, how to get food off your mind?

Problems in Childhood and Chances for Recovery

What makes recovery more or less likely? Is it true that folks with disregulated eating who’ve had a really rough childhood have more problems recovering than those with a less difficult childhood? My answer to this question is both yes and no.

Friends, Mirroring and Contagion

I admit it—when the theory that friends can make friends fat came out a few years ago, I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. How could that be, I wondered—until I read Daniel Goleman’s SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS, which explains how over time spent with someone, our brains tend to synchronize and mirror each other. Now I understand the need to hang out with healthy people, not merely because they raise our self-esteem and make us feel good, but because they may shape our lifestyle and habits. By the way, Goleman is also the author of EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, a classic about our internal emotional world.