One of the most common reasons smart, capable women stay trapped in cycles of struggling with overload, overwhelm, and overeating, is a lack of consistently used, high quality support in their lives.

“Asking for help” sounds like a simple strategy, but for many high-achievers, it just ain’t so.

Here are the most common reasons you may not be getting the help you need.

Shame. Some high-achievers equate strength with self-reliance. They are so strongly independent that they haven’t permitted—or perfected—the skill of asking for help—at least in certain areas of their lives. The belief that health and well-being ought to be areas they can take charge of on their own holds them back and keeps them struggling, in part because they aren’t leveraging the support that they count on in the rest of their lives. If you are carrying a belief that you “shouldn’t need” to ask for help or if you aren’t used to doing so, shame may be holding you back from getting what you need to move forward.

Unused muscles. If you aren’t someone who has asked for help in the past (maybe you’ve even congratulated yourself for this as if it were a strength), then you probably find yourself in situations where help would be useful but it doesn’t even occur to you to ask. If this is the case it’s time to start waking up your “delegating” and “asking for help” muscles. Begin by asking yourself about the situations or struggles that others might be able to help you with. Notice the places where you feel stuck and consider who might have the expertise or wisdom to guide you so that you don’t have to keep struggling to reinvent the wheel.

Being a one-strike-and-you’re-out-support seeker. If you find it challenging to ask for help, you might not be pushing hard enough to get it. If you find yourself thinking, “I asked for help and they never followed through” or, “it just wasn’t’ very helpful—I guess I just need to do it myself,” you aren’t alone. However, these experiences are not reasons to stop asking—they are probably indications that you need to ask more, follow up, and make sure that you are crystal clear about what you are asking for. “I could use some help” and “Would you please stop and pick up dinner on your way home” are two different requests that will yield very different results.

Not knowing what to ask for. This is a big one, and it’s another reason that many women shy away from the help that could really propel them forward. Don’t be afraid to ask others for ideas: “How could you help out with this?” Most of all, don’t short change yourself because you aren’t quite sure what you need. Reaching out to an expert, describing the situation, and finding out what resources are available might make all the difference.

Take good care,

Could you use coaching, support, guidance, accountability and a motivation boost to achieve your goals? Click here to learn more about the Emotional Eating Solution Series or click here to schedule a Peace with Food Breakthrough Session and explore individual coaching options with Dr. Melissa McCreery.

If you are like most busy women with too much on their plates, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to practice indulging—really indulging.  Interestingly, most women who really need to indulge more will tell you that they believe they ought to be indulging less.

1.      Indulging is not about greed or sloth. Indulging isn’t about excess. It’s about allowing yourself something wonderful or special and allowing yourself to really experience and savor it–without guilt or shame. It’s not eating the whole box of cookies or bingeing on clothes at the mall. It’s about allowing yourself just the right amount of what you really crave and fully enjoying the experience. Indulging is not about gulping, it’s a melts-in-your-mouth experience.

2.      Indulging is not laziness Indulging is a way of feeding an important part of yourself and adding dimension to your life. Some women worry that if they start to indulge they’ll “lose control.” The truth is, when you really allow yourself to indulge, you tend to be more satisfied with less.

3.      Indulging does not have to be earned or “deserved.” Some women believe that they haven’t “worked hard enough” or “accomplished enough” to indulge. When you don’t allow yourself this kind of self-care, it’s easy to become caught in a cycle of working harder and harder and feeling more and more behind and burnt out. Again, indulging yourself is a way of refueling. It actually enhances your productivity.

4.      Indulging does not decrease your productivity or make you fat. I’ve already addressed this, but this is such a common myth, it’s important to restate. Allowing yourself truly indulgent experiences, ones where you are completely present and savoring the moment, satisfies you. Real indulgences don’t leave you hungry and craving more—they rejuvenate you and fuel you to be your best. What does leave you primed for a binge of food or laziness is the feeling that your special treat is forbidden or undeserved. The message that you are never going to be allowed to rest or feel like “enough” or eat chocolate again will almost certainly create a craving for the forbidden that can be almost impossible to resist.

Is anger a feeling you are comfortable with or is it an emotion you go to great lengths to avoid? For many women, angry feelings are some of the toughest to acknowledge and cope with effectively. Before you tell me that it's not a part of your world, here's the truth: everyone gets angry. And contrary to what some women may have learned growing up, it isn’t pointless or unkind or impolite.

• How we handle the feeling
• How we choose to behave

What do you DO when you are angry?

Are you one of the many women who suffer from the secret belief that you aren’t good enough? That YOU aren’t enough? That you really need to be thinner, smarter, fitter, or MORE outgoing, confident, successful, financially secure, or whatever?

Until I lose the weight

Until I look better

Until I feel more confident

Until I deserve it.

• ·        Wearing the color red and the bold fashions they loved
• ·        Ballroom dancing
• ·        A day at the spa
• ·        Trying out for a play
• ·        Learning a sport
• ·        Going to the pool
• ·        Riding a bike
• ·        Buying and wearing something sexy
• ·        Throwing a party
• ·        Getting her picture taken
• ·        Taking her career to the next (more visible) level
• ·        Enjoying some much needed me-time without feeling guilty

This is a week when many of us spend some time thinking about the year ahead and the hopes and dreams and goals we have for 2011. Some of us make resolutions, and many of us dive into plans to be more organized, more fit, thinner, kinder, less stressed, or just-plain-happier.

Plans and goals are great. The problem is, I know from experience (and yes, as a coach), that come February or March, many of you will feel like your good intentions and your plans for a better life have fallen off your radar, been postponed, or just weren’t possible to fulfill. Worse yet, some of you will feel like you failed and end the first quarter of the year feeling bad about that. NOT a recipe for creating your best year ever!

I’m not trying to be Debbie Downer here, but it’s important to point out that New Year’s resolutions don’t usually fail because you aren’t sure what you want to do. New Year’s resolutions tend to fail because you lack the plan, the strategies, the tools, and the mindset to coordinate your goals and your hopes and dreams with the rest of your already full life. They tend to fail because you can’t figure out how to make the time for them. They tend to fail because you might be better at taking care of everybody else than you are at taking care of YOU. They tend to fail because it’s hard to say no and because the plan you picked may not have the “wow” factor to keep you motivated. The plan may be more about hard work than about really thriving. New Year’s resolutions and goals tend to fail because many high-achieving women embark on plans for personal change ALONE, without the support, accountability, and success tools they deserve (and that they would probably leverage for any professional project they were embarking on).

Life is too short for broken dreams and plans that never seem to pan out. The THRIVE Formula™: Four Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion program kicks off in a few short weeks. This is a program designed to put you on your own customized plan for THRIVING in 2011. I’ll show you how to create a blueprint that has all the crucial ingredients in my THRIVE Formula,™ including the right action steps, me-time, a winning mindset, goals that motivate and propel you towards them, and your own set of the success tools you need to stay in action. I’ll show you how to identify when you are getting in your own way and how to knock it off, as well as how to craft a plan that takes into account your personal challenges, hurdles, and the things that have knocked you off course in the past. You even get to customize the level of support that’s best for you. Want personal coaching with me? You can include that in your program! http://unleashingyourinnerchampion.com

Best of all, if you sign up by the end of 2010, you qualify for some ridiculous early bird tuition options, AND, if you are one of the first 25 to join us, I’m throwing in a f*ree day-long virtual retreat to really pump up the volume on this experience (virtual means you attend from home, via the phone or internet). We’re going to spend a day helping you get motivated and really clear on who your Best Version of Yourself really is and how to take great, enjoyable care of her.

I created the THRIVE Formula™: Four Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion program because too many women aren’t thriving in February and March after the shine wears off those resolutions. I created it because so much of the struggle is unnecessary. I created it because change can be fun. If this speaks to you, I hope you’ll join me!

Best,

PS: Don’t forget, to qualify for a f*ree ticket to the day-long retreat, you must be one of the first 25 to register. Also, early bird pricing expires on 12/31/10. http://unleashingyourinnerchampion.com

Do you feel stuck in your struggle with stress or emotional eating? This may help.

Are you an emotional eater? Are you sick and tired of struggling with overeating and stress? Do you gravitate to tips on how to take control with food, manage your time, and get on track with your health goals and your needs? Do you feel worn out, overloaded, overwhelmed and frustrated with how things are going?

You aren’t alone. Many women who identify with “too much on her plate,” tell me they are beyond ready for a change. They are working hard and struggling to “get it right.” They are juggling responsibilities and setting goals and buying the recommended books and trying the tips and feeling frustrated that nothing sticks and that they aren’t getting where they want to go. And they are keeping this all, very carefully, tucked away inside themselves. In their efforts to succeed, many are sabotaging themselves by making a crucial mistake—and it’s a mistake that isn’t often discussed. They are struggling alone and in isolation.

On the outside, many frustrated emotional eaters smile and look confident. Sometimes they even laugh at themselves. Many are very successful and receive lots of admiration from their peers. “Everyone thinks I’ve got it all under control,” says a private coaching client. “They probably think I don’t care about the weight—even though I worry about it constantly.”  A new client shares that, “No one would ever suspect that I struggle with food.” Another says, “People think I can do it all. They see me as strong and confident. They’d never imagine how hard this is or how much it affects everything.”

Busy, successful women all over the world struggle with stress and overload, unrealistic expectations of themselves, and all the unhelpful habits that accompany this type of living: emotional eating, overindulgence with other things, too little self-care and attention to themselves. For some, it’s an occasional thing, but for many, it’s a big problem, and one that takes a toll. The women I’m describing may step out on big stages or in front of big conference tables on a regular basis, but they aren’t fully stepping into their power or their potential. They’re struggling in secret, and paying dearly for the beliefs that:

• They are alone
• Their struggles are somehow “shameful”
• Seeking help for “this sort of thing” is an indulgence and “shouldn’t be necessary”
• They ought to “toughen up” or “work harder” or just “knock it off”
• Their struggles are “silly” and they really shouldn’t care so much

Recently, two private clients told me separately that they love working with me because I focus on thriving and self-care and feeling good and yet I’m not “cheesy” about how I do it (yes, they both used that word).

And this is the problematic elephant in the room that so many women are tripping over.

Self-care is not cheesy. Nourishing your spirit and your soul, your body and your mind, and learning how to do it well, is not fluff. Excellent self-care is what fuels women to move mountains, to run multimillion dollar businesses, mother powerfully, and create amazing things. Self-care (including taking care of ourselves and our relationship with food) allows us to be our best version of ourselves. It’s what makes it possible for us to show up fueled, focused, and ready to give our best to the world. It helps us to be bold and courageous, sexy, and amazing.

Emotional eating is not shameful. It’s a symptom of a life that could be balanced better. The desire to reshape your relationship with food is almost always related to knowing that you could be focusing on much more important stuff if you weren’t battling with food or overeating or weight. That is a powerful piece of information.

Getting the help you need to take charge of these struggles is not a sign of weakness. It’s basic and essential maintenance. It’s also one of the smartest, most lucrative investments you can make. Find a successful, thriving woman out there and she’ll tell you that she is paying attention to her needs, her inner wisdom, and that she is nourishing herself in a variety of ways in order to get where she is going.

She’s also not going it alone, in the dark closet, with all her self-doubt. Success flourishes with fresh input. Creative solutions often appear out of nowhere when you collaborate. Something amazing happens when you extract your ideas, your beliefs, and your plans from the dark places in your head and talk them through with someone you respect and trust. You’re suddenly able to see your blind spots. That “someone” hears things that you don’t and helps you hear them too. Your inner critics and gremlins lose some power.

Secrets and closets keep you stuck.

How and when to stop keeping secrets:

Struggling or worrying, in isolation and secrecy, rarely did anyone any good. However, I’m not suggesting that you shout your struggles from the rooftop or open your next presentation with, “Hello, I’m __________ and I am stressed and overeating.”

I am asking you to consider giving any struggles you have with too much on your plate, the same respect and credibility you give your struggles with running your business, or figuring out your taxes, or addressing another health issue.

Be smart about it. Don’t let guilt, shame, or embarrassment take the upper hand.

• Identify what you know and what you don’t about the solution to your struggle
• Allow for the option that you might benefit from (and deserve) help
• Weigh the cost of continuing down the same-old-same-old path
• Weigh the real life cost of your struggle. Where would your time and energy and focus go if this struggle went away? Are there things you are avoiding or not doing because you are struggling with this? How does your struggle limit you and hold you back? How does it limit the way you see and value yourself?
• Weigh the cost of hiding out and consider reaching out and sharing your secret with someone instead. Someone that you respect, that you trust, and who you believe could mentor or help you.

If you are struggling in secret, I know that you aren’t alone. But like anyone holding on to a secret, you won’t know that until you stop keeping it. Reaching out takes courage, but staying stuck has too big a price. And life is too short.

Take good care,

Is it time to invest in a coach? What could you accomplish in the next six months if we worked together to shift you from stuck to succeeding? 2010 isn’t over yet and 2011 is ripe with possibility. Contact me directly to schedule a complimentary consultation and we can discuss how to get started.

Last post I mentioned how self-critical and demeaning thoughts sabotage weight loss.  Please remember that if you’ve been frustrated with your efforts, it wasn’t you that failed—it was your plan that didn’t work.

HOW TO DUMP THAT EXTRA WEIGHT ON YOUR SHOULDERS

Once my clients are able to stop aiming their frustration at themselves, they can start learning to examine their previous attempts at weight loss with curiosity. Curiosity allows us to ask questions that will build effectiveness in the future. “What went wrong last time?” “Where did I get stuck?” “What do I need to do differently this time around?” “What did I need incorporated into my previous plan that I can add this time?”

Our judgmental inner critic operates on the philosophy that feeling badly about ourselves will motivate us to “do better.” This theory of change simply doesn’t produce lasting results, and we all know this at some level. Next time you are listening to your own inner critic, ask yourself whether you’d ever talk to a friend the way you are talking to yourself. Most people are appalled at the idea. That’s something to pay attention to.

CURIOSITY

I can usually tell when my clients are ready to start losing their weight and losing it for good. Just before it starts to happen, they come to appointments looking and sounding visibly lighter. This happens before they’ve lost weight—and that’s because they’ve learned to set down the fifty pound boulder of judgment and self-blame—something we start attacking in our very first appointment.

The blame game doesn’t work. If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to step back and observe your own judgmental self for a week. When you eat or don’t eat, when you exercise or don’t exercise, take note of what that judgmental voice says to you. Do you notice that it is rarely satisfied and seems to never give compliments?

Ban your perfectionist. You’re never going to get it “perfect” and if that’s your expectation, then the stakes are too high and you are setting yourself up to feel like you’ve failed. Stop slamming yourself for what didn’t work and start asking the questions that will help you figure out what will. Hint: these questions often start with “Why” why was I still hungry after lunch?, or “How” how can I rearrange my meal plan so I’ll be less hungry next time? or “What” what else could I do?” or “What could I do instead?”

Are you starting to see how this shift in paradigm can be the key to achieving your weight loss goals?  Next time, I’ll show you how to go a few steps further into developing a plan that truly works for YOU.

Take good care,

Are you carrying around weight that you can put down? This is a question that’s crucial to your long-term success.

I don’t need to tell you that losing weight is hard work—really hard work. What I can share is that many people get stuck in attitudes and ways of thinking that make losing weight even harder. Some attitudes that people often think of as motivating, actually tend to de-motivate us. Trying to lose weight with these mindsets is like trying to climb a mountain carrying a fifty pound boulder. The journey is much easier if we put the boulder down.

JUDGMENT & SELF-CRITICISM

When a new client begins to talk to me about her weight struggles, I can often feel the heaviness that enters the conversation. Her voice may change, her posture slumps, she may adopt an expression of embarrassment or shame or guilt. Her energy dips. Clients talking about attempts to lose weight often stop making eye contact and sound very tired, and frustrated, even angry with themselves. Repeated attempts at weight loss (and repeated weight regain) leave people frustrated and cynical about their ability to succeed. Clients often tell me how “they have failed at weight loss.” They feel defeated and angry with themselves before they even start their next attempt.

Here’s the thing: when we don’t succeed at an undertaking, we are not failures. It is our plan or our approach that has not worked. Beating ourselves up gets us nowhere, and it diverts us from the powerful and important task of reevaluating, taking inventory and making corrections to our approach so that we can get back on target. In addition, the negativity and self blame weigh down our future attempts at success by causing us to feel less capable and less hopeful.

When we’re the most disappointed, the most frustrated and the most vulnerable, many of us have this thoroughly unreasonable idea that an emotional version of the slap-upside-the-head is what’s needed. If we allow it, the critical voices in our head that tell us we’re “not good enough” or lazy or incapable can really take control. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard tell me the harsh, awful, demeaning things their judgmental inner critic tells them about themselves and then, in the same breath, tell me how carefully they listen to it! This is not helpful!

The first step in creating a successful plan for weight loss is to attack that judgmental attitude head-on. If you’ve been frustrated in your efforts to lose weight in the past, it wasn’t you that failed—it was your plan that didn’t work. Anger and self-critical judgment don’t effectively motivate anyone for more than very short periods of time, and long-term, these attitudes will get you seriously off track.

Keep an eye out for my next post where I’ll lay out some simple and practical ways to overcome those inner voices that keep you from your goals.

Take good care,

Struggles with emotional eating, overeating, and weight take a tremendous amount of energy.  For women business owners and professionals, these struggles can also take a major toll on their success.

• A prospective client (and business owner) tells me she is avoiding public speaking opportunities because she feels self conscious being on stage because of her weight.
• A successful internet entrepreneur hasn’t had her headshot updated in almost ten years because she’s afraid of the reaction she might get when people see she’s gained weight.
• A business owner on an upward trajectory says, “I have so much to offer.  I know I’m holding myself back because I don’t want to step forward in my overweight body.  If it weren’t for my weight, I would be a rock star.”

Sound familiar?  Struggles with weight and food aren’t just about the pounds.  These struggles take up so much precious space in our busy minds, suck incredible amounts of our time and energy, impact our self esteem and confidence, and for many women, affect their choices to be visible and powerful in areas of their life and business.  Food and weight struggles take a tremendous toll.

What’s a business owner to do?

For many busy women, especially entrepreneurs and professionals, self-care takes a back seat to business building and work.  Especially in today’s economy, many professionals simply feel they can’t afford to sacrifice anything for the advancement of their business.  Here’s the piece many miss.  The successful foundation for a solid business or career includes a strong, confident self.  You purchase the equipment you need for your business. You dress professionally for that important presentation. Addressing the struggles that wear you out, bring you down, and cause you to potentially play smaller is at least as important—and essential for growing the business or career of your dreams.

Are struggles with food and weight holding you back?

Take a look at your calendar and your life and business plan for the next six months.  Have you included the changes you want to make in these areas?  Do you have a plan to create more peace with food and move in the direction you really want to go? Take some time to think about it.  Ending these struggles is one of the best investments you can make.

Take good care,

Melissa

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