Emotional Eating is Self-Sabotage

This article on Emotional Eating is printed with permission form Dr. Linda Berry Dr. Linda is a long time friend and colleague.  I work with so many people whose health is compromised as a result of emotional eating.  Dr. Linda shares her strategies.

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Speaking from experience, emotional eating is self-sabotage. Yes, it probably tastes good. And yes, it satisfies a need. But doesn’t it just take you further from yourself and the goals you want to accomplish for health and well-being?

The facts keep stacking up — healthy kids eat more than their classmates who are overweight. Having the body that you want doesn’t involve deprivation. It just demands changing behaviors and making different choices.

Why is that so hard? Maybe you were bullied about your weight growing up. Maybe there was a battle at the dinner table every night in your home. Maybe your Mom was a stress case or overweight when she had you in her womb. Maybe you were violated in some way by family, friends, church, or community when you should have been protected and nurtured instead.

Whatever the reason … you need some new knowledge, skills, and inspiratioin to banish the demons that push you into eating patterns that no longer serve your peace of mind, brilliance, or productivity.

What would it be like if instead you ate in synch with the natural rhythms of the day … just enough to be satisfied and not stuffed, food you felt good about eating … that made you feel vital and alive instead of guilty, heavy, and sedated?

When asked why they ate, a group of women gave reasons like:

• Because I’m upset
• When I’m lonely
• If I’m tired
• Out of boredom, etc.

Do you know that none of the women said they ate because they were hungry? Our culture has taught us to use food for everything except good nourishment!

Want to break out of that pattern to shine with a healthy body in time for the holidays? This is the third free call I’m offering on “How to Get Thin for the Holidays”. Many who responded told me they know what to do to lose weight but don’t carry it out because of emotional eating.

So I decided to offer scholarships to everyone who was on those two calls PLUS anyone else who’d like to change some unhealthy habits they know are dragging down their health, and well-being.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful this holiday season to step up with a smile, confident in the way you look, proud of the commitment you made to yourself to lose weight — or at least not get more bloated — before the end of 2010?

Wouldn’t it be more fun to be peppy, cheerful, and radiant instead of worn-out, irritable, and sluggish from stuffing yourself with tempting sugar-laden foods and drink?

Invest an hour of your time for the FREE Live Call (or listen to the recording at your convenience):

How to Heal Emotional Eating

A FREE Presentation – 3 Simple Strategies to
Banish the Eating Demons

Tues, Oct 19 at 5:30 PM Pacific, 6:30 PM Mountain, 7:30 PM Central
and 8:30 PM Eastern

with Dr. Linda Berry author, teacher, and healer

• The #1 thing you need to focus on to have the body you want. (Most doctors don’t even know this.)
• A 3 Part formula for breaking free from the emotional eating habits that sabotage your best intentions to get in shape and stay that way for good.
• Secrets to tripling your energy and optimizing your weight. Not knowing this used to cost me hours of lost joy and freedom, as I struggled with fatigue, mental fog, and food addictions.
• The most critical mindset shift you need to make before attempting to make serious diet and lifestyle improvements. Don’t even bother with all the strategies we’re about to teach you if you’re not willing to do this!
• How to get the knowledge and support you need to make lasting changes that will bring you freedom, joy, and vitaility. (It’s easier than you think.)

NOTE: This call is perfect for you if you eat to stuff, bury, put-aside, lighten, forget, or avoid emotions. Wouldn’t you love to retire the demons that push, plague, and taunt you to act in ways that ultimately hurt you?

I’m ready!Tell me how to face the eating demons!

Did you know that carrying around too much weight can increase your blood pressure? If your joints hurt taking off extra pounds will lighten their load so you feel lighter, stronger, and more flexible. And GI problems are oftern linked to being overweight too.

When your body doesn’t feel good and you’re not happy with the way you look it’s hard to get through the day much less enjoy your life isn’t it?

What if you could take three simple steps to banish the eating demons that plague and taunt you? Instead of doing what most people do – packing on more pounds then waiting once again to take them off in the New Year — but probably failing.

What if this this holiday you emerged slimmer, happier, and healthier? Wouldn’t that feel good?

Learning a bunch of new stuff isn’t what’s going to make the difference in your body shape is it? You’ve also got to take action! The action steps you’re going to learn in this one-hour free teleseminar don’t involve taking any pills. They don’t involve buying into ultra-expensive weight loss programs either. And they’re not another crash and burn diet scheme that makes you gain more weight than you lost when you’re finished.

What would it be worth to you to look and feel better? Wouldn’t it be worth an hour of your time? Don’t delay. And don’t worry if you’re not able to make the live call. It will be recorded and a link will be sent to you when the call is done.

Sign-up HERE for How to Heal Emotional Eating

5 Simple Strategies for Avoiding Food Ruts with Gluten Free Raw Foods

When you decide to start eating a gluten free, allergy avoidance  or raw foods diet for healthy weight,  strength and stamina, and to help your body heal from chronic health challenges, it can seem overwhelming.  There are new foods to experiment with, comfort foods you’re not really happy about letting go of and all new ways of preparing and timing your meals to get all the nutrients you need and avoid the toxins that are making you ill.

Stay tuned over the next few days for several blog posts and the announcement of a free teleseminar to offer give you lots of strategies about how to eat, what to eat and how to deal with cravings for the foods you’ve created an emotional attachment to.

For today, I’d like to address strategies to keep you from getting into a rut around your food choices.

It’s so easy to become overwhelmed when making diet changes. You may feel that there’s nothing familiar left to eat, start eating lots of fruits and salads or packaged foods that claim to be nutritious, and then start to feel frustrated and unfulfilled.  I know how it is…I’ve been there.

Over the years of working on my own eating habits and counseling thousands of patients and students on optimizing their own health, I’ve developed strategies that have helped a lot.  SO I thought today I would share 5 of them with you.

1- Everytime you go shopping, choose at least one food you’ve never made or tasted before.  Then check your recipe
books or do a web search and and choose a recipe you’ve never made before that features the new ingredient.

If you do this a couple of times a week, you’ll soon develop a repertoire of satisfying recipes that you can make quickly and easily.  I have several good recipe books in the shopping area of my website if you need inspiration.

2- Make friends with herbs and spices.  You can capture the essence of a particular type of ethnic cuisine my liberally sprinkling your food with seasoning blends.  I like to purchase pre-made mixtures for convenience to use when I am short of time and create my own when I’m less busy.  I’ve made my own seasoning blends using tried and true combinations of ethnic seasonings and added extra punch and nutrition by grinding kelp powder and adding hemp seeds.

3- Purchase a dehydrator and learn to make your favorite comfort foods in healthy new ways.  You can still eat bread, cheese and crackers, cookies and chips on a health supporting diet.  You just need to learn new techniques and have a selection of tried and true recipes to follow.  A dehydrator allows you to make delicious comfort foods from vegetables, herbs spices, nuts, seeds, sprouted grains and fruits.

I’ve spent the last year putting together two amazing products that teach you just how to do this step by step.  There’s an e-book with over 250 pages of detailed instruction plus over 160 recipes and a DVD set with recipe guide and laminated charts that shows you every step of the way.

You can get on the early notification list by going to www.DriedandGoneToHeaven.com

4- Experiment with food combinations you wouldn’t ordinarily think about doing.  I recently discovered that I love mango with avocado and a pinch of cayenne.  It couldn’t be easier to fix and it tastes divine.  Just yesterday, I blended some coconut butter (whole organic coconut flesh blended into a cream) with vanilla and poured over frozen cherries.  The coconut hardened on the cherries and it was like eating candy.

5- Attend food preparation classes regularly to get new ideas and learn new techniques.  It’s helpful to find classes taught by people with lots of experience.  You’ll benefit from their vast years or even decades of experimentation and perfecting their technique.  If you can’t be there in person, attend online.

About a month ago I discovered that there’s is a huge demand for high quality food preparation classes. We had over 100 attendees worldwide attend our Bread Making class last month…and it was announced within only 2 weeks of the start date.  We’re expecting even more participants for our upcoming series.

We’ll announce the entire lineup of classes tomorrow when the website is completed.  In the meantime, check out
our “Thai Food Goes Raw” class and learn to make delicious, nutritious recipes that are so satisfying and aromatic,
you’ll be making them all the time.

http://www.drritamarie.com/videoclasses/thaigoesraw

The class will be held in Austin Texas and broadcast over the internet.  As a participant in either the in person class or the online broadcast, you’ll get access to the high quality videos after the event is over and a pdf format e-book of the recipes, complete with a photo of each recipe.

The price of the videos will go up as soon as the class is over, so even if you can’t make the live call, you’ll be able to watch the videos and get started making the recipes right away.

It’s so exciting to teach these classes, and I’m priveleged to have on my team two amazing chefs, Karen Osborne, a graduate of Living Light Culinary Institute and Pamela Weems, trained by me as a certified Alisa Cohen Living on Live Foods chef and instructor.

The Thai Raw Food menu is amazing!  check it out at http://www.drritamarie.com/videoclasses/thaigoesraw

In my over two decades of coaching and consulting patients and training people in the art of whole fresh foods for optimal health, I’ve found the the most profound changes to health come from the power of your fork.  What you put in becomes the building blocks for your fit, trim, comfortable and joyfully present body, mind and spirit.

Eating wholesome nutritious foods does not have to be boring.  Get out of your food rut and enjoy the foods that are rebuilding your body into an amazing vessel of love, health and joy!

Love, Health and Joy to YOU,

Dr. Ritamarie

Getting Control of Emotional Eating: My Secret Strategies for Getting off the Out of Contol Roller Coaster

Have you ever felt like you’re on a roller coaster when it comes to your health habits?  You know what to do, but you don’t always seem to be able to follow through?

You’re not alone.  This is a problem shared by many.  So quit chastising yourself.

Comfort eating most likely started when you were very little. Some well meaning adult offered you a lollipop to soothe the hurt when you scraped your knee. You felt better and a neural pathway was created. The event was repeated and the pathway got reinforced. Now every time you feel a certain way, you reach for food to soothe the associated emotions.

I know it often feels like it’s out of control and you’ll never be able to stop the roller coaster long enough to get steady, but, in my two decades plus of clinical experience, I’ve noticed that many people do succeed at getting off the out of control ride and achieve the energy, strength and excellent health they desire.

Today I’m going to share a few tips from Chapter 5 the Vibrant Health Mindset Course I created witht eh help of Registered Dietitian and nutrition counselor Jane Harden, RD, LD, MS .   We have devoted a large part of a chapter to techniques you can use right away to tame the emotional eating demon and get your diet habits under control.  Ready?

Here’s a short-cut process to use when you’re caught unprepared for the situation at hand, and can be used to get you out of trouble.  It might take a few attempts to get this to work because the emotional eating response is burned into your brain.

Strategies for Overcoming Emotional Eating

The first step is to identify the emotion you’re feeling that has caused you to turn to food for comfort.

1- Are you tired? It’s very common for people to turn to food when feeling weary.  The problem is, the food usually makes the tiredness worse.  If you’ve identified that you’re tired, take a break.  Even sitting quietly and closing your eyes for just 5 minutes could offer the refreshment you need.

2- Are you lonely? Eating when lonely is a common reaction, yet once the food is gone, the loneliness returns.  If  you discover that you’re lonely, call a friend, go for a walk and talk to a neighbor or go to a health food store and strike up a conversation in the produce aisle.  You never know when a new best friend is ready to appear in your life.  If loneliness is a common situation, join a meetup group in an area of interest.  There are hundreds of groups on all interests -  art , music, hobbies, health…you name it.

3- Are you angry? Many of my clients and patients reach for food to stuff their anger.  Instead, work trough the anger.  If you are unable to confront the target of your anger directly, write a letter.  Even if you never send it, you’ll experience relief.

Work through the list…there are really only 4 emotions…all others fall into one of these categories.  Here’s an easy way to remember them – they rhyme:  scared, mad, glad, sad.   What causes you to eat emotionally?  Once you create new behaviors in response to the emotional triggers, you’ll create new neural pathways and the emotional eating  pathway will shrivel from disuse.

Outsmart Your  Cravings

Here’s an example of a worksheet we’ll be sharing during the live teleclass training portion of the Vibrant Health Mindset process.  Complete this in advance so when emotional eating strikes, you’re prepared.

1. Make a list of the emotions  and the circumstances that trigger emotional eating. Is it visiting your mother, going to restaurants with friends, fights with your partner? What situations (and feelings they illicit) are most likely to trigger you to soothe yourself with food?
2. Once you’ve identified the emotions, make a list of the foods that you’d typically turn to to soothe your pain.
3. Describe how you feel after eating the food(s).
4. Describe what, if any, physical or emotional symptoms eating these foods causes in the short term.
5. Make a list of what continuing to eat these foods may keep you from achieving in the long term?  (ie vibrant health, strength, stamina, clean arteries, exotic vacations, enjoying your grandchildren, etc
6. List at least 3 things you can do instead to soothe the bad feelings?

Here’s where you can use the fun list activity we teach in an earlier chapter .

Using this technique alone can help a lot.

To deepen the process and learn much more about the steps to creating a mindset that results in vibrant health, join us for the Vibrant health Mindset e-course and teleseminar series.  It’s a life changing process.

www.VibrantHealthMindset.com

The Video below will give you an idea about the class.

Question of the Day:  what do you do to handle strong and uncomfortable emotions?

Answer below.

Love, health and Joy

Dr. Ritamarie

Conquering Food Cravings: Stop Sugar Cravings and Overcome Adrenal Exhaustion

What causes food cravings…you don’t really need the sugar and bread, do you? The cravings for food you you can’t seem to control are a cry from your body for help. What really causes food cravings is a deficiency of one of your basic needs. When nutrients are out of balance, your body craves food to rebuild its stores. When you respond to the cravings with sugar, starches and nutritionally depleted and harmful foods, you add stress to your body, which burdens your adrenal glands. So giving in to food cravings can contribute to adrenal exhaustion.

Learn why and and how breaking free from emotional eating and providing the nutrition you really need will stop cravings in their tracks. By supplying your body with the building blocks of a healthy mind and body, you allow your adrenals to rebuild, your fatigue and exhaustion improve and the cravings lessen.

Question of the Day:  What do you crave and how do you handle it when the craving gets really strong?  Post your answer in the comments box below.

Strategies For Effectively Changing Your Health Habits: Goal Setting

If you’re the type of person who has no problem sticking to new behaviors, like diet changes, exercise and meditation when you set your mind to it, despite temptations, then congratulations.  You are certainly not in the majority.  If this describes you, then skip reading this post.  Or, better yet, forward a link to those people in your life who struggle with sustaining healthy changes, despite the pain and suffering it may be causing them.

The fact of the matter is, most people struggle when they make a decision to get healthier, and begin to make changes in that direction.  Emotional eating patterns, favorite food temptations, and social and family pressures are amongst the biggest issues that cause you to deviate from your chosen path, despite your desire to stay on track.

A big part of creating vibrant health is really getting to know who you are and what you want. All too often you start a rigorous health revitalization program, only to fall on your face when temptations take over. A successful health regime needs to start with being and connecting, not doing.

I’m hosting a teleseminar to allow us to explore together what you really want for yourself and what you value the most. This teleseminar “Setting Your Goals, Connecting to your Vision” is a powerful, interactive session intended to supercharge your health and immunity by reconnecting you to the powerful healer within who knows what to do to be healthy.

To sign-up for the teleseminar, download your handout and receive a copy of the recording, please go to

http://www.drritamarie.com/SettingGoalsTeleconference.htm

Turn your have-to’s into love-to’s and consistently make the choices that joyfully create vibrant health.

Love and Health,

Dr. Ritamarie

http://www.FreshnFunLiving.com
http://www.EatYourWayOutofPain.com
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http://www.GreenFoodMagic.com

E-Mail:  DrRitamarie@DrRitamarie.com