Too Much on Her Plate

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Getting to the Root of Emotional Eating Part Two: Effective Weeding

February 17th, 2010, No Comments »

Monday I shared with you why it is so important to identify and address the root cause of your struggles with food, emotional eating and overeating if you want to create an effective, lasting solution. Now, let’s look at your “weeding technique.” How are you at effectively addressing the root of your difficulties?

Here’s what I see. Too often, women gloss over the idea of understanding what is going on with their relationship with food. They look at a checklist and determine that they are an emotional eater, make a quick note of it, and then move on to planning what they will do differently in the future. This time (they tell themselves), they will eat salad for lunch. They won’t snack after dinner, and they will go to the gym on a regular basis. They fail to create a plan to address the real root cause of their overeating.

Planning feels productive and it makes most of us feel effective and in charge. I don’t have anything against plans—as long as they address the root cause that has propeled the problems with food, weight, and overeating in the past.

Too often women shame themselves into thinking that they are “making this too complicated.” They deny themselves the help and support and solutions that could maximize their effectiveness and minimize their struggle because they don’t feel “deserving” or because they have difficulties investing in themselves and making their goals a priority.

Quite simply, many of the women I encounter have a long history of trying very hard to change their relationship with food without the resources they need. No wonder they feel tired, discouraged, unmotivated and skeptical. They’ve been trying to create major life change on a shoestring—and a frazzled one at that.

So here’s the question (and the challenge) of the day: This topic speaks to you, or you wouldn’t have read as far as you already have. When it comes to getting to the root of the cause of your emotional eating or overeating, are you on the premium plan or are you trying to squeak by with the economy, super-saver-free-trial offer? Be honest with yourself. If you aren’t finding the success that you want, it’s cheap and easy (albeit painful) to beat yourself up emotionally for a lack of results.  Does this add to your effectiveness? Not one bit. The alternative that could? Upgrading your attention to the roots.

Ready to make a change? Here’s the challenge: If you were to upgrade your weeding strategy and really address the root cause of your struggles with food, what would that look like? What would you do differently? What new tools would you want to use? What help would you ask for? What resources would you engage?

What step can you commit to taking today?

Take good care,

The Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Take Action Series combines my 28 Day structured and self-guided program with the accountability, motivation, strategies and tips provided in six weekly teleseminars. We’re starting a new session soon. Find out more here.

Emotional Eating and Overeating: Why Getting to the Root Cause is so Important.

February 15th, 2010, No Comments »

There are few things more discouraging than battles with overeating, weight loss struggles and weight regain. I’ve seen far too many savvy, wise women lose their confidence and even their hopefulness about their ability to make successful and lasting changes in the way that they eat and in the number on the scale. The guilt and self blame that often follows just makes everything harder.

Here’s the truth. Making successful changes with your eating and your lifestyle requires paying attention to the head game. You can develop all the menus you want, precut and bag your veggies,  and stock up on fruit and protein powder until the cows come home, but if you don’t understand what is driving your eating, what led to any extra pounds you are trying to lose, what contributed to your last attempt at weight loss not working out so well, why the chocolate calls so loudly to you every evening, or why you typically regain any weight that you lose, your efforts aren’t going to pay off the way that you want them to. At least, not in a way that lasts.

Trying to lose weight or “get healthy” by going on a diet is like weeding a garden by chopping the leaves off the weeds. It doesn’t work. If you want to solve either problem in an enduring way, you must deal with the root.

The root is how the weed gets nourishment. With overeating and emotional eating, the root is the real, underlying reason that compels you to overeat or eat differently than you want to and than your wise self tells you that you should. If you don’t identify and figure out how to address the root cause of your overeating, emotional eating, and your battles with food or weight, the chance that these issues will always come back is pretty high.

Dealing with the root is not always quick, simple, or sexy. But it IS fundamentally important. And though it may seem like an overwhelming proposition, the truth is that if you allow yourself the proper tools to do the work involved, it doesn’t need to be a STRUGGLE.

To be continued….

Take good care,

Want to move forward? Looking for a plan to address the root of your emotional eating or overeating? The Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Take Action Series kicks off soon. Go here to learn more and to snap up some great bonuses just for signing up.

Emotional Eating and Overeating: What You Need To Know So That They Don’t Sabotage Your Weight Loss Plan

February 3rd, 2010, No Comments »

I’m pleased to announce the next call in the Smart Women’s Teleseminar Series and it might be just the ticket for you if you are finding yourself struggling or veering off track with your New Year’s plan for a healthier lifestyle.

The topic this month:

Emotional Eating and Overeating: What You Need To Know So That They Don’t Sabotage Your Weight Loss Plan

Did you know that emotional eating can be an issue for you and you might not even know it? Or that slowing down and paying attention to emotional eating can help you identify additional triggers that may be fueling your appetite, slowing down your metabolism and sabotaging your weight loss attempts? Join me for this free teleseminar on Tuesday, February 9 at 3pm Pacific/6pm Eastern and you’ll hear:

• What you need to know about overeating that no diet will address

• Why most dieters fail

• The most powerful tool you can use to create permanent weight loss and changes in your relationship with food

… and much more.  I’m also going to be providing information about the upcoming Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Take Action Series which begins this month.

You can register and get all the information for the free call here.

Take good care,

Are You Missing An Essential Ingredient?

August 21st, 2009, No Comments »

The “secret sauce” ingredient that helps women create and stick with a plan for lasting weight loss, healthy eating and the life they want to be living.

That’s what I covered in my most recent Smart Women’s Teleseminar this week:

Ending Emotional Eating and Overeating Struggles–The Important Step Even Smart Women Skip

I covered some important ground on this call, including some very powerful questions to ask yourself.  I’ve seen these questions make a tremendous difference for other women and for some, answering them has changed their weight loss journey entirely.

Curious yet?  These questions aren’t about food or calories or even exercise, but I’ll tell you, if you are missing the “secret sauce” ingredient I’m talking about, you won’t be nearly as likely to succeed with weight loss.

The call also contains information about our current programs and special limited discounts for the Smart Choices Success Circle Mastermind Community and my 6 week Smart Women’s Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Coaching Groups (yes, I am doing another specialized group just for women who have had weight loss surgery).

So, in case you were on vacation or just missed the call, you can still access the recording.

Take good care,

Melissa

The End of Overeating–I Give Up!

August 10th, 2009, No Comments »

I give up.  For a month now I have been intending to write a post about the information-packed book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner. This book is a brilliantly written explanation of how overeating is biologically and culturally driven—not a character flaw.  Kessler reviews an incredible range of research detailing how the food industry, our evolving lifestyle, and marketing influences have, in combination, altered our biological self-regulatory mechanisms and how increasing numbers of people of all ages are being “set up” for a lifetime of overeating and an obsessive relationship with food.

It’s great stuff.  And each time I sit down to write about one portion of it, I feel like I’m leaving something out.  You deserve the full meal deal.

Knowledge is power and there is a lot of knowledge in this book.  The more we know about how food influences us, the more we are able to make conscious choices about how and what we eat. As Kessler points out, awareness of the factors that drive us to overeat and to crave foods that are high in sugar, fat, and salt is the first essential step in breaking the cycle and creating a new relationship with food.

Knowledge also helps us let go of inaccurate and unhelpful guilt and self blame.  The truth is, there are important reasons that Americans weigh more and eat more than ever.

How to make time to digest all this helpful information when you’re already very busy?  Here’s what I did.  I listened to the unabridged version on CD while I was driving. This is a listen (and a read) that I highly recommend.

Take good care,

Melissa

Taking Control of Emotional Eating: A Free Teleseminar

April 13th, 2009, No Comments »

Emotional eating is one of the biggest causes of overeating, weight gain, and weight re-gain.

April is Emotional Overeating Awareness month and to commemorate this, I’m offering a free teleclass to answer your questions about how to take control of emotional eating and struggles with food, weight and healthy lifestyle.

The teleseminar will take place on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at noon Pacific and 3pm Eastern.

Creating change isn’t automatic and it isn’t always easy. However, it DOESN’T need to be a struggle. Join me for this free teleseminar where I’ll answer your questions about how to end emotional eating battles and make peace with food—once and for all. Just go here to register and submit your question.

The Question About Overeating That Smart Capable Women Sometimes Skip

April 7th, 2009, No Comments »

Some women spend a lot of time trying to understand their emotional eating struggles. Others I talk with are very frustrated with the pattern of eating and overeating to cope with stress or boredom or heartbreak or nerves, but they haven’t spent much time examining why they do it. Their preferred approach is to apply “tough love” to themselves and just “knock it off.”

Often, these are women who are used to hard work. They just want to dive in, get tough, and solve this problem once and for all. They are smart women who are used to managing quite a bit and have been successful in many areas of their lives. They may be business owners, successful professionals, supermoms, or even “all of the above” (is this starting to sound familiar?).

This “get tough” approach is usually unsuccessful—at least in the long run. That’s because, if you are using food as a coping tool (as busy women who are juggling a lot often do); if you are using food as something to help you feel better or different; or maybe to not feel anything; taking the food away is going to leave you with the feelings you didn’t want to cope with in the first place. If you don’t ask the question, “Why am I overeating?” you won’t be on the path to developing solid alternatives that will help you NOT overeat in the future.

Asking the why question can be hard to do because we often don’t know what to do with the feelings and answers we find there—at least not right away. Hard or not, it’s an essential question, and asking it can help you get on the path you want to be on with food and with weight. Once you ask the question you’ll be much better equipped to start looking for the tools, tips and strategies that can help you take the care you need of yourself, get in control with your eating, and lose the weight once and for all.

Take good care,

Melissa

Emotional Eating and EnduringChange.com on the Radio

April 1st, 2009, No Comments »

Last week I was interviewed by Joe Pena for his Enlighten Me radio show. He was such a great interviewer and we covered so much ground that I wanted to share the interview here.

We talked about emotional eating and why I’m so passionate about the need to address it. We also talked about why smart successful savvy women (like Oprah) can continue to feel stuck and even powerless when it comes to struggles with weight and emotional eating.

Feel free to take a listen:

Of laughter, weight loss, and staying in the positive

January 7th, 2009, No Comments »

Somebody asked me today what my approach was to helping my clients lose weight. Here’s what I told her. “I take on the non-food part.”

I told her that in my experience, most people who are struggling with food and weight know the food part upside down and backwards. Diet veterans know about eating less and exercising more. Most can write out a pretty spiffy plan of what they “should” be doing. Information about food is usually not the problem. The problem is the implementation.

Knowing and doing are two different things. Unfortunately, many “plans” don’t send that message and when users of the plan fail they often fall into the trap of blaming themselves, not realizing that the plan left out a crucial component: if you’re going to “not do” something, you need to have a plan for what you are going “to do” instead.

As a brilliant participant in the Weight Loss Winner’s Circle said yesterday, “Having the goal to not do something (eat less) is not really a goal. You are taking something away. When you set out to not do something, what you end up with is a hole.”

I help people fill the hole. My job, as I see it, is to help my clients create a life that feeds their cravings. When we have the tools and resources we need to cope with our needs and feelings and with hard times, our relationship with food shifts dramatically. When our life becomes more of a reward, chocolate doesn’t hold the same power that it used to.

My approach means that my groups and coaching programs aren’t filled with talk about weight or calories or what to eat for breakfast. Much of the work that we do focuses on taking the focus off food. Learning other ways to take care of ourselves, find comfort, relieve stress, and celebrate. And we laugh—a lot. Not only that, but the process is it’s own reward.

I hope you’ll keep these ideas in mind as you move forward in your weight loss journey.

* Don’t set negative goals.
* Fill the holes.
* Have fun along the way.

Take good care,

Melissa

Indulging and weight loss: an important connection

January 5th, 2009, Comments Off

Will you allow me an observation? Too often, when the focus is losing weight, people get overly focused on what they are going to give up and don’t give enough thought to how they will indulge.

One of the reasons that diets don’t work (and there are many) is that diets create a mindset of deprivation. No one likes to live in a state of doing without. Very few people can maintain that feeling of deprivation successfully for the long term—who would want to? Weight loss plans that are structured around deprivation tend to fail. Sometimes the rebound from a deprivation diet leaves the dieter more overweight than when s/he started.

An essential concept I stress with my clients is that of indulgence. Our spirits, our senses, and our needs need to be FED. Whenever we consider taking something away from our lives that has been meeting some kind of need (as overeating or emotional eating does for many), it is crucial to consider what the replacement will be.

If you are trying to change your eating habits or lose weight, I challenge you to ask yourself how you do plan to indulge. If it’s not going to be chocolate or fast food anymore (and I’m not saying those indulgences ever really did the job they were intended to), than what WILL it be?

Your answer will be unique to you. It might be something you really need to think about. It must be something that really feels like a treat, a reward, or a comfort.

It’s so easy to skip this step and attempt to move forward with the sole spirit of determination. I urge you not to do it. Add indulgence to your game plan and you are likely to go a lot farther.

Take good care,
Melissa

PS: If you are interested in gaining the support, accountability, and motivation from a group program that makes THRIVING as important as weight loss, check out the new Weight Loss Winner’s Circle.