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.

How to Break Free from the Vicious Cycles that Keep You Stuck, Stressed, and Overeating

Here are some tips to help you break free of vicious cycles that keep you stuck with overload, overwhelm, and overeating:

• Before you start, know this: you are a smart woman and you keep running on that hamster wheel for a reason. What keeps you moving forward (and round and round), even though what you are doing isn’t working? Please notice that this is a question that is meant to trigger curiosity—not shame. In fact, leave your guilt, blame, and shame about past failures at the door, because they are the number one emotions for keeping you stuck. Ask this—“What are the forces that have kept you on the hamster wheel?” Have you been operating under a mindset or belief that you “have” to do things a certain way? Is your inner perfectionist telling you that you just need to keep trying the same old, same old until you get it perfect? You never will. Are you stuck in a vicious cycle because you are bending to the expectations of others? Are you trying to do it the way “everyone else” is?

Or, like so many of us, do you keep on doing the same old thing that doesn’t really work because it works a little bit or for a short time and you don’t know what else to do?

The more clarity you can get about what has kept you in this rut, the better you’ll be able to address the feelings, circumstances, and relationships that draw you back to it.

• Breaking free of a vicious cycle, or getting off a hamster wheel, requires stepping sideways instead of pushing forward harder and harder. This means doing something different and stepping outside your comfort zone. Don’t feel like you have to take a flying leap. Even a small sidestep will start breaking the cycle and getting you out of the rut.

What does a sidestep look like? It might be trying new tools, asking for help, changing your routine, or making the decision not to ignore something that has never worked when you’ve tried to make changes in the past.

When you are ready to step sideways, ask yourself, “What can I do differently this time that will help me be more effective? What hasn’t worked well in the past, and how can I address this?”

Note that the two most common mistakes I see people make here are: 

1. Mistaking “I’ll just work harder” as “doing it differently” (it’s not)
2. .Completely neglecting the option of asking for help. Nothing will help you step sideways and create a new approach faster than getting fresh expertise or a new perspective. All too often, we can’t see how we’re stuck because we’re wearing blinders and we don’t even know it.

• You need structure and accountability to keep you in action until your new approach is fine-tuned and familiar. I know I’m not the only one out there who has started something that I loved, enjoyed, and knew was a winning approach only to realize four weeks later it had completely slipped off my radar and I’d forgotten about it completely.

Establishing new habits takes work and persistence. You’ll benefit from strategies and support to keep new intentions “front of mind.” Support or guidance is invaluable for reminding you why this new way is important and how the old way didn’t work. A system for checking in or holding yourself accountable helps you measure progress, catch motivation problems, and stay on track.

Decide what you will do to keep your new approach “front of mind” and on track. Where will you post reminders, how will you stay inspired, and when and how will you track your progress? Don’t neglect these steps. They are the actions that winners take.

• You’re in it for the long haul, not a few short weeks. Creating new pathways for success requires tools and strategies for course-correction and honoring success. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve worked with who make it off the hamster wheel, get grooving in a new routine that is bringing them the results and satisfaction they used to dream of, and when I ask them about celebrating their achievements, respond by telling me how far they still have to go.

Not stopping to absorb your success and celebrate your progress is leftover residue from being on a hamster wheel. On a hamster wheel, you never get anywhere, and you always have farther to go. There is no reward, only pressure to work harder or move faster.

If you want to break free of vicious cycles and create changes that last, it’s critical that you learn how to recognize your accomplishments and celebrate the milestones along your journey—because you are planning on staying on this path for a very long time. Equally important is finding flexibility to tweak your approach on a regular basis so that it continues to fit you, your preferences and your life.

If this sounds like a foreign language, that’s because, I may be describing skills, strategies, and tools that you haven’t used much or don’t even know about. Creating a new approach when you’ve been stuck in a routine or pattern that didn’t work for you requires a much broader perspective. If you can’t see it yet and feel at a loss about what to do, don’t keep struggling alone, inside your head. That’s the road straight back to the hamster wheel.

Phone a friend. Find a mentor. Hire a coach. Reach out for new tools that expand your possibilities. Change IS possible, but in order to change you must do things differently.

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

I know you are busy. I also know that many of you are anxious to figure out how to get “it” all done, and also find the time to focus on your personal goals and to feel more in charge of your life. That’s exactly the topic of the free Smart Woman’s Call I’m inviting you to this month. I hope you’ll join me, if you’d like to make 2011 your best year ever!

Upcoming Smart Woman’s Free Teleseminar Series: December 21, 2010:

No More Excuses: How to Create a Winning (Do-able) Strategy for Personal Success in 2011

Are you:

• Fed up with New Year’s resolutions that fizzle by February?
• Burnt out on diets and exercise plans that only discourage you?
• Tired of being tired, stressed, and overcommitted?

It’s time for a No Excuses Approach. It’s time for a change. Life is TOO SHORT to stay stuck in cycles that aren’t working for you. I’d like to show you the way out (and the good news is, that probably is NOT about working harder than you already are).

Join me for a free call on December 21 at 1pm Pacific, 4pm Eastern where I’ll share with you my tips for cutting through the excuses and creating a winning and do-able strategy for personal success in the New Year. I’ll cover:

• Why a New Year’s resolution almost always flops or fizzles out
• How to quickly discover whether your goals are designed for success—the litmus test that I use
• What THRIVING in your personal life can do for your bottom line (both of them)
• The three biggest mistakes I see smart women make CONSISTENTLY which sabotages their success
• The three questions you should be asking yourself today to boost your momentum and increase your odds of achieving success in any area of your life.

…and much more. I’m also going to share with you the first information about my 2011 T.H.R.I.V.E. Formula™ Series: Four Weeks to Unleashing Your Inner Champion

Will you join me for a free call on December 21? Go to here for all the information and to register.

PS: Yes, the call will be recorded, but please try to be there live. I have surprises

If you are a stress eater or struggle with emotional eating of any kind, you know how frustrating it can be. Emotional overeating is one of the primary reasons it can be so hard to achieve weight loss that lasts—and ongoing weight loss battles are a huge energy drain. The weight loss industry is a big business, and there are plenty of plans, approaches, and “experts” out there, willing to “help you” in the search for a slimming solution that lasts.

Before you try the latest idea, here’s a question to consider: Do you need more weight loss wisdom, or is over-achieving actually making weight loss harder? In your quest to achieve success, are you creating overload and overwhelming yourself? It’s an important question, because this can create a big overeating and weight trap for busy women with high expectations.

I recently heard a great comment from someone about overwhelm. She said that even accessing the highest quality help, information, and ideas can feel like being hit by an avalanche if we have too much of it.  If you’ll excuse a food-related metaphor: when the portion is too big, even the best help isn’t digestible. And yet, if you are someone who expects a lot from yourself, you are likely to be haunted by a question that can get you into trouble:

“What else can I do?” or “What should I be doing?”

Are you always adding to your weight loss to-do list? Taking action is a strategy that we use to be effective when we feel out of control. And while taking action is the first step in creating success, taking too many actions creates overwhelm. Are you falling into this trap?

Here are some signs that you are an over-achieving emotional eater:

• Are you an emotional eater who has a bedside table heaped with the latest books on the topic?
• Do you know so much about nutrition and weight loss science that you can’t make a decision about what to eat anymore—because you’ve heard so much contradictory advice?
• Do your attempts to lose weight turn into life overhauls and plans for change that quickly overwhelm you and that feel much too hard to stick with?
• When you finish a task or arrive at a “pause” in your day, do you automatically ask, “what should I do now?”
• Do you have a hard time doing nothing?
• In spite of all your effort, are you feeling stuck or ineffective when it comes to losing weight or eating the way that is best for you?

Over-achieving causes overwhelm. It increases the overall level of stress in your life. If you are an over-achiever in the area of health and weight loss, it could easily be preventing the very goals that you are trying to achieve. Women who are trapped in a cycle of constant activity and “always doing more” end up being exhausted and less productive in the long run. Not only do overwhelm and stress lead to overeating for many women, there’s another problem with over-achieving: constant activity can keep you from seeing the real solution.

Here’s what happens when we over-achieve. We can get so focused on “getting it right” and “figuring it out” that we aim all our energy in the wrong direction and we create a cycle of working very hard but not getting anywhere. That’s what yo-yo dieters are experiencing. They are caught up in a cycle of taking drastic action to lose weight, but they are so busy “achieving” that they haven’t created a blueprint that will allow them to create lasting success.

Stay tuned for my next post. I’m going to share my tips for how to break out of the over-achiever cycle and create a path for change that will last–and not burn you out!

Take good care,

Are you an emotional eater ready to make these changes in your life? The Emotional Eating Toolbox™ Take Action Series starts soon. This six week program is all about creating a lasting blueprint for successfully taking control of emotional eating—in a do-able way that fits with your unique life. You can find out all about the program here.

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.

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:

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,

If you haven’t heard yet, you will soon—it’s everywhere in the media. Oprah has disclosed that she has regained weight she worked so hard to lose and that she now weighs 200lbs. My heart goes out to Oprah—as well as to the millions of women who struggle just like her. Today, on a morning news show, I watched two reporters banter back and forth about what they believe she should be doing to reach and maintain a lower weight. They discussed their certainty that slower weight loss, smaller meals, and more frequent exercise are just what Oprah needs. They rattled off new behaviors they think she could easily make permanent if she would just follow their advice. My husband just shook his head at them knowingly as my reaction started to show on my face.

It’s not about the food.

I can’t imagine how painful it must be to have the world discussing your weight struggles. As of this morning there were 830 articles on Google about Oprah’s newest admission of weight gain and I have no doubt that the number will more than double quickly.

It’s not about the food—and Oprah knows that. I’ve never spoken with Oprah, but I have worked with enough clients struggling with weight and food and emotional eating to know that Oprah almost certainly knows all those food and nutrition and healthy eating tips. Oprah knows how to exercise and Oprah knows how to lose weight. Oprah knows about the ways the body itself can make weight loss difficult (I understand that she also struggles with thyroid problems which can create havoc with metabolism, weight and energy levels). Oprah knows what she “should” be doing and Oprah might even lie awake at night beating herself up when those “shoulds” don’t come to fruition. That’s part of the vicious cycle. Unfortunately for Oprah, she has an audience of millions as she succeeds and fails and takes missteps.

Oprah is a very savvy woman with incredible power and extensive resources. She has accomplished amazing things. If this was easy, don’t you think she’d have crossed this off her list long ago? It’s not simply about knowing nutrition and exercise facts. Oprah knows that. Oprah acknowledges that she struggles with emotional eating.

Emotional eating is about using food for needs and feelings and situations that really have nothing to do with a physical hunger. Emotional eating is about turning to food because you don’t know what else to do or because the habit is so ingrained, that emotional cravings have become indistinguishable from physical hunger.

Nutrition and weight loss facts are an important part of the weight loss equation, but they aren’t the whole equation. If emotional eating is an issue and it isn’t addressed adequately, any diet or food plan will ultimately fail. Most weight loss plans neglect the issue entirely—or—they point out the problem of emotional eating (like it is a character flaw) and warn the dieter “to avoid it.” What emotional eaters need to know is how to avoid it and what to do instead.

When we approach weight loss without taking emotional eating into account, we’ve failed before we’ve started. No diet in the world is going to help us cope with tough emotions or situations. No food plan exists that will help us face stress or loneliness or boredom. Learning to identify our emotional hungers and respond to them without food is a skill that diets don’t address.

Perhaps the worst thing is that when we approach weight loss with a recipe that is missing a crucial ingredient and we don’t know it, we feel like failures when the recipe flops. When the diet (that never addressed the dieter’s emotional struggles with food) fails, we blame ourselves. We feel guilty and ashamed and awful about ourselves. And with weight, the struggle is all too visible. There is no place to hide. Especially for Oprah.

My hope for Oprah, and the millions who struggle just like her every day, is that they have the courage and the time and the space to take a breath and form a helpful game plan—a game plan that encompasses a lot more than calories and food choices.

Emotional eaters thrive and succeed with a game plan that is individualized and that honors their unique relationship with food, their vulnerabilities, their needs and their strengths. My hope for Oprah and all emotional eaters is that they are working with someone who is able to help them step back from their frustration and shame and self blame and approach this issue with a helpful dose of creativity and curiosity.

There is a way out of the emotional eating trap, but shame and guilt and self-blame will slam the door in your face. I hope that Oprah has a coach or a mentor who is helping her honor the strengths and the abilities and resources she already has and is guiding her in creating new tools and ways of coping.

I hope that Oprah finds a solution that lasts, both for her, and for the many who also live with weight loss struggles and who wake up many mornings mad at themselves and feeling hopeless and like they’ve failed. Whether she likes it or not, the world is watching. I know that Oprah knows that her struggle is not only about food and that focusing on the food is much too superficial. I wish that all the people commenting on it and covering the “story” did too.

Take good care,

Melissa

One of the most powerful things we can do to maximize our effectiveness, minimize our overwhelm, and be more successful is to know when it is to our benefit to actually do less. We truly can’t do it all and we will virtually never get it perfect.

Getting fixated on “fitting it all in” or not knowing when we’ve done enough(because we get stuck in that nonproductive place of trying to make it perfect) can be a trap that leads to overwhelm, stress, feeling like we can’t succeed, and often, resorting to food for some sort of comfort.

Multi-tasking has a way of making us feel super-efficient, but what it usually does is keep us from being truly focused on what it is we are doing. When we multi-task, we lose our ability to be mindful and we are less aware. This also contributes to stress, overload, and the bad habits we turn to to “cope.”

When we are busy; when we are jumping from one thing to another (or even doing three things at a time), we can become so used to that rhythm that we aren’t even aware of the stress or the overwhelm that is building. When we spend every waking moment chasing our day, just doing what “has to” be done, there isn’t any room to be proactive and there probably isn’t enough room for self-care.

Deliberately doing less, or purposefully working to reduce stress, requires creating enough time to pause and to become aware of all that is going on. It’s important to learn to take a step back in order to gain perspective and to even be able to realize when we are in overwhelm. The next step is creating a piece of quiet time where you can make a decision–a conscious choice–about how to move forward.

You may benefit from practicing this act of pausing. Challenge yourself to sit quietly for 3-5 minutes each day. Sit and do NOTHING. Close your eyes, stare at the ceiling, watch your fish in your aquarium. Move your mind gently away from the list of things to do or the grocery list. Practice pausing.

You may find that this act of completely stopping, even for such a short time, is incredibly difficult. You might even tell yourself that this is one of those activities you can benefit from by just imagining yourself doing it. Trust me–it’s not true. The more you resist it, the more you probably need the practice.

Take good care,

Melissa