"Normal" Eating by Karen R. Koenig

Thanks From Your Wild Child

I’ve blogged often about the wild child in you that’s been getting its way around food—the part that’s entitled, defiant, demanding, uncaring about consequence, and who lives only in the moment. But there’s another part of the wild child that knows she’s out of her league around food and desperately, more than anything in the world, wants the loving, nurturing, compassionate, caring part of you to reign her in and be in charge.

Competence and Self-esteem

At a dinner meeting I attended, the topic of self-esteem arose and generated quite a lively debate on what it is and how it develops. The answer to these questions are highly relevant to troubled eaters who generally exhibit low self-esteem and are looking for ways to raise it. Here’s a how-to from the so-called “father of self-esteem.”

Self-care When Life is Hectic

Clients tell me how they used to take better care of themselves through exercise, meditation, yoga or some centering activity that brought them in touch with their mind/body. The way they tell it is that they enjoyed and benefitted from the practice until life became so hectic that they “had” to give it up. Here's another take on their story.

Learned Lovability

We believe we’re lovable or unlovable based on our early experiences with people, primarily our parents. If they cared for us lovingly, we come to believe we’re lovable. If, due to their own limitations, they didn’t love us well, we may end up believing we’re unlovable. The whole lovability concept is that simple. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Trusting Yourself and the Organic Process

As a disregulated eater, you likely doubt your ability to make wise decisions for yourself. Maybe lack of trust existed prior to your eating problems or maybe abusing food wore down your conviction that you can adequately care for yourself. If you’ve come to distrust your judgment, read on about a winning way to make decisions.

Pleasure Versus Pride

If you’re an overeater or a binge-eater who’s learning the rules of “normal” eating, you may be a little worried about missing out on the pleasure of eating. In fact, it may be so difficult for you to conceive of not eating foods you love the way you do now that you end up eating more of them just to prove you can have them. Looking for something to “get” in return for “giving up” pleasure? Read on.

Living, Not Self-evaluating

One of the tendencies of people with eating disorders is to constantly evaluate how they’re doing—not only with eating, but in many aspects of life. Whenever clients frequently comment that they’re “doing good” or “had a bad week,” I know that they likely need to back off from a harmful habit of self-evaluation.

Eating, Fat, and Punishment

How many of you self-punish to regulate your eating? Punishment starts with fear, self-judgment, and self-anger. Many disregulated eaters get stuck in this rigid, misguided approach and never move on to more enlightened, self-nurturing, self-loving ways of regulating eating. Here’s what self-punishment does: After you’ve done something you feel badly about, you use words or actions to make yourself feel worse. Double ouch! Fortunately, there is another way of changing behavior.

More on Self-love

Part of being an emotionally healthy, mature adult means achieving permanent self-love so that you don’t channel energy into looking to others for approval, validation and love. I blog away on this subject because it’s essential to eradicating food abuse and establishing healthy body attitudes and because self-love is difficult to come by if you’re a disregulated eater who had a childhood in which you were emotionally mistreated.

Identity

How exactly do we acquire our identity and how does it shape our eating? Much of who we are is dictated by our genes—temperament and talent, for example—but what of other factors? Are you who you think you are, who other people think you are, or a composite of both? If a major part of your identity is feeling unloved and unlovable, how does that affect your ability to overcome food and weight problems?