How do you fix a broken resolution? With LOVE (and Micro-steps)
Maybe it’s happened again—you had great plans for 2020 and perhaps you started off strong, but you’ve gotten sidetracked or fallen off the wagon, and you feel like giving up. Even worse, you feel like you’ve broken a promise to yourself, and feel like a failure. ...
In Praise of Freedom (Diet-Freedom)
On this Independence Day, as I'm celebrating the founding of our nation, I'm also enjoying a special kind of freedom, something I discovered by accident many years ago: freedom from dieting and peace with food and with my body. It was hard-earned, and well worth the...
Thinking about losing made me gain. Here’s what I did instead…
Maybe this has happened to you? Years ago, early in my work life, I would start thinking about how I looked and soon the idea would come: "I should lose some weight". Then shortly after that, I'd find myself in the break room, in front of the Coke machine, holding a...
Your Comfort Food is special, now capture its power
Are warm, powerful memories associated with it? Honor them and own them—they’re a part of you. By consciously acknowledging them in this way, you can learn to bring them to mind without the food, so those good feelings are there for you when you need them.
How to know when to stop
I was speaking with my friend Elly about an article she had just written, and she shared something that’s especially powerful for eating just the right amount. For years, I’ve emphasized how important it is to get in touch with your internal signals of hunger and...
Try something Radical!
"My body would be OK if I lost 25 pounds” “I won’t be happy until I can wear my old jeans” “No one could love someone like me” Do you ever have thoughts like these? I did for years, and at one point I thought I was a worthless human being because I couldn’t do one...
Thanksgiving Challenge — 3 Steps to Enjoyment Without Regret
Worried about eating too much on Thanksgiving? That worry can not only ruin your holiday, it can cause you to overeat! Let’s deal with it now so you can truly enjoy yourself this week. What’s there to worry about anyway? Food is the focus A tradition of stuffing...
Boost Your Curiosity Quotient to achieve Joyful, Lasting Weight Loss
Feel guilty for overeating, for eating "sinfully"? Cancel that thought! We judge ourselves (and sometimes others) constantly, and often harshly. It's part of the way we're wired, as human beings and especially as Americans. 70% of men and 80% of women in this nation...
Joy in the morning–How to have a good day with food
It’s not about eating as little as possible, or strictly controlling what you eat! Those things feed obsessive thinking and often lead to overeating in the long run. A good day with food leaves you feeling “just right”—in your body, in your energy, in your mood. To...
Don’t just “try harder”, ESCAPE the Willpower Trap!
If Willpower is your ONLY resource, eventual failure is almost assured. That’s why the vast majority of people fail to lose weight and keep it off in the long run. That’s why compliance with eating plans is so poor—even among people with serious, even life-threatening health conditions.
Instead of Eating, SURF THE WAVE!
The next time you feel the urge to eat, notice if you’re physically hungry or if a feeling or need is driving the desire for food. If it’s a feeling, take 90 seconds and practice the Rosenberg Reset: The Rosenberg Reset: 1 choice + 8 unpleasant feelings + 90...
Weight Loss Failure? Blame Kryptonite!
Why Kryptonite? It steals our natural, innate power… With new super-hero movies coming out, let’s take a moment to remember Superman: he could fight and fly, had super-hearing and x-ray vision. He was powerful, unstoppable—except when kryptonite was around. Just a...
Afraid you’re a “Sugar Addict”? Let’s get to the root of the problem.
Addicted to Sugar? Feel powerless around cookies, cake, candy? Before you decide to go “cold turkey”, let’s take a look at the "Addiction Model” the concept of sugar addiction is based on. The basis of the Addiction Model is a series of studies done in the 70’s with...
Show YOURSELF a little love today!
It may not be easy, it may seem forced or silly, but it’s VITALLY IMPORTANT! Sure, there’s room for improvement—we could all be better, do better at something, but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve love. There are imperfect people in our lives, but we love them...
One Reason Trusting Yourself can be the BIGGEST Challenge
"I'm smart, and I've been successful at so many things, but with diets the weight has always come back! If it's so simple, why haven't I figured it out myself?" We don't think to look within ourselves for answers when there are so many solutions out there already--...
Wellness–a New Religion?
Worthiness, Belonging, Sin, Guilt, Shame -- these are usually the purview of religion, but more and more they're to be found lurking under the umbrella of "wellness". The linking of wellness and "goodness" has been building for years now, but it's reached epidemic...
Take Back the Beach, the Trail, the Dance Floor!
'Tis the season to bare it all, to be seen. In spite of the images we're fed by the media, the world is full of people of all shapes and sizes--many of them actually having a good time. Imagine that! Yes, really imagine it: If self-consciousness is holding you back,...
The TWO WORDS she needed to hear: “Enjoy It!”
One woman caught up to me later and said “ENJOY IT! That’s what I needed to hear, thank you so much!” It had clicked for her–the link between pleasure and satisfaction–and she could feel the power of holding a different point of view about her eating. She’s on her way to a life of confident, joyful, eating.
The Problem with Perfect
Protect Your Mind by challenging negative judgments, both their accuracy and the right of anyone else to make them. Your body is your business, and so is your weight. When people say negative things (even in seemingly helpful ways) there’s an underlying judgment that the way you are right now is “not OK”. That actually does not help the situation–it only makes you feel worse (there’s research on this: Self-Acceptance leads to lower weight. Self-criticism does not).
Chaos Theory and Your Weight (Yes, there’s a link!)
Over time, the result of tweaking our eating rules is stabilized weight and often, weight loss: we eat more and more out of hunger, usually stop when we’re satisfied, and our weight gradually moves toward its genetic set point and then levels off.
Weighing, Measuring, Counting, Worrying … THERE’S A BETTER APP FOR THAT!
There’s a better way than counting points to determine how much to put on your plate, how much to eat once you’ve started, when to stop: YOUR OWN BODY KNOWS!
Making Peace with Your Body
97% of women have a negative thought about their body at least once a day. For many, it's a constant refrain in the back of their minds--and, of course, it's not just women. Especially now: Society is putting ever more emphasis on weight (often in the guise of health...
Is Food a “THING” for you?
One of my Magic of Mindful Eating workshop participants stopped me cold with that question this weekend — it took a few moments of silence to think carefully about my answer.
Willpower vs. Choice
I had a great question on Friday from Dr. Norma Harris, a long-time friend and MBSR Teacher. (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) "So what's the difference between Willpower and Choice?" The AIM Eating response would go something like this: When there's something you...
No food allowed for 36 hours! Suddenly, I couldn’t think of anything else…
It’s really not a big deal to skip a few meals. After all, I’ve been an AIM Eater for decades now, and I’m not easily triggered — or so I thought!
After a negative comment about her appearance, she posted this amazing video comeback
If you’ve ever criticized your own body or someone else’s, watch this!
GOOD READ: Secrets from the Eating Lab by Traci Mann, Ph.D.
There’s so much great information in this book, I don’t know where to start…Here’s a tidbit — Diets make us dumb! On a diet we’re so busy thinking about food and eating that we don’t perform tasks or process information well: “These studies have shown that dieters...
Sandra Aamodt makes the case for not dieting — make that YOUR RESOLUTION too!
Watch this wonderful TED Talk by Sandra Aamodt. She quit dieting and lost weight, but the big story is the back story...she explains how the body and brain react to dieting, and makes the case for Intuitive Eating. [youtube...
Photoshop, Reality, Self-Image
This isn’t new, but it’s still mind-blowing…see just how totally unreal are the images we’re bombarded with. It’s no wonder so many of us are dissatisfied with our bodies! Watch as the model is Photoshopped out of reality and into perfection.
Why Intuitive Eating Could Change The World
Great article! The writer is off to a wonderful start, and reading this would be a great foundation for anyone who wants to give Intuitive Eating a try.