Decoding Emotional Eating
You’ve probably heard that Oprah has gone public with her latest weight regain and her struggles with emotional eating. She recently said, “My drug of choice used to be potato chips. Now this year, it was organic, multigrain blue chips — but a bag of them.”
My first thought? Wow, maybe Oprah has unresolved anger issues. What does anger have to do with potato chips and corn chips? Well, people who work in the field of emotional eating have long known that we crave different flavors and textures depending on the emotional needs we’re trying to “fix” with the food. Read more
What Does it Mean to Offer Ourselves Radical Acceptance?
For the last year I’ve been blessed to be working with Bill Baren, a wonderful business and life coach. We talk weekly and he has been by my side throughout the process of bringing NurturingHope.com from a spark of an idea to the actuality of a home for those of us who struggle with compulsive hoarding and eating.
There is a critical, self-loathing voice inside my head, and it seems like it has always been there for as long as I can remember. Perhaps you have one too. It tells me that I’m just not good enough, that maybe I don’t really have my life under control, that maybe I’m just a misstep or two away from living in squalor and filth again, that maybe my eating is already out of control and I’m back on the road to morbid obesity. It tells me that I can’t trust myself, that I have to be self-critical and hard on myself or my life will fall apart again. The voice both creates and expresses a sense of fear and anxiety that can be paralyzing at times.
A month or two ago I was discussing this self-critical voice with Bill. He asked me a question that boggled my mind: “Catherine, what would it take to accept the part of you that does not accept yourself?” At first this question seemed so paradoxical that I could not even comprehend it. My self-loathing voice is like an enemy who is determined to make me miserable, an enemy whom I cannot escape. I desperately wanted to eliminate this part of me, not accept it! Read more
Christmas and Emotional Eating
In 2001 I weighed 357 pounds, and in the seven years since then I have lost — and kept off — more than 100 pounds. People who share my struggle with morbid obesity know that this is a life-changing amount of weight to lose. I no longer worry about whether I can find clothes to fit, whether there will be a chair that is big enough when I go somewhere new, whether there will be an empty seat next to me on the plane. I can do cardio exercise and I walk for hours on end. Changing from a body size that is huge to one that is merely big means that most of the time I feel pretty normal these days; back when I was at my largest, I always felt like people were staring at me — the truth is, they were. Read more