You know that vibrant health, a winning attitude, and the weight you dream of would be easier to achieve if you took better care of yourself. You’ve lived the reality of getting too busy and watching your good intentions, your workout plans, and your resolve to lower your stress slip off your radar.

Melissa McCreery

Many people have asked me over the years why I work with women who’ve had weight loss surgery.  I’ve not had bariatric surgery myself.  What I have done, is spend my entire professional life working with women who struggle with their eating and with their weight.

As a psychologist, I’ve seen all sorts of outcomes after weight loss surgery—including seeing women who invested their heart, soul, and a good deal of money, only to find themselves still struggling with weight and overeating.  I’ve known too many women who felt guilty, lost hope, and even blamed themselves (which only makes the problem worse).

If you are someone who has had a bariatric procedure,  you’ve heard that bariatric surgery is only a tool. What I remind my clients is that it’s also only ONE tool. Weight loss surgery isn’t the complete tool kit. Creating peace with food often takes more than a physical procedure.  It requires learning how to use a whole new set of tools to address the emotional reasons that trigger many women to turn to food—stress, boredom, frustration—even a need for comfort or a need to celebrate.

For those of you who have had weight loss surgery of any type and continue to struggle with emotional eating and overeating, I have an exciting new resource for you.  I’ve just released the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Bonus Series for Women After Weight Loss Surgery. This use-at-home, self-guided program includes the original Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program plus all the bonus material, activities, special topic coaching and information that was shared in my original, live  Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Program for Women After Weight Loss Surgery. I no longer offer this program live, but you can now have all the materials, tools, templates, Master Schedules, and six hours of information and inspiration-packed down-loadable seminars.  You can find all the information here.

Emotional eating after weight loss surgery is such an important issue. Please share this information with others who might benefit.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

I wanted to share this post from the Solo Entrepreneur blog (Solo-e) on how overeating and weight struggles can keep you from being your best self and the tools busy women need to create lasting changes.

Do your weight loss battles keep you from shining or playing as big as you’d like to? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Do you have the time to stop overeating? To take control of emotional eating? To get on track with your healthy lifestyle goals?  Lately I’ve been encountering many women who tell me they don’t. I’ve been hearing from women who are incredibly frustrated with their eating habits, their weight gain, their lack of progress on important health goals.  I’ve talked to women who fear their family history of diabetes or heart disease. I’ve talked to women who’ve even had weight loss surgery and are terrified because they are seeing the weight they’ve lost start to creep back.  I’ve also talked with too many women who have put some aspect of their life “on hold” until they can start losing weight. Their struggles with food and emotional eating or overeating are something they think about every day.

But they aren’t moving forward.

They aren’t moving forward because they are using a faulty recipe for success.  These busy woman are trying to make a positive change by cutting back; taking things (food) away and doing with less.  But they aren’t adding anything else in—because they don’t have time.  They don’t have time to feed their spirit, their soul, their passion in non-food ways.  They don’t have time to go to the groups, the seminars, the inspiring places or activities that could keep them on track.  They don’t have time for themselves.

Really, we all have time. The truth is, we choose how we spend it.

Struggles with food are created in many ways.  Struggles with food end when we learn how to really truly feed ourselves the things we need (these are different for everyone) and this can only happen when we take the time to listen and hear ourselves, sort it all out, and respond.  Ending emotional eating, overeating, and weight struggles requires us to take the time—to spend a portion of our time on ourselves.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be a lot of time, but it does have to be dedicated time we allot for ourselves and our needs.  It’s not food-focused time, but it’s time that helps us become less focused on the food.  It’s essential. There really are no short cuts with this step.

Take good care,

Melissa

Melissa McCreery

Okay readers,

It’s September and we’re approaching Labor Day weekend.  If you’ve been telling yourself all summer that you’re “waiting ‘til September” to take better care of yourself . . . you’ve just run out of excuses.

I know–summer does have a different rhythm to it, and many of us look to September as the start of a new chapter in our lives and a return of more structure and planning.

So now that it’s here, what are you going to do?  What one step will you commit to to undertake your own personal health care reform?

Do you need to clean up your eating?  Find a better way to cope with stress and overwhelm and exhaustion?  Make a commitment to getting more activity?  Create more space and time for yourself?  Grow a stronger support system?  It’s time for that next step. Set your intention, create a goal and then answer the following question:

How can the world support you?  What do you need to ask for, do, or say no to in order to be effective?

It’s September ladies.  Time to take a stand.  Time to reform YOUR health care. What’s it going to be?

Want to be bold? Share your commitment in a comment.

Take good care,

Melissa

PS:  If you could benefit from some extra tools and support to propel you forward, the good news is that there are still a few spots left in the fall Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Smart Women’s Group and the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Group for Weight Loss Surgery Patients (both held by phone).  Take advantage of our fall sale on this and other resources until  9/13/09 or supplies run out.

Melissa McCreery

Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Six Week Tele-Groups, including a specialized program for weight loss surgery patients, begin next week.

Designed to enhance and expand the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Self-guided Program, these small groups have received great reviews. The groups have been newly updated (I’ve added on two additional weeks) and now contain new upgraded activities and exercises.

Learn how to:

• Identify emotional eating
• Learn what you are REALLY hungry for (when it isn’t food)
• Develop tools and strategies you can use INSTEAD of eating
• Reduce anxiety and stress in your life
• Identify strategies and mindsets that sabotage you and begin to eliminate them
• Set goals that are designed to be successful and motivating
• Address perfectionism, negative thinking and self blame

Groups are limited in size to ensure plenty of time for individualized coaching, feedback, and discussion. There are still spots remaining in the traditional Six Week Emotional Eating Toolbox Program™ as well as in the specialized Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Program for Women Who Have Had Weight Loss Surgery.

Both groups begin 3/17/09 and will be held by telephone on six consecutive Tuesdays. Specific times and dates and registration information can be found here. Registration fees for the group include a copy of the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day program ($139 value).

Take good care,

melissa

Smart, savvy women who’ve chosen to have weight loss surgery know that while surgery is a powerful tool, it is not the only tool necessary to achieve lasting success with weight loss. As I hear weight loss surgery patients tell me often, “It’s not brain surgery—I still have to deal with how I think and feel about eating and food.”

Emotional eating continues to be an issue for many bariatric surgery patients. For some, the struggles with emotional or stress eating don’t end with the surgery. For others, urges to use food to cope with emotions might disappear in the short term, only to reappear months or years following surgery.

The Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program has been a helpful tool for many weight loss surgery patients and I am excited to be working on a new, expanded version, specifically geared towards individuals who have had or who are planning to have bariatric surgery.

If you would like to be informed about development and release details, make sure you have subscribed to my newsletter (you’ll also receive a nifty audio ecourse on life balance when you sign up—my compliments). If you are interested in current specialized offerings for weight loss surgery patients, you can go here.

Take good care,

Melissa

melissa

Will you join me on the radio? Come join the conversation about emotional eating, staying on track with weight loss, and staying out of overwhelm during the holiday season and into the New Year.

I’m going to be a guest on “The New You” Radio show, the radio show that’s all about empowering weight loss surgery patients–both before and after surgery. We’ll be talking about staying on track with weight loss–especially during the holiday season.

Join me–Wednesday, November 12 at 8pm Eastern, 7pm Central, 6pm Mountain and 5pm Pacific. You can tune in during the show, call in and ask questions, participate in the live interactive chat room, or listen via the podcast that will be available after the show. I would love to hear from readers and clients during the show! For more information, go here.

Take good care,

Melissa

melissa

Last week, over one hundred weight loss surgery patients registered for my free teleclass on taking charge of overeating and emotional eating after bariatric surgery. The class consisted entirely of addressing questions submitted by class members. It was an amazing hour. We didn’t begin to get through everyone’s questions, but we covered some very important topics.

If you missed the class, and would like to hear more of what we covered, it’s not too late. The class was recorded and you can go here to listen in:
http://enduringchange.com/Septemberrecordingsignup.htm
Don’t miss the special bonuses and the discount that is mentioned near the end of the call!

Take good care,

Melissa

melissa

After taking a summer break, I’m happy to announce that my free teleclass series is starting up again in September. The next free teleclass is on a specialized topic: Emotional Eating, Overeating, and Success After Weight Loss Surgery. If you are someone who has had weight loss surgery or is considering it, this call is for you.

The teleclass takes place Wednesday September 3, 2008 at
3 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, and noon Pacific time.

If you can’t attend, don’t let that stop you from registering. The call will be recorded and registered participants will receive access to the class recording after the call. If you’ve never attended a teleclass before, they’re easy. You’ll just dial in on the phone number you will receive when you register (you are responsible for any long distance charges) and when prompted you’ll be given an access code to enter.

You can go here to register and when you do, you’ll have an opportunity to submit a question that you would like addressed. I’ll try to get to as many as I can on the call. Hope to “see” you in class!

Take good care,

Melissa

melissa