In this week’s video tip, I share one of my favorite “power tools” for taking control of emotional eating.

“Free curiosity is of more value than harsh discipline.”
~Saint Augustine of Hippo

Discovering how to be curious about your overeating and your urges to binge instead of focusing on willpower or self discipline can open incredible doors for you. Try the three minute strategy I describe in this week’s video tip!

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Tackling the issue of weight almost always boils down to how to stop overeating. Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that when it comes to changing eating habits and fighting cravings, having a plan and being able to stick with it are two very different things.

Busy women can be especially challenged by overeating. Time is always an issue. Multiple responsibilities, stress, and often exhaustion, can all be powerful triggers for overeating. Many smart women know that what they are doing isn’t working. They end up frustrated with themselves and their situation but aren’t sure what else to do or when they are supposed to do whatever it is that will get them unstuck and on track.

If you are trying to figure out how you can move forward, stop overeating, and create changes that will last, I suggest reviewing the following checklist of ingredients I believe are essential to making peace with food and putting an end to overeating. Identify what you have already put into place and set the goal of addressing any gaps or weaknesses in your recipe for success.

The essential ingredients busy women need to stop overeating and make peace with food:

1. Know your why. You eat for a reason. Always. If your reason isn’t your body’s need for food or fuel, there is something else driving or triggering your overeating. Knowing what this is is critical because you can’t address something if you don’t know it exists. Getting clear on your emotional eating triggers, the situations, circumstances, and even relationships that contribute to your overeating is an important first step to creating success.
2. Crack your unique code. If you don’t respect who you are, you aren’t likely to develop a plan that respects you either. A plan for long term success needs to honor the truth about you, your preferences, the realities of your schedule, your relationships, and your life. Setting yourself up for long term failure by ignoring what you know about who you are is not what you want to do. Learn to prioritize yourself and your needs and include this any plan you develop.
3. Get the tools, and expertise to stop overeating effectively. Knowing that you struggle with emotional eating or that you eat to procrastinate or that you binge at night is very different from knowing what to do about it. If you are busy and time crunched you probably don’t feel like you have the time (and who does?) to experiment with lots of things that might not work. Do yourself the respectful favor of seeking out skilled help, emotional eating tools, and strategies that address your triggers and your unique situation.
4. Plan for long term success. Peace with food should feel peaceful. That means you don’t want to set yourself up by doing everything the hard way. Consider your unique strengths and the things that come easily for you. Ask yourself how you can leverage these talents as you move forward to stop overeating and emotional eating.

It is both possible and extremely rewarding to break free from vicious cycles with overeating and food. Just make sure you start out with a recipe that sets you up for success.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

"I've been fighting with food my whole life."

"I'm so sick and tired of fighting with my weight. I don't think I'll ever win."

"It's been going really well and I've lost twenty-five pounds. I just wonder how long it will last."

These are real quotes from real women who contacted me recently about my emotional eating coaching programs. I get emails almost daily from women who've spent more energy than you can measure fighting with weight, battling the scale, and trying desperately to control their eating.

Even when things are going "well," it can feel like a tightrope act requiring constant discipline, vigilance, and will power.

It's exhausting. And the sad thing is, it's a losing battle.

Because it IS a battle. And it will continue to be a battle, even if you are winning it.

As long as you are battling, food cannot be your friend. And when you "battle" your weight, you are at war with yourself. I'd like to suggest a different way of approaching all this that will allow you to stop struggling, fighting against yourself, and feeling guilty and ineffective

There is no trust or ease or peace or relaxation.

A fight means that food potentially has power over you.

Battles take energy. Valuable energy. Even if you are winning.

As long as you are battling, food cannot be your friend.

And when you "battle" your weight, you are at war with yourself.

Clients have come to work with me because they are determined to win the battle. And I've always suggested a bigger and more rewarding challenge.

I call it peace with food.

Peace. Calm. Ease. No conflict. A relationship with food that works. That doesn't drain your energy or your mood. That allows you to move forward and be your Best Self.

Peace with food is a relationship without tangles or desperation or deprivation. Food fuels your body. Food feeds your senses. You can taste and you can savor. And when you aren't hungry, you can walk away.

Peace with food begins with the acknowledgement that your current relationship with food exists for a reason.

Be respectful and curious about how you are currently using food:

• to cope?
• to manage feelings (emotional eating)?
• for comfort or to protect yourself?

With the right tools and support you can find alternatives that work better. You can stop fighting and start creating peace with food.

And then you can start thinking about what you will do with all that extra hope and energy.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Have you checked out a newsstand recently? You won’t be surprised that there are dozens and dozens of tips, plans, and miracle programs being promoted just this month to help you slim down, lose a pant size, make your butt smaller and lose your midlife muffin top.

Melissa McCreery

Are you BEYOND sick and tired of struggling with overeating, stress eating, or of being stuck on the weight loss roller coaster?

Come learn what may very likely be missing from your get-healthy-lose-weight-or-stop-overeating plan. On August 31, 2011 I'm offering a free teleclass:

Emotional Eating Solutions: Why One Size DOESN’T Fit All, Why Smart Women Get Stuck, and Savory Strategies for Success

I'll be sharing:

• Five things every woman who struggles with food or weight needs to know about emotional eating

• Why smart women get stuck, the unique struggles you face with food and overeating, and how to start breaking free—NOW

•  Why one solution doesn’t fit everyone and the exact formula you can use to determine what will work for you

• The ingredients you must have for lasting peace with food and weight loss success

I'll also be sharing information about the emotional eating solutions and resources that I've created and the path to creating real lasting peace with food.

Click here to reserve your no-cost spot.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Many smart women struggle with their weight and many busy, successful professional women resort to food to cope with the stress, uncertainty, and other emotions that occur in a full, high-pressure life.

1. Let go of the belief that you are alone and the only one struggling like this. If you are caught in this cycle with food and overeating, you’re in some great company. One of the most self-defeating actions you can take is to continue to struggle alone, heaping on self-blame and even shame. Find someone to talk to. Open your eyes to the possibility of support. Ask other women what they do when they struggle. Consider investing in yourself the same way you invest in your career and your family and your home and pursuing emotional eating solutions that can help you.
2. Take control of perfectionism. You’re human and you’ll never be perfect. Perfectionism or all-or-nothing thinking is common among women who expect a lot of themselves. It can get you stuck in a pattern where making a poor choice is interpreted as “blowing it.” Women trying to lose weight fall for this all the time. Instead of continuing forward and allowing the next choice to be a better one, the tendency is to cash in all your chips and start down a road of overeating because you’re upset with yourself and you “failed.” Plan for imperfection. Train your mind to notice your progress and not just your missteps. Try the “Three Things That Went Well” strategy.
3. Stop relying on willpower. This is a biggie. You are a high-achiever. You probably have a lot of willpower and stick-to-it-ness in other areas of your life. You may be lost in a mindset of beating yourself up over this cycle you are stuck in. If so, you probably tell yourself things like:

• “What’s wrong with me that I can’t get a grip on this?”
• “This should be easy.”
•  “I’m just not trying hard enough.”
•  “This is an embarrassment and I need to stop being lazy and just take a tough line with myself.”

• Help with finding motivation
• Help with creating time for themselves
• Help with accountability
• Help developing new skills and strategies
• Help with getting to the root of what’s triggering their overeating
• Help. Period.

Approaching the problem with respect and allowing yourself the resources you need to be effective can make a world of difference.

Melissa McCreery

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some common traps that even the smartest women fall for and the success strategies you can use to avoid them:

1. Getting too focused on what to eat. Cycles of overeating and weight gain are rarely fixed by focusing only on the food. A focus on what to eat doesn’t address or fix the situations, feelings, or relationships that may be triggering overeating. Yes, portion size matters and sometimes food intolerances or metabolic difficulties cause weight gain. However, even these situations become clearer and easier to sort out when you start listening to yourself and paying attention to how you feel, instead of focusing your attention on every bite, calorie, or fat gram that you put into your mouth.
2. Disregarding what you really need. You know yourself better than anyone. Instead of focusing on what “should” work and what you “should” do, take this bold step that many high-achieving women skip:
   
   Ask yourself what you really need to be successful—and then give it to yourself. You’re likely to spend less time, energy, heartache and even money in the long run when you trust your inner wisdom. Do you need the help of an expert? Be honest about that. Better tools to deal with stress or difficult emotions? Do you need some one-on-one mentoring or support? Don’t cheat yourself. Investing in what you know to be true and getting the targeted help you need will likely make more of a difference than all the self-help books you can’t figure out how to make work for you.

   Too many women spend too much money on solutions that aren’t comprehensive or individualized enough and don’t really meet their needs. Not only does this lead to failure, it burns up your hope and your sense of effectiveness. Do you feel like you know what you need but it isn’t possible? Don’t let that stop you. Ask yourself what it would take to make it happen and ask what is do-able that would start allowing you to have more of what you need. Start believing that you deserve to get what you need and start asking for it. You might be surprised what shows up.

3. Refusing to ask for help. High-achievers can fall into the trap of believing that lifestyle change has to happen solo. Many women who are successful in other areas of their lives feel embarrassed and even ashamed of their struggles with overeating. They feel like they are alone in their struggles. Unfortunately, not reaching out for help increases the sense of isolation and decreases your potential effectiveness. Asking for help might be the scariest step you take in order to make peace with food, but stepping outside of your own head, your own mindset, beliefs, and traps, can start change happening—and quickly.
4. Not addressing time issues. My heart almost broke when I heard an outwardly successful professional woman tell me that given the hectic state of her life, she believed that she wouldn’t be able to focus on her own goals for the next ten years. Really? What kind of life is that and what kind of example are you living? Change requires a commitment to making it happen. Whether it’s taking the time to attend a class, listen to audios, create a plan for healthy meals, or meet with a coach, if you don’t create the time, it isn’t really a priority. Honest truth. If you need help learning how to make or find the time, or how to put yourself first, make this your first action step.

Melissa McCreery

Thriving means moving forward in the direction that you want to go, making necessary adjustments as you go along, being effective, and enjoying the ride. Thriving requires taking charge of your mind, your body, and your lifestyle so that they work for you.

Melissa McCreery

When WAS the last time you ate because you were physically famished? When was the last time you ate that you weren't?

Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel. Diets mess with our relationship with food and add so many “shoulds” to the equation that many chronic dieters hardly know if they are hungry or not. They are conditioned to judge their “fullness” by calorie counts, the clock, fat grams, carbs, and other external cues that are not hunger.

A woman who is at peace with food feeds herself in high quality ways (and I'm talking about feeding her spirit and her soul as well as her stomach).

She also allows herself to savor the food and the experiences that she takes in. Eating doesn't trigger guilt or self-loathing and responding to her hunger isn't something she does in secret.

Let’s evaluate your relationship with hunger.

• How do you decide when you are hungry?
• Where do you feel hunger in your body?
• On a hunger scale of 1 (ravenous) to 10 (stuffed to the gills), how hungry do you allow yourself to become before you feed yourself? How full do you fill yourself when you do eat?
• When you determine that you are hungry, how do you decide what to eat?
• How do you tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger?

If your Inner Champion was running the show and helping you live your BEST version of your life, how would you be responding to your physical and emotional cravings? Would it be different?

Melissa McCreery

My guess is that emotional eating haunts most women who are struggling with weight loss. It’s a major cause of diet failure (although we all know diets don’t really work anyway) and a huge contributor to weight gain.

Most women who struggle with emotional eating also feel frustrated with themselves about it. Emotional eating erodes self esteem. Many women feel shame or guilt. They blast themselves with the belief that overeating is “an easy way out” and call themselves lazy or stupid or losers. They retaliate by “starting over” and telling themselves that this time they will push harder, be stricter, and find success.

Melissa McCreery