All they give you is juice? NO THANKS!

Now that it’s the day after Christmas you will no doubt be starting to get trolled by instagram, television, facebook, your friends… everyone who wants to start a 2022 weight loss challenge. It’s so difficult to avoid the allure of these juice fasts, quick starts, all keto all the time fads….

There are so many reasons that diets are so seductive.

They take away our choice- we don’t have to make decisions- we just drink the juice.

They make us feel proactive, as though we are doing something for our health and well-being

They give us the promise of some future perfect life where our bodies are not weaponized, where we are happy and successful and feel good in our clothes.

But, unfortunately, as you know… diets just don’t work long term. If they did, you would have lost weight on the very first diet you went on in high school, or middle school or elementary school and then never had to diet again.

It’s the second part that’s the clincher, right? Never had to diet again. Every diet works for as long as you can stick to it. But most people cannot stick to a diet long term or the other option is that folks become so obsessive that food and exercise rule their lives- they lose out on family, friends, outings and interaction because they are afraid of temptation afraid of missing a workout.

IF there is a third situation where folks go on one diet and lose weight and keep it off and then feel great for the rest of their lives and still have active social lives with all of their friends and never have any fear about food or social events- I’ve never heard of anyone like that. This is why the diet industry is so rich- it’s a never ending industry. One with billions of repeat customers.

What might be better? To think about how to take care of yourself in a way that is kind, gentle, patient and loving. To give your body the food that it wants and needs (and only your body knows what it wants and needs, no one can tell you that- NO ONE), to learn to listen to your body. To eat when your body is hungry, to give it the food that nurtures it and to move it in a way that feels joyful (not punishing) and to not punish yourself by purging or starving yourself or bingeing or speaking to yourself unkindly on the days that you eat more than your body wanted.

Your body deserves love, respect and kindness. Mostly from you. Your body is only a vessel for staying alive in order for you to do all the amazing things in the world that you were meant to do. So keep it alive and if you want to keep it healthy, you can to do that too! Not by dieting, but by treating it with respect and kindness.

I care about all of you and want you to get out into the world and make it a better place. I know that you can do that. I know that you have that power.

Happy Holidays to all of you.

From today until the end of the year, I am giving everyone $200 off of my stop binge eating program. So please do take advantage of it. Click here for testimonials AND – if you have end of the year funds, you can use your FSA/HSA card to pay for it. Just email me if you decide to do that and I’ll provide you with a receipt to submit to your FSA/HSA.

Click here to purchase the program paid in full and get $200 off with the code: GRATEFUL

Click here to purchase the program and pay over six months and get $214 off – use the code: GRATEFUL

Click here to purchase the program and pay over twelve months and get $235 off – use the code: GRATEFUL

If you haven’t already, you should follow my Instagram page! I have to be totally honest and tell you that my assistant is the one who curates the page. But she does an amazing job. It’s so inspirational.

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Available in paperback, on audible or for kindle.

The post That Day After Christmas Juice Fast appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

Thanksgiving is a hard day for everyone. Family, lack of family, plans, lack of plans…

Most people don’t actually binge at Thanksgiving dinner. They usually eat until they are comfortably full or even uncomfortably full. The binge comes when they get home or later that night. Because for people with eating issues, being full is NEVER comfortable. Usually the binge comes when you’re in the kitchen cleaning up, or after you get home, or after everyone has gone to sleep. And it’s pretty much always alone.

I have been getting emails all day from people telling me that they overate or binged on Thanksgiving and that they hate themselves, that they are failures, that they are worthless, that they are defective, that they will never be good enough. They will never look like the women they work with – they won’t go back to the office in January with their whole new me pandemic look and they’ll never look the way those Insta models look or even how their mother thinks that they should look. They’re telling me that they are they only person in the world who “can’t stick to their diet…”

This breaks my heart severely. These are hate letters that people are sending me all about themselves.

You are not defective. You are not flawed. You are not bad. Eating or overeating or eating off your diet does not make you a bad person. It’s not like you kicked a homeless person or set fire to your neighbors house — or walked around a supermarket without a mask knowing that you had COVID and coughed on people. You just ate more than you had planned to. How could you not have? It’s Thanksgiving! The holiday that is centered around eating too much.

Diets don’t work because diets go against human nature and basic biology. You didn’t fail at dieting, you won at being human. And your human self deserves love and kindness most of all from yourself. When you plan to restrict your food – you are sure to crack at some point. Human willpower can only go so far. And when highly palatable food is all around you, it’s very difficult not to eat it. And if you try really hard not to and you’re able to – there is a big chance that you will wind up bingeing on it or something else later. Please don’t beat yourself. Please try your best to take a breath and remind yourself that it was Thanksgiving. That you are allowed to eat. And that today, even if you ate more than you wanted to or planned to, that you can still eat. You don’t have to punish yourself by restricting or bingeing or purging. You need to eat. You don’t have to earn your meals. Eating is a basic human need.

You also don’t need to look like anyone else. As women we have been taught to relentlessly compare ourselves to other women. If we see a beautiful woman, we think to ourselves “she is beautiful – therefore that means that I am not… I should hate myself…” and when we compare ourselves to others, we fail to see what is beautiful and wonderful about ourselves. We believe that what we don’t have makes us flawed. We have all been taught that, to focus on our “perceived” flaws… by the things that make us feel separate from ourselves rather than aligned with ourselves.

But what if we thought about focusing on what makes us special?

What if we thought about not comparing ourselves to others (we can’t be anyone else nor should we be) and instead thinking about the amazing things that make us who we are?

Even if you can focus on one thing that you like about yourself (a self-gratitude list) I think you might find some peace. It doesn’t have to be about the way that you look, it can be about who you are and what makes you feel the most like yourself. And then you might spend some time focusing on that. For instance, if you like that you are a voracious reader – spend time reading, if you like that you are a great writer, spend time writing, if you like that you are a fantastic knitter, knit scarves or hats or sweaters for people you love or for strangers who are less fortunate than you. If you like that you are kind and generous, spend some time serving food at a soup kitchen, if you like that you are a good friend, call someone who needs you and be a good friend to them. Or, if you just like that you are “that bitch” harness your inner Lizzo, put on some heels and get out of your house and have fun–  … or whatever YOU want to do. You are trying to be more you, not more anyone else. So find what makes you who you are and inhabit that. This is how you develop and firm up that firm sense of self that is so helpful in healing.

What I mean to say here is that it’s important for you to be you and not to try to be anyone else. And when you get in touch with what makes you you and you truly align to that – you will begin to feel embodied and be able to revel in your own authenticity rather than thinking that you’d be better off being someone else.

And… if you are interested in signing up for the 5 Week Program to Stop Binge Eating-  we’ve created a sale for the weekend! Once you buy it, it is yours forever so if you take advantage of the sale now, you can start it next week or next month or next year or 5 years from now. This is yours forever. 

THE BLACK FRIDAY CYBER MONDAY SALE IS ON NOW! GET $150 OFF THE 5 WEEK PROGRAM!

USE THE CODE “GRATEFUL”

The post If You Binged On Thanksgiving appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

There are so many reasons for it, especially now after a year and a half of lock-down- when people have become obsessed with their Covid weight gain and ads for diets and workout plans are popping up everywhere.

It starts on October 1st, the day that Starbucks introduces its pumpkin spice latte and other limited edition coffee drinks. They begin to tempt us with warnings that it will only be here for a limited time. It messes with our scarcity psychology and causes us to spend tons of money and eat and drink lots of things that we normally wouldn’t spend money on- just because it’s “limited.” I call it the pumpkin phenomena. All of a sudden it’s pumpkin beer, maple latte’s, candy corn frappuccinos, etc. etc.

After that is Halloween, which messes with everyone. There are women in sexy cat costumes, candy everywhere, parties, no parties, covid drama, etc. etc. and then there is the after Halloween affect of all the half price candy, bowls full of your kids’ trick or treat bounty- just sitting there TAUNTING you. Halloween is a super scary holiday for binge eaters and emotional eaters because Halloween brings candy all over the place and then it lingers for weeks and months afterwards. I hear so many people telling me that they are continuing to binge on their kids’ Halloween candy in January.

After Halloween, Thanksgiving comes which is a full on binge holiday – it brings with it family drama, mashed potatoes and phantom urges, and then there is December.

December is the worst! There are constant parties, constant drinking, there are cookie swaps, latke feasts, gift baskets full of peppermint brownies sent to your office or your home, baked goods all over the place. and then there’s that “well just screw it, I’ll go on a juice fast starting on January 1st and then after 3 days I’ll go Paleo…” and then you binge your way through December feeling awful, sick to your stomach, uncontrollable, uncomfortable and holding on to the promise that 2022 is going to be different. It’s going to be your year and then by January 2nd- you’re back on the cycle and you already feel as though you’ve ruined the whole year!

LET’S NOT DO THAT THIS YEAR!

Let’s have a peaceful, calm, easy and moderate Fall this year. I want to support you in being kind to your mind and body. No crazy diets, no intense binges. And if you slip up, I want reach out to help you stand up quickly and not slide down that slippery slope of end of the year madness.

Starting October 4th, we will be doing the 2021 Fall Cohort of the 5 Week Step by Step Program to Stop Binge Eating. We will all being doing the program together this Fall starting on October 4th!

Here’s what you get:

The FULL 5 Week Step-by-Step Program to Stop Binge Eating For Good and everything that comes with it for a LIFETIME! It’s always yours.
The Facebook support group that comes with it.
Holiday Buddy support. So during the holidays, I help people match up with buddies so that they have extra support and someone (or a group) to text with so they can get help to stay safe and moderate and comfortable with their eating.
I will be doing Facebook lives which are interactive before the major holidays to help give you extra support and answer individual questions about families, food, challenges, etc.
An email every single day in December to help you stay focused on your goal of self-kindness, self-compassion, eating with kindness and love, not over-eating, not restricting, but enjoying your food and not beating yourself up over what you might have done or not done with eating and your food.
I want you to start 2022 strong. I don’t want you to start 2022 thinking “this is the year I finally tackle my food issues,” I want you start the new year feeling calm and relaxed and not feeling like you have to make any big changes. I want you Fall to be lovely, peaceful, enjoyable and full of joy instead of angst over food.
Right now, I am offering the program for $100 off! So if you pay in full today, it will be $399. And- the first 10 people to sign up will receive a free copy of the audible version of Reclaiming Yourself from Binge Eating.

I’ll be checking in with you guys a lot now that it’s Fall to make sure that you’re getting the support you need. I do hope that you will join the program.

If you have questions, please reply to this email with your questions or to check out the testimonials to learn more and see how this program has helped thousands of people recover from binge eating.

The post Fall is Scary for Binge Eating Disorder appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

Your Best is No One Else’s Best

“Don’t worry about what other people in the class is doing, everyone is doing their best, just like you…”

I thought it was a brilliant comment.

I often see people afraid to start something because they base their goals on what other people are doing. For instance, “I can’t go to that yoga class because I won’t be as strong or as flexible or as fit or as thin as everyone else,” and then you sabotage yourself. You don’t do the thing you want to do (learn to play guitar, start writing a novel, launch your own business, etc. etc.) because you base your personal success on what others have done. And then you are stuck. You confuse your best with other people’s best.

But then you don’t get to live YOUR life. And what if you could live your life just for you? What if you didn’t worry about what other people’s achievements were and just focused on your own?

What if your best today is just standing up and stretching? And so you do it. And then you do it again tomorrow. and then the next day. And each day, you do your best. And then your best grows?

And what if your best today is not actually doing anything but just being kind to yourself? Buying yourself a bouquet of flowers? Taking time to wash your hair? And what if you did that again tomorrow and the next day? And then you find yourself being kind to yourself and others effortlessly…

And what if your best today is baking a batch of cookies for your children and trying to eat one or two or three without fear, without shame, without bingeing, without purging, without telling yourself that eating a cookie is a moral failure? And then you did it again tomorrow.

And what if your best today is just showing up. Going to that yoga class and barely participating, but just showing up and maybe doing a few asanas just to get used to the class and check it out. No one will judge you, they’ll just be happy to be there with you.

These are just examples, but what if you could look at yourself and say, “what do I want to do or be today that has nothing to do what anyone else is doing today?” What would that look like for you?

The post How To Do Your Best appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

STOP SHAMING PEOPLE FOR GAINING WEIGHT DURING COVID

This past weekend, one of my girlfriends, whom I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, came over to my house with her husband and kids. When I went to hug her, instead of reaching out to hug me, she pulled up her shirt and grabbed two handfuls of her tattoo clad belly and said, “look at this!”

“It’s beautiful!” I responded, “You’re beautiful and perfect.”  But she was not happy and wanted to show me that she had put on weight since the pandemic. (Side note- she’s a nurse. A nurse during the pandemic. A freaking goddamned hero. She had ridiculous amounts of non-stop stress- not to mention she’s a mother of two boys). She, me,  and most other people in the United States gained weight during the pandemic.  She was upset about it and feeling bad about herself, feeling like she had been bad or done something wrong.

Gaining weight during Covid doesn’t make you a moral failure. Not during the pandemic and not ever.  Yet I have so many clients who absolutely hate themselves and are calling themselves failures because they put weight on during lockdown.

Diet culture is foaming at the mouth to jump on the Covid weight gain bandwagon. But diet culture is ALWAYS looking for a way to shame people in order to make money

Come to think of it, capitalism as a whole loves to use shame and fear to profit. So much easier to sell things to people when they are afraid of what happens if they don’t buy it.

Trigger Warning- Fatphobia below:

When I first moved to California, I remember that 24 HOUR FITNESS (a gym chain up here) had a billboard with aliens landing on earth that said, “When they come, they’ll eat the fat ones first….” I remember this because Marilyn Wann, author of FAT!SO? Led protests against the chain. The fact that they implied that being fat would cause you to be abducted and cannibalized by aliens was absurd and cruel.

Marketing is a little more subtle now, but it still relies on eliciting shame and fear to sell products.

Basically all of my clients have gained weight during Covid and I have as well. Many of my clients are really stressed out about going back to the office, about things opening up again, about having to see family and friends because of their weight gain. And the funny thing is that everyone thinks that they are the only one. They believe that everyone else turned their house into a home gym and became bikini models during Covid. Are there people who did that? Sure, a few. But the majority of people put weight on. If you are reading this, YOU SURVIVED A GLOBAL PANDEMIC!!!!!!!!!! Buy yourself a new pair of jeans. You deserve it.

The Covid situation was so scary and also isolating and caused so much fear and depression and anxiety in people. People moved less since they weren’t out and about. They snacked more since they were always home, and they used food for comfort, which is not pathological nor is it an eating disorder, it’s normal. And when your survival is at stake, eating as a result is biology kicking in. It’s a survival mechanism.

So if you gained weight during Covid, you are not alone. I read a statistic recently that said 72% of Americans reported weight gain during Covid. Which means that if you are in a room of 10 people, there are only about 3 who didn’t gain weight during Covid.

So what are you going to do about it? Nothing.

Your health is certainly important. But as always, focusing on weight loss rather than overall health turns into a shame/blame fest. It leads to obsession and disordered thinking and behaviors around food and body image and scales. So rather than focusing on weight loss in this post pandemic world, focus on gentleness. Focus on being kind to yourself. Meet up with friends for walks or swims or bike rides and spend time outdoors moving again. Buy yourself clothes that you feel beautiful in. Move your body in a way that feels joyful. Eat yummy nutritious food. And most of all, thank your body and your self for letting you get through this really insane time in the world.

You are perfect and whole and complete in this very moment!!!

Your value and worth has nothing to do with your body. It’s what’s inside your body that counts. The parts of you that are kind to yourself and others. The parts of you that can hug, that can tell stories, that can play with your kids or your dogs or your cats or water your plants or who can just sit down and cuddle up with a cup of tea and a good book.

As always, nurture yourself with love and kindness. Your weight might have gone up, and it might go back down again. But the main point here is that you survived. You got through. Don’t let anyone tell you that your worthiness is decreased because you gained weight. And most of all, don’t let yourself tell you that you are not good enough because you gained weight.

The post Covid Weight Gain appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

I was speaking with one of my wonderful and beautiful clients about all her body has been through. Between childhood abuse, chronic illness, fertility treatments, multiple children and a life-long eating disorder- her body has been through a lot.

I was sitting there in total awe of her, thinking how damn strong she was and how amazing it was that she was still alive.

I was overcome with this love and gratitude for her body, for the fact that it had carried her for so long and continued to stay alive and keep her here on this earth. I just wanted to hug her for hours and tell her body that I loved it so much for keeping her alive and for letting us keep such a beautiful person on this earth.

And then, I began to wonder if she ever felt that way about her body, if she ever told her body that she loved it. So I gave her the assignment to tell her body that she loved it every day for a week. And then I gave the assignment to my eating disorder group,  and then I gave the assignment to myself, and now I’m giving it to you.

But HOW Can You Love Your Body When You Hate the Way It Looks?

Healing body image isn’t as simple as standing in front of a mirror and telling your body that it’s beautiful and that you love it. You will never feel okay doing that because you just won’t believe it. But what about telling your body that you love it the way you would one of your children or one of your pets, or someone else you loved? Would you all of a sudden stop loving your child or your pet because they gained weight?

It’s not about loving the way your body looks, it’s about loving your body in a way that is more pure way, like this:

“I love you because we’ve been together our whole lives. I love you because you have kept me alive. I love you because even though I’ve abused you, and been angry at you and said horrible things to you, you keep me alive. You stay with me. I beat you down, I abuse you, I say mean things to you. God, you don’t deserve that. You have carried me. You have kept me alive and for that I love you. I know that I don’t love your size or your shape or certain things about you. I know that I don’t even like you very much. And I know that sometimes I even hate the way you look. But that’s on me, not on you. That’s on society, not on you. YOU are amazing. I’m sorry for the things that I’ve said, I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you, I’m sorry for the things I’ve said that made you feel bad. And I’m sorry that I’m probably going to all these things in the future. But please know for now that I love you.”

Try to tell your body that you love her once (or twice or 10 times) a day for a week or so and then, check in. You will be amazed at the difference it makes.

Related: How To Stop Hating Your Body

Related:  Thunder Thighs and Other “Problem” Areas

Right now I’m loving the book Body Positive Power by  Body PosiPanda (Megan Jane Crabbe)

The post How To Love Your Body Even If You Completely Hate It appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

Why Don’t People Like Me?

And What Can I Do About it?

What has always been generally accepted in the thinking about eating disorders is that they are about “control.” But what does that mean? Is it about controlling food? Not really, food is just the symptom. What control means at its core in eating disorders, is trying to control what other people think about you. We stop focusing on the people who love us and start to hyper focus on the people who are judgmental, critical and spend our time trying to make them like us. The critical people outside of us mimic the voice of an internal critic and we want to do anything in our power to make them like us.

The Diet Starts to Control What Other People Think About You

This is why the diet starts. You want people to think that you are… (fill in the blank – beautiful, in control, happy, have your life together… etc.) I remember when I went on my first diet as a 9 year old. I was being bullied in school and I thought that if I was really skinny that then no one could make fun of me. I’d be impermeable to taunting. I’d be invisible or better yet, beautiful. And this turned into another 15 years of dieting/restricting/bingeing until I finally recovered.

Related: How To Stop Caring What Other People Think of Your Body

What I have discovered in working as a psychotherapist is that people have varying degrees of worrying about whether or not people like them or are judging them or criticizing them or think that they are not good enough, not smart enough, too fat, etc. It rules people’s lives. For example, one woman won’t break up with her boyfriend because she is afraid of what people will think about her being a 43 year old woman who is single. But she’s not happy in her relationship. Another woman doesn’t want to eat because she is afraid that if she’s not skinny people will think that she is unworthy. Another man thinks that if he quits his high paying job that is literally giving him ulcers, that he won’t be able to give his family enough and people will think he’s incapable. And social media makes everything so. much. worse. Because then you are spending 24/7 thinking about how to present yourself in the best possible way so that you can control people’s assumptions about you.

But what if you didn’t care what people thought? What if you realized that they were just scrolling through and trying to see how many likes they got and to figure out if they got more or less than you or someone else?

But What Can I Do When Someone REALLY Does Not Like Me?

And what if  you come to find a person who really just does not like you? What if? Here’s the thing. There is nothing you can do about it. You can’t force someone to like you. You can’t do things to change their mind. I mean, you might be able to, but honestly- why? That seems like a huge amount of time to spend trying to change someone’s mind when you could have spent them time on yourself. When we start to worry too much about what people think about us, we become their servants. They have power over us. We don’t make decisions on our own accord, we make them for others.

Some people just won’t like you…and there’s nothing you can do about and nothing you SHOULD do about it. You definitely can’t and shouldn’t change for other people. It will only cause you to forget who you are.

The only way to get over this is to make sure that YOU like YOU. Instead of caring about the people who don’t like you and worrying why, what if you began to only focus on people who loved you and were kind to you and stopped worrying about pandering to the more critical/judgmental people in your life?   Be kind to yourself, be kind to other people around you, let go of trying to control what other people think, how they act… instead come back to yourself and ask, “how can I be a kind, loving human being to myself? how can I be a kind loving human being to the people around me?” and when you are kind and loving, other people’s rejection and dislike for you will just be a shoulder shrug. “Oh well. that’s okay….” and that is what makes life so much easier.

Extra Help For This

My book recommendation to help you through this is called LOVE IS LETTING GO OF FEAR by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky. He was a brilliant psychiatrist who practiced close by my home. He just passed away a few months ago at the age of 95. Highly recommend his book.

The post Why Don’t People Like Me? How Can I Make People Like Me More? appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

Well… most people don’t binge at Thanksgiving dinner… It’s usually after.

Thanksgiving Binge? It’s okay.

most people don’t binge at Thanksgiving dinner. They usually eat until they are comfortably full or even uncomfortably full. The binge comes when they get home. Because for people with eating issues, being full is NEVER comfortable. Usually the binge comes when you’re in the kitchen cleaning up, or after you get home, or after everyone has gone to sleep. And it’s pretty much always alone.

I have been getting emails all day from people telling me that they overate or binged on Thanksgiving and that they hate themselves, that they are failures, that they are worthless, that they are defective, that they will never be good enough. They will never look like the women they work with – they won’t come back to the office with their whole new me pandemic look and they’ll never look the way those Insta models look or even how their mother thinks that they should look. They’re telling me that they are they only person in the world who “can’t stick to their diet…”

This breaks my heart severely. These are hate letters that people are sending me all about themselves.

You are not defective. You are not flawed. You are not bad. Eating or overeating or eating off your diet does not make you a bad person. It’s not like you kicked a homeless person or set fire to your neighbors house — or walked around a supermarket without a mask knowing that you had COVID-19 and coughed on people. You just ate more than you had planned to. How could you not have? It’s Thanksgiving! The holiday that is centered around eating too much.

Diets don’t work because diets go against human nature and basic biology. You didn’t fail at dieting, you won at being human. And your human self deserves love and kindness most of all from yourself. When you plan to restrict your food – you are sure to crack at some point. Human willpower can only go so far. And when highly palatable food is all around you, it’s very difficult not to eat it. And if you try really hard not to and you’re able to – there is a big chance that you will wind up bingeing on it or something else later. Please don’t beat yourself. Please try your best to take a breath and remind yourself that it was Thanksgiving. That you are allowed to eat. And that today, even if you ate more than you wanted to or planned to, that you can still eat. You don’t have to punish yourself by restricting or bingeing or purging. You need to eat. You don’t have to earn your meals. Eating is a basic human need.

You also don’t need to look like anyone else. As women we have been taught to relentlessly compare ourselves to other women. If we see a beautiful woman, we think to ourselves “she is beautiful – therefore that means that I am not… I should hate myself…” and when we compare ourselves to others, we fail to see what is beautiful and wonderful about ourselves. We believe that what we don’t have makes us flawed. We have all been taught that, to focus on our “perceived” flaws… by the things that make us feel separate from ourselves rather than aligned with ourselves.

But what if we thought about focusing on what makes us special?

What if we thought about not comparing ourselves to others (we can’t be anyone else nor should we be) and instead thinking about the amazing things that make us who we are?

Even if you can focus on one thing that you like about yourself (a self-gratitude list) I think you might find some peace. It doesn’t have to be about the way that you look, it can be about who you are and what makes you feel the most like yourself. And then you might spend some time focusing on that. For instance, if you like that you are a voracious reader – spend time reading, if you like that you are a great writer, spend time writing, if you like that you are a fantastic knitter, knit scarves or hats or sweaters for people you love or for strangers who are less fortunate than you. If you like that you are kind, and you can safely do so, and you are not a high risk person go serve food at a soup kitchen… or whatever.

What I mean to say here is that it’s important for you to be you and not to try to be anyone else. And when you get in touch with what makes you you and you truly align to that – you will begin to feel embodied and be able to revel in your own authenticity rather than thinking that you’d be better off being someone else.

I hope that you have a really great long weekend.

My GET THROUGH DECEMBER WITHOUT BINGEING email series will start in the next couple of days! If you are not subscribed to the newsletter, click here to receive a daily encouraging email every single day in December…

Sending you love, peace and gratitude.

Oh, and if you haven’t taken advantage of this free self-love meditation, here you go! This will be a nice one to lay down and relax to tonight. It’s short and calming.

The post So You Binged on Thanksgiving. Now What? appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

A long, long time ago, in a lifetime that is so far from the one I’m currently in, I had one of my first major, major forays into deeply disordered eating on Thanksgiving. It was 1986, I was twelve years old (12 YEARS OLD!!!!) and we were having our Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandmother’s boyfriend’s daughter’s house. Said boyfriend’s daughter also had a daughter who was about the same age as I was, only she was a much better person than I was. I knew this because my grandmother kept insisting “why can’t you be more like Allison?”

I didn’t realize it then, but there was no way I could be more like Allison. Allison had a mother and father who lived under the same roof, she lived in a house in the suburbs in Connecticut and money, cool clothes and lots of friends weren’t an issue for her. And, not to mention, she was tall and thin. I lived in a tiny apartment alone with my mother in the Bronx, we didn’t have money for Guess jeans and Swatches and being the total nerd girl that I was, I was more interested in books and my saxophone than boys and clothes. I was also painfully shy, so even if I wanted to make friends and have a cool TV life like Justine Bateman in Family Ties or Rickie Schroder in Silver Spoons.. it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I was too different. I didn’t have the look, I didn’t have the house, I didn’t have the family structure. No brothers or sisters, no two parent household, no house with a yard, no mother baking me cookies when I got home from school, just one totally stressed out Mom who came home after dark totally frazzled, angry and needing a break but not getting one.

Anyway, it was a huge set up for me. We’d go to these people’s house in the suburbs and I’d feel so different. My mother would be annoyed, and my grandmother would be pinching me and whispering to me, “why can’t you be more like Allison?” This particular year, when I was twelve, I remember everyone gushing about how tall and thin and beautiful Allison was. And I felt short and not thin and ugly. So I ate lots of yummy Thanksgiving food to help me feel better. Allison’s mother could cook and cook and cook for days and make the most delicious meals. My mother didn’t have the time to cook those kinds of meals– what we mostly ate at home was brown rice and squash and tofu. I remember that particular Thanksgiving my grandmother jabbing me when I was on my second piece of pie and whispering “Stop eating piggy… don’t you want to be thin and beautiful like Allison?” All of my shame came flooding into me. I couldn’t win. I went up to the bathroom and I don’t even know how at age 12 I knew how to do this, but I looked for laxatives in their medicine cabinet. I took a bunch of ex-lax right there in that Connecticut bathroom and that night, after we went home and my mother had gone to sleep, I dragged her bathroom scale into my room and stayed up all night with stomach pain and cramping and using the bathroom. And every time I went to the bathroom, I would note that I was down another notch on the scale. I did this until it was light out and the Star Spangled Banner was on television and then I went to sleep, feeling light, empty and proud of myself for all the great work I’d done. (????)

There were so many things that Thanksgiving that triggered my disordered eating episode. The food was inconsequential in a sense… it was just there to soothe me. There was my shame, my comparative thinking, my family, my sadness/loneliness, my usual restrictive way of eating that was so different from what was being served.. Given this scenario, I was set up for a really bad night. I can think of a lot of cases where there are a million set ups for disordered eating on Thanksgiving, and it’s not just because the food is there.

In my first semester of graduate school, right before we left for Thanksgiving break, one of my professors asked who was headed home for the break. Most of us raised our hands. “Well,” he said, “I don’t care how much therapy you’ve had, I don’t care how much you meditate, I don’t care how much healing you’ve done, when you go home, you are going to be that same twelve-year old kid that you used to be. Same family of origin issues, same role in your family… so be prepared and expect it when it happens.”

I want to support you in having a really fantastic Thanksgiving this year, one without disordered eating, without self-hatred, comparative thinking or severe loneliness. And so what if all of these difficult feelings come up? It’s okay, let’s see if we can create some strategies around not acting out in your eating disorder.

When I think about family systems, I imagine a giant machine with gears that all work together to create one fluid movement. This is what happens in families, we all have an agreed upon role. If one person were to change, it would gum up the works and the machine would begin to move differently… not necessarily worse, just differently. And not everyone has agreed to change so we wind up just back in our old fixed gear position, no matter how many changes we’ve made.

When you are back at your childhood home, or with people you knew from way back or even around food that is old and familiar, you will likely notice some phantom urges.

It’s weird. Out of nowhere, you might notice old thought patterns just popping into your head, like, “when everyone goes to sleep, I will turn the television on and sit by myself and binge and purge…” but these aren’t necessarily attached to desire… they are just sort of old passing phantom thoughts and feelings because you’re being reminded of a scenario that triggered disordered eating back when it all started for you. It might just be old thought energies popping into your mind triggered by being in an old situation with the same old smells and sights and people and feelings. The phenomena of phantom limbs is when someone feels pain in a limb that has been amputated. This was the same thing- feeling a pain that had no attachments or groundings. In this time of travel and family, you might find yourself having lots of old urges coming up again and again. It’s okay. This is to be expected. Ask yourself, “is this a present day urge or is this old material presenting itself.” It’s like this, let’s say you went home and found your seventh grade diary and started reading through it. You come to the part about your big crush– the boy who sat next to you in sixth period. You read about how he ignored you or never noticed you and how you felt so sad and rejected and how more than anything you just wanted him to notice you. When you read that, you might notice some old feelings of pain and longing come up, but you wouldn’t feel the actually desire to be with this boy. That’s because the feeling no longer exists, it’s just old material. When you go home, you are confronted by a lot of old material that triggers old feelings. Remind yourself, “this feels really real, but it’s old, it’s no longer a valid truth, this isn’t relevant to today’s circumstances…” You might go home and feel like a twelve year old, but you won’t actually be a twelve year old. You are an intact adult who can handle the difficult emotions, even if they are difficult.

Remember to breath and tell yourself that just because the old energy is coming back, you can still bring in the new energy just by breathing it in and remembering that it is there for you. Put your hand on your heart and be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that being human is so, so very messy and human emotions are not rational or linear and that everyone has them, everyone feels completely alone and sad and messy at some point. Tell yourself that i’s okay and that you are perfect and whole and complete exactly as you are in this moment, even if you’re messy, even if things feel out of control, it’s okay… being human is never easy for anyone (I bet even for Allison wherever she is)…

The Thanksgiving meal day itself is something that is always difficult, so I’ve compiled a list of things to help you stay in your recovery during that time:

How To Not Binge Eat on Thanksgiving:

1. Have an intention around not bingeing, but not around food. Let yourself eat whatever you want, but tell yourself that you’re not planning on bingeing on it. This is because if you tell yourself no sweets, but then you have one bite of pecan pie, there’s a good chance that you’ll binge on it and not stop bingeing. Know that you can have potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, all of it! Anytime of year, or even the next day for lunch. This is not all or nothing and it doesn’t have to be a binge, it can be a meal where you eat what you want until you feel satisfied.

2. DO NOT SET UP, CLEAN UP OR COOK BY YOURSELF! Being alone is a huge set up for sneak eating or eating compulsively. Make sure that you either have someone to do this for you or that you at least have help or even someone in the kitchen with you so that you’re not alone. Let yourself get support too, let the person who is with you know that you’re trying to avoid sneak eating or disordered behaviors around food so you’d feel better if they were with you.

3. Tell your family about your Eating Disorder recovery. I always encourage my clients to let their family know how their recovery has been going when they go home for holidays. It both gives them accountability as well as love and support from the family.

4. DO NOT COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE ELSE- As women, we have been absolutely conditioned to look at other women and then see what they have or what they look like that we do not have or we do not look like. We then focus on what we are not instead of what we are. When we do that, we feel awful. And we hate ourselves and when we hate ourselves, we abuse ourselves (with food, alcohol, restricting, intense exercise, mean self-talk, etc). Instead of focusing on what other people are and what you are not, focus on what makes you great, what makes you beautiful and what makes you you. Focusing on what you believe you lack, on your “perceived” deficits will always, 100% of the time, make you feel like crap. And that’s what we have been taught to do, look at other people and figure out what they have that we don’t and what they are that we are not and then feel terrible. It’s an awful cycle and it’s a non-winning cycle because you will never be anyone other than yourself. So be with that, be with that amazing person who is you. Make a self gratitude list – list things that you are thankful for about yourself. This will help you both love yourself but also love others around you without feeling jealous or resentful. It will also create space between you and people who might be critical of you (grandma, Mom, etc…). Others criticism, especially those who you are closest to are reflections of their own fears about themselves and they are projecting them onto you.

4. Get support to manage your social anxiety. One of the more challenging parts of these holiday dinners is being around lots and lots of people and just feeling overwhelmed. One of your instincts might be to dissociate this is where you sort of disconnect from your body so you don’t have to deal with your anxiety and all the people around you. At this point you might find yourself just eating and eating and eating to deal with your discomfort. A good thing to do is to ground yourself and come back to your body. Feel your feet on the floor, look around, see who you see and come back to your body. When you leave your body– you have no one there to to be present and let you know whether you actually want to eat or if you’re just using a coping mechanism. Find yourself physically and emotionally, remind yourself that you might be feeling overwhelmed and shy and that’s okay, (no shame in being who you are) do what you need to comfort yourself. Take a walk, go to the bathroom and breath or drink some water just to feel present again. Find a safe person to anchor you and to help you feel comfortable. If

5. If you don’t have anyone supportive at the Thanksgiving meal, join our supportive and secret facebook group to checkin with people who are both struggling and able to give support. a friend who might be going through recovery with you or someone you feel safe with. If you cannot do that, have a support person who you can talk to on the phone intermittently throughout the meal.

6. Make sure that you eat a good solid breakfast before you go to Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t show up hungry. If you do, your hunger might take over and squelch your intention. Our culture is so entrenched in diet culture that the idea of not eating, doing a “turkey trot” and then bingeing at Thanksgiving dinner has been normalized. But it’s not normal and it’s not good for people with disordered eating as it costs much more than it’s worth. Try to make it into a somewhat normal eating day for you so that you don’t have to take a step back in your recovery.

7. Eat whatever you want, no food is bad, but do try to incorporate a solid nutrient dense meal, with protein, vegetables and a starch. If you just snack or graze on a bunch of different foods, you will inevitably wind up feeling unsatisfied, as though you’ve not really had a meal. This could lead to feeling too full and trigger a binge. I really like the one plate theory for big buffets and dinner. Decide that you are going to just have one plateful of food and choose whatever it is that you want to eat on that plate. But when that plate is done, you’re done. That should take the stress away from the after effects of eating and the bingeing that happens when you are uncomfortable and unsure after you eat your meal.

8. Take breaks. Go into the bathroom and breathe deeply while you’re eating. This will help you digest your meal and to stay calm. Suit up for winter and get outside into the cool air for a walk around the neighborhood. Change your environment a bit so you don’t get lost in it or in your reaction to it. Let yourself get away from the stress of the food and the stress of family that sometimes exists. If it’s too cold or not realistic for you to leave, take your cell phone into another room and say you need to make an important call and talk to your support person.

9. Talk to people in rooms away from food. You don’t have to sit on a couch in front of a giant platter of cheese and crackers and nuts and hors d’œuvres talking to your aunt as it might take away from your conversation. Try to concentrate on conversations with people and really engage, really make connections with people who you’ve not spent time talking to in a while.

10. Eat slowly and mindfully. It’s not a race to the end. You can enjoy good food and good conversation.

11. Don’t compulsively overexercise in anticipation of “eating extra calories.” It will leave you very tired and hungry, again, unable to empower yourself to hold your intention.

12. Bring your journal with you so that you can sit and relax and process your feelings during the meal rather in case you are feeling like you need to stuff down your feelings with food.

13. Listen to mediations or relaxing music that puts you in a calm mood before you go.

14. Make a gratitude list before you go. Think of 10 things that you are truly grateful for. Research shows that creating gratitude lists can decrease anxiety, increase positive relationships, improve physical and psychological health, increase empathy and compassion and increase self esteem.

15. Engage with the very young and the very old. If there are children there, spend time playing with them. If there are elders there, spend time talking to and getting to know them. Both things that will be enriching and get your mind off of food.

16. Mediate. Sit quietly in the bathroom for five minutes and take deep slow breaths into your belly. Inhale slowly to the count of five and exhale slowly to the count of five. This will calm your body and allow you to let go of any stress or anxiety that your body is holding on to.

17. Remember that if it seems like it might be too hard this year, you don’t have to go. It’s true, you might let some people down. But you can always explain to them that it’s important for you to take care of yourself in this way this year. If you don’t think that they’d be amenable to this, or you think that they will accuse you of being self centered or self absorbed, don’t offer any explanation that might leave you vulnerable to being shamed or insulted. Creating boundaries with people is important. You don’t have to worry about letting people down wben you need to do things that preserve your SELF. Your sanity is the most important thing to keep you safe and at peace.

18. Create loving boundaries for yourself. Think of your inner child and think about how you would help your child if they wanted to eat all the pie and all the mashed potatoes. You would be kind and understanding but explain to them that you didn’t want them to get a bellyache! So of course they are allowed to eat pie and mashed potatoes, but in moderate amounts. A good rule of thumb, keep portion sizes for your Thanksgiving treats to about the size of the palm of your hand. Don’t try to restrict desert because that can be a setup for a binge. Instead, tell yourself that you can sample 2-4 different deserts but take smaller pieces, so that you get to eat some of everything! Whatever works to put on one desert plate. It’s so important that you let yourself have what you want so that you don’t leave feeling deprived and wanting to binge later.

19. Consider refraining from taking home leftovers if you feel they will trigger a binge. That doesn’t mean not to take home leftovers, but ask yourself, will I be safe with this food or not so much? You know yourself best.

20. Plan for what you will do for the rest of the evening– feeling full can trigger a binge in many people – so plan to do something relaxing (conversation with good friend, watching a good movie on Netflix, etc.) when you get home that night and be done eating.

21. Listen to last year’s Recovery Warriors podcast  where Jessica talks to me about Thanksgiving!

22. Be kind and gentle with yourself. In most people with BED, being too full triggers a binge. Remind yourself that getting too full on Thanksgiving is what most of America goes through and not to beat yourself up and that it doesn’t have to trigger a binge.

23. And what if you do all these things and you still wind up bingeing? Forgive yourself. It’s okay. The last thing I want for you is to continue this binge for the rest of the week and into December. See How To Recover from a Binge.

But I’m all alone on Thanksgiving- what should I do?

Being alone on Thanksgiving is isolating, lonely and challenging. But there are many things that you can do to counter that.

1. Volunteer to serve meals at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen

2. Get away- get out of the house and travel and spend the day doing something you love, hiking, or exploring.

3. Go out and see a movie marathon

4. Get online and see if there are any meet-ups for people alone on Thanksgiving

5. Spend the day doing things that feel organizing and energizing, cleaning and organizing your house, giving yourself a facial or hot oil treatment, relaxing and catching up on your favorite movies or podcasts.

Are you traveling for Thanksgiving? Please read HOW TO AVOID BINGEING AT THE AIRPORT

Thanksgiving the full out binge holiday – it brings with it family drama, the pain of the pandemic and those who can’t be together, and then of course there is the food, the mashed potatoes and phantom urges, and around the corner is December. December is the worst! There are constant parties, constant drinking, there are cookie swaps, latke feasts, gift baskets full of peppermint brownies sent to your home office! Baked goods and cookie swaps- friends and families delivering these items not to your office but STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOUSE… and there’s no office party. You’re the only one eating these things. Then there’s that “well just screw it, I’ll go on a juice fast starting on January 1st and then after 3 days I’ll go Keto…” and then you binge your way through December feeling awful, sick to your stomach, uncontrollable, uncomfortable and holding on to the promise that 2021 is going to be better. (Godwilling) It’s going to be your year and then by January 2nd- you’re back on the cycle and you already feel as though you’ve ruined the whole year!

LET’S NOT DO THAT THIS YEAR!

Let’s have a peaceful, calm, easy and moderate Fall this year. I want to support you in being kind to your mind and body. No crazy diets, no intense binges. And if you slip up, I want reach out to help you stand up quickly and not slide down that slippery slope of end of the year madness.

I invite you to join for LIFETIME ACCESS to the 5 week program so that you can get the support you need for the holidays.

And, because of the craziness of 2020, I am offering discounts through the end of the year. You can either go and learn more about the program by going to recoverfrombingeeating.com or you can just sign up straight from this email. If we do another cohort, it will be in the Fall 2021. But the program is always offered as a self-guided program and there is always the support of the group. So sign up anytime. If you want the discount, be sure to sign up before the end of the year. And if you want extra support for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and any other holiday I forgot, go ahead and sign up now!

Choose your own discount according to what you can afford.

COVID100 for $100 off

COVID200 for $200 off

Discount codes are applied as a percentage and are applicable to payment plans as well.

To purchase choose one of the options below – and be sure to apply the coupon codes if you need the discount.

Here’s what you get –

• The FULL 5 Week Step-by-Step Program to Stop Binge Eating For Good and everything that comes with it for a LIFETIME! It’s always yours.
• The Facebook support group that comes with it.
• Weekly group coaching calls every Monday until mid-January
• Holiday Buddy support. So during the holidays, I help people match up with buddies so that they have extra support and someone (or a group) to text with so they can get help to stay safe and moderate and comfortable with their eating.
• Group get togethers – arts and crafts, yoga, pilates, cooking classes, things to keep you occupied on the weekends when bingeing happens a lot.
• An email every single day in December to help you stay focused on your goal of self-kindness, self-compassion, eating with kindness and love, not over-eating, not restricting, but enjoying your food and not beating yourself up over what you might have done or not done with eating and your food.
• I want you to start 2021 strong. I don’t want you to start 2021 thinking “Thank god 2020 is over – and this is the year I finally stop trying the next new diet and make peace with myself, my body and learn to eat for pleasure, nutrition and in the most self-loving way. I want you start 2021 feeling calm and relaxed and not feeling like you have to make any big changes. I want this Autumn and Winter to be lovely, peaceful, enjoyable and full of joy instead of angst over food. This program and the members in this group are some of the most lovely, inspiring, kind, supportive and wonderful people I’ve had the honor of meeting.

I do hope that you will join the program. Feel free to check out the testimonials to learn more!!!

And, if you haven’t yet, follow me on insta – I’ve really been having fun with it since I started it in March.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m sending you SO MUCH LOVE!!!!!!

The post How To Not Binge Eat on Thanksgiving appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.

There are many people who come to me with a desire to stop binge eating. They tell me that they have tried for years to get over their binge eating disorder, but that they have no willpower, no ability to stop overeating. For most it’s a ritual that happens when they are all alone, a letting go, a release. A time to be alone, to not be bothered, to totally shut their minds down.

Upon further investigation, we usually find that the binge eating disorder is concurrent with a restriction or obsessive dieting behavior.

All eating disorders represent a total disconnection between the body and the self. At some point someone tells you or you are lead to believe that you are not enough. Not pretty enough, not handsome enough, not thin enough, not smart enough, not good enough.. and so rather than coming back to yourself, you try to prove to everyone around you that you ARE good enough. You try to get smaller so that you are not taking up too much space, you eat less than your body wants, you completely disregard your body’s natural hunger signals. You begin to disregard all of your own needs. You stop eating when you’re hungry, you don’t stop eating when you are full.

Your hunger signals and your human mechanism for eating gets completely overridden by your belief that you need to be someone different and you try desperately to control your eating. Which then results in a total breakdown of your natural human eating behaviors.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. You can come back to yourself. You can find peace inside of your body and with food. Recovery is always relational. Sure it’s about healing your relationship with food, but what it’s really about is healing your fractured relationship with yourself. Healing the beliefs and the shame that led you to do harmful things to your body with food and diets and bingeing and restricting.

You are worth recovering. Your body is worthy of love. You are worthy of love and respect. Most of all from yourself. You deserve that. You need that.

We are starting our fall cohort of the 5 week program to stop binge eating for good on MONDAY November 2nd.

This kicks off this coming Friday, October 30th with a FREE zoom coaching call. Click here to register! The call is there to discuss how to get through Halloween, through Thanksgiving, through Christmas and through New Years in a ways that feels sane. I will tell you more about the upcoming program and answer any and all questions you might have.

This Fall Cohort will help you to peacefully arrive in 2021 not with a bang, but with a peaceful brain. It starts right after Halloween and takes you straight through the holidays into mid January to help support you while all the diets and weight loss gurus try to get you to join their ranks.

If you are ready to sign up now, GO FOR IT! You can start immediately right now if you want and get a head start. Or you can wait until next Monday when we all start together as a group.

The post Is it Binge Eating or is It Something Else? appeared first on Binge Eating Therapy.