"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Vacation

Everyone needs time off, and I’ll be taking a bit of it from July 2-10. My blogs will resume on Monday, July 12. Readers might want to use this time to check out my blog archives. I’ve posted over 350 blogs since 2007.

 

Best,

Karen

www.eatingnormal.com

www.squidoo.com/eatnormalnow

Visit the message board exclusively devoted to my new book, The Food and Feelings Workbook, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foodandfeelings.

PLEASE NOTE: I encourage you to comment on my blogs and will do my best to address topics/questions you raise in future blogs. Unfortunately, however, due to time constraints, I cannot provide individual responses. 

Pain and Pleasure

A client made an interesting comment which strikes at the heart of receiving pleasure, with food or otherwise. We were discussing why she doesn’t go all out to pursue joy and passion, and she said, “Well, you know, the price of pleasure is pain.” Ouch! As soon as I heard her response, I knew this was a core belief that both inhibited her ability to eat “normally” and prevented her from creating a happier life for herself.

Why It Can Be Hard to Lose Weight

A major disappointment and frustration for many overweight clients is working hard to eat “normally” without pounds slipping off quickly or at all while watching others lose weight more easily. Fortunately, science is beginning to give us answers to why some people lose weight more effortlessly than others.

Make "Normal" Eating Your Project

One of the biggest problems in becoming a “normal” eater is working at it for a while, then giving up and going back to mindless eating or dieting. If you stop and start, no wonder you feel as if you aren’t getting very far. No innate defect is preventing your success, however. Rather, you’re underestimating what you need to do to change.

Self-regulation

I’ve been writing about self-regulation for decades, mostly in the realm of eating—I find the term disregulated more accurate than disordered, and regulated more accurate than intuitive—but also in terms of monitoring emotions and behavior. Recently, I’m pleased to see the terms self-regulation and disregulation cropping up in more and more articles. The better you understand how to regulate yourself, the better your life will be.

Article on Weight and Depression

Here's a link to a great article on Weight and Depression:  Weight and Depression.

Best,

Karen R. Koenig

Needing Each Other

A New York Times article on human communication and touch contained a sentence which caught my eye. Although the article was about how positively people respond to touch, what grabbed my interest was more general—about why we need each other and relationships in the first place. One more reason to reach out and touch someone.

An enlightening new book, THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF: STORIES OF PERSONAL TRIUMPH FROM THE FRONTIERS OF BRAIN SCIENCE by Norman Doidge, M.D., is not about eating per se, but I recommend it because it is all about mental change. Although the title may sound daunting and dry, the book is anything but.

Learned Self-consciousness

Overweight people may be uncomfortable with their appearance due to a concept called learned self-consciousness. Of course, a person can be any weight and self-conscious or plus-size and cool with it. With learned self-consciousness, you are hyper-aware of your body or appearance, uneasy being looked at or even noticed, and become twitchy when people focus or comment on your body. You’re dying to blend in, be invisible, shrink into nothingness. Self-consciousness is a learned trait—and you can unlearn it.

Emotional Disregulation and Re-regulation

It’s probably not uncommon for someone to say or do something that sends you, a disregulated eater, into an emotional tailspin—which then propels you, immediately or even hours later, to the refrigerator. If you have some self-awareness, you may make the connection between a person’s actions or words and your distress. If you have little or no self-awareness, you might feel a vague upset, but not necessarily relate it to someone triggering your distress. However, this is exactly what happens.