The Juicy Woman

What Are the Roots of Your Food Obsessions?

Recently Dr. Phil was on Rachael Ray discussing the importance of not dieting in order to lose weight permanently. His words were, “One and done.” Let me ask you. Are you still dieting? If you are, do you find that you’re spending most of your day thinking about what you just ate or what you're going to eat next, Dr. Phil says that the possible roots of your obsession may surprise you. Before you take that next mouthful of food when you know that you aren’t hungry, see if any of these 7 statements ring true for you.

•    Most of the time, people make the mistake thinking that their obsessive behavior and compulsive thinking means that they have no control around food. Your relationship to food only reflects how you feel about yourself, your self image, the things you tell yourself every day about what kind of person you are, what you deserve, what you are capable of achieving.

•    If you’re spending much of your day obsessing about food, you may be using food as a way of avoiding some part of your life that needs attention. Food often becomes the battlefield substitute when we have trouble setting boundaries and/or asserting our needs.

•    Studies show that between 92-98% of all people on diets will regain their weight within 5 years. Diets are not the answer. Self management of your stress is. You must be able to deal with the root of the problem. Food is not your problem. You have to relearn new ways of speaking to yourself.

•    Consider that in order to truly get control of your eating, you have to give up the control. By taking the focus off of food and putting it onto caring for yourself and expressing your feelings, your food issues will melt away along with the excess pounds and inches you carry.

•    Do you sometimes think that you’re a total screw up, a worthless human being simply by virtue of your pants size? What if you said, "My body image is independent of my self-image. If I am a good, caring and loving parent/spouse/child and an honest, responsible citizen, it doesn't matter how much I weigh"? You may want to weigh less and that's OK. Remember weight and self-image are not the same thing.

•  Realize that you can unlearn this compulsive eating behavior and lose weight without dieting. If your definition of weight control is to avoid foods you love, your cravings will get you every time. You need to make peace with food and friends with your body.

•  When discussing food obsession, Dr. Phil believes it's important to note that one of the biggest problems with weight loss programs today is that they are highly focused on food. Many popular programs incorporate a regimented diet in which people have to weigh food and count calories, etc. People go on diets because they don't want to eat less food but the structure of the diet requires them to spend their entire day focused on food, which only makes them want to eat all the time.

Take it from me. I’ve learned that if you want to make peace with food and friends with your body, it’s a process. Here's a quote from one of my mentors, Dr. Nancy Bonus, the creator of The Beyond Dieting Bonus Plan.

"Permanent change requires a climate of love and nurturing, not self hatred and resentment."

What no kick butt, bootcamp drill sargeant approach! No. It doesn't work and you already know that. Don't you? Join me on October 9 for my next teleclass, Tap Into Self Acceptance and Love the Skin You're In. Let me teach you what I know about making peace with food and friends with your body. Hurry and be one of the 20 eligible women to save $20 on the cost of the class by leaving a comment on this blog.

Think of Your "Slip ups or Failures" as Eggs

Back in my dieting days, one of the toughest things for me was to know what to do to recover from a binge. To my way of thinking, I was either on the diet bandwagon or “off the wagon.” There were no in betweens. As a result of all that pressure to try to be perfect, it was so hard to stay on my diet. I was always teetering on the brink of my last failure, feeling so pressured to be perfect. That pressure only made me want to give in to whatever temptations presented themselves. I swore that I had no control around food.

My Weight Watchers leader used to call that all or nothing thinking the ‘what the hell effect.’ Here’s what she described. Imagine you’re in the kitchen and you’re bringing a dozen eggs from the refrigerator to the counter top. As you walk, you drop one of the eggs.  What do you do?

In dieting, you’ll notice that what people tend to do when they've slipped up is that they say, “Oh what the h---, I’ve already screwed that  one up, I ate that cookie that I shouldn't have eaten, let me just start my diet on ___. “

Now let’s just put that back into perspective with the eggs. If you’ve already dropped one egg, do you grab the other 11 and start tossing them at the floor? Does that make sense? You are probably shaking you head saying, “No.”

But that’s what diets teach us to do. We’re conditioned to think in terms of black and white habits, behaviors, eating choices and feelings about our bodies. If you eat cheesecake for breakfast, you think of yourself as undisciplined, or bad. If your clothes are too tight, you tend to think, “I’m a fat pig.” It’s the all or nothing thinking that drives you to sabotage yourself because the unspoken message that is getting reinforced is that I’m not good enough and I don’t deserve to be happy. Who can live under that pressure, deprivation and guilt? Tomorrow we'll talk about the difference between formula vs. process thinking. Diet vs. no diet. You decide!

What do you think? What’s been your experience with dieting? How did you react to a slip up? Share your experience with our readers and let’s get a discussion going.

How to Love Your Body When You Just Can't Stand It...

Did you know that according to research, nearly 4 out of 5 women hate their bodies, picking at flaws and focusing endlessly on imperfections. Diet organizations feed on that kind of insecurity and fear, happily encouraging that trend of thinking that deludes you into believing that something is wrong with you, especially if you’re overweight.

The thing that nobody has ever told you is that your stinking thinking has actually been making you fatter. Your body recognizes how you feel about it. When you think loving thoughts, you feel lovable. When you think hateful thoughts, you feel hateful. As long as you think harmful thoughts about yourself, your weight, your body, your relationship to food, you and your body will always be in a stand off. Self acceptance is the key to unlock your personal transformation.

As long as you hate your body it will stubbornly hate you back by refusing to budge, keeping you stuck, feeling as though you are insatiable, hungry all the time, which prevents you from feeling safe and comfortable enough to stop eating on your own, which inhibits your ability to lose weight naturally and get thinner. If you can’t love your body now, despite how it looks, love it for its function.

Realize that  your stomach may be flabby but without it you wouldn’t be able to enjoy eating wonderful food. You wouldn’t be able to digest that food and feel nourished. That’s your stomach.

Remember that those legs that you profess to hate, carry you around all day, every day, maybe you use them to run, or walk or stand and water your plants. No matter how difficult it may be to like what you see, remember that they keep you solidly grounded and moving through life. Those are your legs.

Keep in mind that those arms that you may call, “batwings” are the same ones that may have held your first child, embraced your lover, given and received many wonderful bear hugs. Those are your arms.

Today begin to appreciate and thank each and every one of your body parts for its resiliency, function and loyalty. It’s always been there for you, and never abandoned you. Isn’t it time that you showed it a little love in return?

Looking for Wrinkles and Little White Bumps or How Many Ways Can I Play the I’m Not Perfect Game…

Several months ago I looked in the mirror and noticed that on my forehead I had a little white bump. At first I thought nothing of it. After all it might have always been there. I'm not a very visually observant person. My special talent is in my ability to listen. Anyway, I found myself each morning, checking the mirror to see what was happening with it.

After several weeks of this silly behavior, it should be no surprise to discover that the one little white bump had a friend tagging along. Now I had two little white bumps on my forehead.

Never before concerned with getting older, I wondered if maybe these white bumps were signs of early aging. I started looking for white bumps everywhere. Whenever I saw women of my age, 45 on the screen or face to face, I checked their foreheads looking for white bumps on them. One day, consumed with this new upset, I decided to do an internet search and found out what these bumps were. Milia. Now they had a name. More energy invested in them. Bumps, bumps, bumps. It was all I could think about. Then one day I shared this new obsession of getting older with my EFT tapping buddy. I told her about my concerns about aging and my fear that those little white bumps were my passport to an early grave.

After a few rounds of tapping, I felt completely differently about those little white bumps. My freak out melt down had faded completely. Life went on with a new realization that it was time to redefine “beauty” for myself. Above the sofa in my office, I have a wall filled with old sepia framed photos of my grandmother. As I scrutinized the photos of my Nana, throughout many different stages in her life, I remembered that I always considered my Nana beautiful, no matter what age or weight she was. Maybe I wasn't obsessing about my thighs, but I had cleverly found another distraction that kept me from loving and accepting myself. I saw the silly game that I was playing and realized it was hurting me.

How about you? What’s got your attention lately? What games are you playing with yourself? Are you obsessed about the size or shape of your thighs or are you pinned to the mirror bent on finding your flaws? None of us are perfect and we’re all getting older. Yet that doesn’t mean that we can’t retain our youthful essence and beauty. I’ve learned that the more that you focus on things you don’t want, you get more of them. So what are you willing to focus on today? Share a comment and let us know your new definition of beauty. Mine's gotten a real makeover. It now includes little white bumps, lumps, bulges and all.

Making Friends with Your Wobbly Bits

In a poignantly funny scene from one of my favorite movies, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Renee Zelwegger, who plays Bridget struggles with negative feelings about her body and tries to cover herself up after making love with her boyfriend, Mark Darcy.

Mark Darcy: What on Earth are you doing?
Bridget Jones: Getting dressed.
Mark Darcy: Why're you dancing around in that tent business?
Bridget Jones: Because I don't want you to see any of my wobbly bits.

In the movie, Bridget gets into and out of relationships and struggles with each of them because she doesn’t have a sense of her own self worth. The reason for her struggles is not her wobbly bits, as she thinks, but her sagging self esteem.

Have you made peace with your wobbly bits?
When you pass a mirror naked do you want to run and hide?
Are you busy playing the game of I’ll never be perfect?

Are you, like Bridget, rushing to cover your wobbly bits? It doesn’t matter how much or how little you weigh, if you don’t learn to accept your body now, you never will. Need some help lovin' the skin you're in? Pick up a copy of my free sampler and find out how to make peace with food and love your body.