How to Stop Overeating, Overcoming Overeating

THE TALE OF TWO SISTERS

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

As I work with people struggling with their weight, I continue to see patterns emerge that illustrate some very important points about the deeper parts of the emotional eating problem. Recently I saw two women who have been struggling with weight issues for decades, both of whom have a very difficult relationship with their sisters. And it is the "sister thing" that was "eating them both up" when we talked, and is quite central to their binge behavior and chronic weight problem.

Both women are married and both have very strong successful careers. Neither woman can stop binging when they are unhappy or distressed with their sisters. Both women tended to dwell in the past despite the fact that their present life is going quite well, albeit the normal stress bumps of every day life. In both cases, the emotional passion was much more intense when talking about their childhood grievances than about any real time problem in living.

The striking commonality on the surface is the conflict they have with their sisters, though each conflict is quite different. One feels overloaded by the responsibility of taking care of her older sister while the other feels exploited by her younger sister. Both relationships are enduring with absolutely no real danger of ending, and therein lies the deeper problem. They are both stuck and neither can figure out an easy solution to the thirty year problem of how to fashion a healthy, mutual, workable relationship with their respective sister.
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All or None Thinking

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

As an emotional eater, when your life feels overwhelming and oppressive, you not only feel you want to eat, you actually need to binge. You have a desire to get away from it all, to get inside your own private familiar bubble, we call the food trance. When you just can't take it anymore, you say to yourself... "I need this for me. I'm doing enough and I need my reward." But you won't get the reward you are looking for if you apply "all or none" thinking to the situation that is oppressing you.

There are many reasons for periodically being overwhelmed or feeling oppressed by life, but the most persistent one is related to family roles adopted early in life that have not been modified over time. The most common role is taking responsibility for other members of the family, and encumbering yourself with the IMPOSSIBLE task of making everything all right, and fixing everyone. It is usually the most "sensitive" one in the family who gets caught in this role.
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TRUE WILL

FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

In order to cure yourself of the obsession with food, you first have to walk away from the endless willpower battle between your conscious will to diet vs your unconscious will to binge or overeat. To do this, you have to reconnect to and trust your innate healthy "true" will. That's how you will overcome the intense cravings for food and take control of your eating habits, as well as manage and enjoy your life as a proud adult.

One person asked, is the "true will" the same as the higher power in the 12 step program? That higher power has been described in so many different ways that I hesitate to answer. However, if trusting in the higher power is the way to reconnect and trust yourself, then the answer is yes.

You may be asking yourself, what is MY "true" will, and how do I find it?
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Three Forms of Will Power

FRIDAY, AUGUST 06, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

How many times have you had this thought?
"I have no willpower when it comes to food!"

Well it's not true. You have plenty of will power. You have a determination to lose weight by dieting, and you have probably spent thousands of hours exercising that "will." But there is something else you are determined to do, and that is to avoid certain feelings and thoughts about yourself that bother you.

That other "will" mandates that you eat to stuff down those feelings. In that sense, you have too much will power and you are out of balance when it comes to food. This battle of the two wills is endless unless you recognize that you actually have a third "will" power source.

There is a power within you which I call the "true will", and that is the will to continue to mature, deal better with reality, and be proud of yourself as an adult who can make your life work. You know about this "true will" which is pushing you to stop hiding in the shadows or behind your fat. This true character of who you really are deep down inside is the part of you that you need to reinvest in or reinvent. You have known about it all along but have been afraid to admit it out loud, because you don't know how to let it out safely. However, as you have seen from all the other comments to this blog, people have learned how to reconnect with themselves safely and have prospered.

I have been saying this in other ways in the last few blogs and today it may be even clearer to you. Once you take the leap of faith and start working on yourself instead of your diet, you will find a new source of energy and motivation, and your "true will" will have the power to make the right decisions in all areas of your life. That's what it really means to have will power. That's when you will be "cured" of your food obsession.
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Fear, Hope and Growth

FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

We've firmly established that in order to "cure" yourself of a food obsession, you have to do some personal development work, i.e. reinventing some part of yourself. The comments from last week both add to the list of what it means to reinvent yourself and at the same time, re-introduce the fear of doing so. Today I want to discuss that fear.

Growing and learning from experience has such a positive value and outcome, it is always liberating. No one, who has ever grown and found deeper parts of themselves, has ever said they were sorry they did it. So why is it that what seems so right and natural, is also seen in such a dark light as something dangerous and impossible? It is true that whatever is avoided tends to grow dangerous in the dark recesses of your imagination. If you have been avoiding growth by interrupting it with compulsive or binge eating, then whatever you have avoided has grown to monstrous proportions inside your mind. The longer you avoid it, the more frightening it becomes to look at.

I can assure you that there is nothing to fear and everything to gain. However, some of your emotions may be telling you a different story. One of the comments from last week illustrates the extreme degree of fear and avoidance. -- "I've been reading this blog for a while now. Sometimes I am too afraid to read it. I guess that's what you would call avoidance."

She is too afraid to even learn about emotional eating in this very safe venue probably because it might tempt her to look at herself, and learn about herself. But she does look a little, and has a peek at what we now know is a familiar starting fear for almost everyone who becomes a member of the Shrink Yourself program. -- "Why? I don't know. What am I afraid of? Good question. I don't know really, but it may just be failure. Because I've failed so many times before."

Now she is intrigued and determined to do something more, meaning maybe something like this can work, and maybe she can look deeper. -- "I decided to finally buy your book and get serious. Stop avoiding. Thanks for making your blog available for people like me who are comforted by reading it." However, then she also pulls back her commitment so she can escape if she needs too. -- "I will eventually, hopefully, be inspired to make positive changes when the time is right."

Why not make positive changes right now?
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Reinventing Yourself: Part 2

FRIDAY, JULY 23, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

Emotional eating is a way of interrupting the natural conversation that is taking place within you, between your mind and your brain. Your brain continuously sends you messages in the form of feelings and thoughts and makes a demand on your mind to think in order to sort them out and figure out how to respond. This is the way that people grow, change, mature and recover from their childhood experiences as they go through the phases and stages of adult life.

If you put the "mute" button on by overeating or binging, you shut off the flow of wisdom and intelligence of your own brain, and the maturation process comes to a halt. The normal process of reinventing yourself in little daily steps doesn't happen, but the need to reinvent yourself doesn't go away. You are aware that you have to change in some way, but you don't do it because you are too scared to try. Then you get behind in the personal development work you need to do.
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Reinvent Yourself

FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

Emotional Eating is not simply a bad habit, but a symptom of a much more complex human phenomenon that involves all parts of your mind and life.

Recently a well respected figure in the world of adult development died, Dr. Robert Butler, someone who I knew professionally, but not personally. He too wrote about the life cycle and the issues of adapting to the various phases of adulthood. His primary focus was on post retirement, where my focus has been on mid-life crisis.

His thesis is that people have to "reinvent" themselves many times during the course of life, and that this is especially important if one is going to enjoy healthy aging. Although we haven't used that particular term, that is core of what we do here. In order to fully break the emotional eating habit and free yourself from binging, compulsive eating or the food obsession, you have to reinvent yourself!
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As a psychiatrist who has worked with thousands of overweight people over four decades, I can understand how much you suffer when you are overweight or think of yourself as fat. Not only do you suffer from the physical and medical consequences of extra weight, but I know that you also suffer from painful feelings, such as disappointment, hopelessness, and guilt.

This program will help you learn the mental skills you need to stop overeating. Because, most of the time, you are really not hungry for food but for something else.

As you uncover and demystify your hidden triggers to eat, you will diminish their power over you, until one day you wake and the cravings will be gone! The new thinner, healthier, happier YOU will emerge.

Find out if you're an emotional eater and what your triggers are. Take my Emotional Eating Diagnostic.

JOIN NOW!