"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Weekday and Weekend Eating

Recently I was chatting with a friend who complained that she was looking to lose weight, but was frustrated that she couldn’t shake off any more pounds. She reported cutting portions and making healthier food choices and paying more attention to her appetite. For a moment, there seemed like little she could do to improve her habits—until she mentioned being careful during the week, but eating junk food with her boyfriend which he brought over on the weekend.

Approval Seeking

One trait that many disregulated eaters have in common is the desire for the approval of others. Sadly, not receiving this hoped-for approval can provoke disappointment, frustration, rage—and a whopper of a binge. While practicing strategies to disconnect internal distress from unwanted eating, it’s also essential to let go of approval-seeking thoughts and behavior. Here’s what you can do.

Love and Abuse

It’s not uncommon for people who have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse at the hands of their parents or other primary caretakers, to allow themselves to be abused in adult relationships. Although the idea appears to be paradoxical—wouldn’t abuse survivors go out of their way to be around people who are not abusive?—that is not how things often work out. Understanding why you’re drawn to or surround yourself with abusive people will help you unhook from them and from abusing yourself with food.

Book Review - Creativity Workbook

Ever think that there must be another way to work on your eating problems? FINDING YOUR VOICE THROUGH CREATIVITY: THE ART AND JOURNALING WORKBOOK FOR DISORDERED EATING by Mindy Jacobson-Levy and Maureen Foy-Tornay (Gürze Books, 2010) offers an approach that encourages you to use creativity to access your innermost thoughts and feelings about your disregulated eating.

Women, Food and God--And Oprah!

Oprah says she’s seen the light—that diets don’t work, that punishing herself for being fat and overeating is exactly the wrong thing to do, that instead of hating her food problems, she needs to value them as a tool to teach her how to live her best life. Let’s hope that Geneen Roth’s May 12 appearance on Oprah helped switch on the light for Oprah’s entire viewing audience. And that it also gets Geneen Roth’s newest book, WOMEN, FOOD AND GOD, read and reread by disregulated eaters everywhere.

Anger Instead of Anxiety

Many people get anxious around folks who don’t treat them well—a spouse, partner, friend, parent, child, neighbor, boss, or colleague. They’re anxious before seeing the person, while they’re with them, and after the fact. Well, there’s a better way than agita to respond to mistreatment! Some good, old-fashioned anger might just do the trick.

Emptiness

Emptiness is both a physical sensation and an emotion and is somewhat difficult to describe because of its nature—it’s easier to describe something than its absence. However, understanding underlying issues about and resolving discomfort with both types of emptiness will go a long way toward helping you recover from eating problems.

Self-centering

So many disregulated eaters, especially you nice girls and guys, fear being self-centered—you know, selfish, egotistical, or self-absorbed. Instead, you turn yourself inside out to be self-effacing and other-oriented, as if focusing on you is a sin. In reaction to early care-takers who were too self-centered, you now fail to center on yourself nearly enough. Once again, all-or-nothing thinking rears its ugly head, as if people are totally self- or other-oriented. The healthy among us are both!