mindless eating Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Diet Free Radiant Me | Intuitive Eating | Emotional Eating

How to Manage Your Emotions without Turning to Food

One of the things that come up often in my work with my clients is how they deal with emotional eating. We all experience different emotions throughout a given day. For some, there might be more than others. Such emotions include anxiety, loneliness and sadness. Other more subtle emotions that often might lead you to turn to food include boredom and stress. It is totally normal to experience these emotions from time to time, but how you cope with them is key. (Note: if you are experiencing intense sadness and depression, please see an appropriate mental health professional.)

So the question here is: do you find yourself reaching into the food cabinets when these emotions arise? If you do, how do you feel after you eat the cookies, candy or whatever your “go to” mood fixer food is?

I know that deep down you realize that food is not resolving the issue at hand. Yet, you still find comfort even for the moment in the box of chocolates. But you know what? After you eat them, you now have to deal with the guilt, physical discomfort of overeating and the original emotion you were trying to numb. You are now worse off than when you started.

Does this sound like you? How do you get out of this viscous cycle?

The first thing you need to do is acknowledge that you turn to food to comfort negative feelings, even to numb the emotional pain you might be feeling. Then, you need to commit to learning a new way. Before immediately turning to food, STOP and ask yourself what are you really feeling. If you can honestly say you are hungry, then by all means you should eat….a well-balanced power snack or meal. But if you are being true to yourself and really want to help yourself, you won’t automatically say “I’m hungry”. Instead, you will think about what you are feeling and how you can comfort yourself without turning to food.

If you are unsure what you need, seek out the support from a friend, counselor or therapist. Talking through your emotions instead of eating through them is an amazing feeling. If you are not ready to face your feelings, then engage in an alternate activity.

Write down some things that you enjoy doing that can distract you during these times. Take a walk, do a puzzle, read a book, go for a ride etc. Figure out what works for you.

I’ll tell you what works for me. When I am feeling overwhelmed, stressed or upset about something, I remove myself from the area I am at that is causing me distress. I then take several deep breaths and count down from 10 to 0. It really helps me clear my head, and prevents me from heading to the peanut butter jar:)

What works for you? Please let me know in the comments section below. And if you need help sorting through your emotions, I am here for you. Just click here and request to speak with me so you can get clear on your challenges and have a clear path towards dealing with your emotions without turning to food.

Food Deprivation Leading to Rebound Eating

Overindulging in a food item that you restrict is common if you are a chronic dieter. This is called deprivation backlash-rebound eating.

Here’s a common scenario: you deprive yourself of a certain food, such as your beloved chocolate because you are on a diet and you are not allowed to have chocolate, right? Well an old time friend comes to visit and brings you a box of chocolates. You put it away vowing you will not open it. A family member spots the chocolate, opens the box and now what do you do? Hmmm, I’ll just have one, really only one. But before you turn around, you have more than one, and at this point you might as well finish the box because you promise yourself you won’t have chocolate again. You truly believe that you won’t. Yet, you now feel guilty and as a punishment you skip dinner only to find yourself bingeing into the evening.

The above scenario is one example of the backlash that happens when you deprive yourself of a food you love. You rebound by eating, and overeating.

There are many different forms of rebound eating.

Have you ever engaged in The Last Supper eating? I have had many clients tell me that they knew they were coming to see me on Monday (or whatever day their appointment was on) and so the day before they overindulged on all the foods they thought they would no longer be allowed to eat….the foods that they thought would be off limits.

Listen, eating shouldn’t be this difficult. It’s time for you to make peace with food so you can once and for all stop the dieting cycle.

Need help? Click here to schedule a time to chat.

Your turn to take action: Tell me about a time that you engaged in rebound eating or The Last Supper. Share your stories in the comments section below.

Did I Eat It?

I constantly find myself thinking where did the time go? Or, I have so much to do, there just are not enough hours in the day! I am sure you can relate. Society has put so much emphasis on rushing around and getting as much as we possibly can get done in 24 hours. It is no surprise that you may find yourself eating on the go, or eating in the mists of preforming other daily tasks. Did you know that eating while doing other things such as driving or getting the kids ready for school is mindless eating?

Many of my clients are unaware that they are mindless eaters. Whether you are eating on the run or eating while relaxing at the end of a busy day watching your favorite show, you are only semi-paying attention to what you are eating. You are not paying full attention to the flavor or the pleasure your meal or snack is providing. You are missing out on all the wonderful sensations that food brings to the experience of eating. So what do you do? You reach for more due to dissatisfaction and eat more calories than you need, which leads to weight gain.

Let me give you an example from my own personal experience. I’m taking you back many years to when I was newly married with a newborn. I went to graduate school at night and therefore ate dinner before I left. One evening I was eating dinner. The baby was in his crib, my husband was still at work and I sat down to eat my dinner. I was watching T.V. while I was eating. At the end of the show, I looked down on my plate and thought to myself “I’m pretty sure I had a baked potato on my plate. Where did it go? Did I eat it?”

Well, I realized the baby certainly didn’t eat my potato, and it wasn’t on the floor so I must have eaten it. I ate the whole thing without even realizing! I remember feeling like I wanted another. From that moment on, I told myself I would share this story with my future clients to reiterate how important it is to enjoy what you are eating without distraction to ultimately achieve meal time satisfaction.

Once you learn to be mindful of what you are eating, you will find that you will be more satisfied with less food. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

– When you eat, just eat!

– Sit down at the table to eat, not in the living room, den or bedroom.

– Turn off all distractions while you eat, such as the T.V., cell phone, email, Facebook. Let your voicemail take messages during mealtimes instead of answering the phone.

– At work, eat in the lounge, or go outside and find a park bench, weather permitting. Try not to eat at your desk. If you must, put the work aside and take time to enjoy what you are eating.

Remember eating should be a pleasurable experience!

Now it’s your turn to take action: What steps will you take to be more mindful in your eating?

My Experience with Comfortable Satiety

When working with my clients, it is often hard for them to identify what comfortable satiety feels like. This is truly understandable. If you have been eating mindlessly and/or cleaning the plate without consideration if you’ve even had enough (“how can I leave food over, I’m entitled to eat this amount on my diet?”), then that would partly explain why this part of your journey might be difficult.

As I’ve previously mentioned, I have incorporated intuitive eating into my own life. I want to share an experience with you that I had yesterday when I was eating lunch.

I identified that I was “gently hungry” and decided to take my lunch break. I remembered that I had some soup left over in the fridge from dinner the night before, that I did not eat but that my family raved about. While the soup was heating up, I prepared my sandwich, which is what I often eat for lunch.

I sat at the kitchen table, took a deep breath to center myself, and began eating my soup. Yum, it was truly delicious. The texture of the vegetables, the flavor of the spices, and the temperature really hit the spot. I noticed the trees and the sunshine out my bay window (it was a nicer day yesterday than today…brrr, its cold today).

I finished the soup, rested a moment to check in with my stomach. I felt good, but was still slightly hungry so I picked up half my sandwich. I ate focusing on each bite. It too, was delicious. After I finished the half sandwich, I once again checked in with myself. I was feeling content. I didn’t need to eat the other half of the sandwich. My son had left me a small bowl of 4 peeled grapefruit sections with a note “Enjoy, Ma, Love Jason”. How sweet. He knows how I love grapefruit sections.

At this point, I decided to wrap up the other half of the sandwich and finish off my meal with the 4 grapefruit sections. What a wonderful experience. I was being intuitive, listening to my body, and being mindful. And I enjoyed every bite.

Now it’s your turn to take action: Tune into your internal signals at mealtime, and share your experience in the comments below.

We’re All Human

This week’s blog post will be a bit different. I am sharing with you a story told to me by a very close friend who happens to also assist me in my office. For anonymity, I will call her Mary. Mary was instrumental in helping me launch my iEat Mindfully™ Intuitive Eating Program. At the time, she was in her final year of college preparing to enter into her dietetic internship to eventually become a registered dietitian.

Mary had shared with me early on that one of the reasons she had gotten into the nutrition field was because of her experience with her dieting history. She had a strong diet mentality throughout her early twenties. Despite a healthy body weight, she was addicted to seeing the number on the scale go down, and to trying whatever diet of the moment was around so she can lose weight. She would always end up starving by the end of the 6-14 day trial period, gaining back any weight she lost and then some with a vengeance.

Lucky for her, through her studies in personal training and then even more so in nutrition, she began to learn not just the science behind how food works in the body, but the mentality with which to truly approach healthy eating. Mindful eating in particular appealed to Mary because so much of her difficulties with weight stemmed from not trusting her own intuition about food.

Despite her knowledge of nutrition, Mary recently went through a stressful time in her life. She was in the midst of her dietetic internship program, and between the stress of the program and other things going on in her life, she found herself deflecting that stress into disliking her appearance. An unflattering dressing room light and a glimpse in the mirror while trying on clothes spiraled her thoughts into a whirlwind of, “How can I lose weight quickly, I need to get back on track.”

Fortunately for Mary, she sat down with herself and had a clarifying moment. She thought about the idea of jumping into a fad diet, but realized she knew better. She also knew that she had been out of touch with her intuitive eating and instead was eating to decrease stress instead of listening to her body and eating to nourish it.

Mary decided to be positive and invest in a gym membership, and started collecting healthy recipes she wanted to try. She treated herself to new cooking appliances and reminded herself what it means to be healthy, and also reminded herself of some of the things she liked about her body.

Mary wanted me to share this story with you to remind you that roadblocks are inevitable, but they don’t have to derail you. We are all human and there will be times when we forget the things we have learned, and want to jump back into a negative place. If you can take a breath and refocus, whatever “damage” you may have felt you did, you can learn from it. Remember this all part of the journey which will lead you to where you want to be.

Your turn to take action: Have a heart to heart talk with yourself. If you have been having a difficult time on your intuitive eating journey, try to figure out why. Please share your thoughts with me and together we can help you get back on the road to a body you love without dieting!

Are You Minding Your Portions?

Have you heard of the concept of portion distortion?

Research strongly suggests that increasing rates of overweight and obesity are in direct correlation with the increased portion sizes we have experienced since the early 1980s. Individuals are frequently unaware of how much food they actually consume in a single sitting. This lack of awareness is usually tied to whatever activity they are doing while eating, be it watching television or trying to finish that book they’re reading.

On the other hand, mindless eating could be a result of your psychosocial state, that is, emotional eating. Mindless eating, be it multitasking while eating or emotional eating, may be taking a significant toll on your health. Are you even aware of the fact that you are likely gaining weight, inches, and feeling sluggish? Adding insult to injury, our population is increasingly becoming more sedentary in their daily activities. Therefore, the extra portions being consumed are not being burned off efficiently enough.

It’s time to take control and engage in awareness. For years I would encourage my clients to use measuring cups and food scales as a way of controlling food portions. More recently, as I have been teaching intuitive eating, the only tool an intuitive eater really needs is that of his/her internal signals. I therefore no longer encourage the use of these external tools.

Having said that, there are some times when you might just need a visual of what a recommended amount of a particular food is. Since restaurants have been serving up super-sized portions, you might not really have any idea what a “normal” portion looks like. I just discovered a great new tool for portion awareness. It’s called PortionMate^TM. It is a meal and snacking measuring tool that allows you to quickly and easily measure portions into a plate or bowl. The measuring tool is in the form of cylinders, or rings. There are six cylinders to help measure different types of food. The sizes range from largest (1 cup), to smallest (1 ounce). PortionMate™ is a great visual tool as it works by placing the rings on your plate or in your bowl then placing the food inside the cylinder, therefore providing an accurate measure of your portions.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I still want you to tune into your hunger and satiety signals when eating. So, even though Portionmate™ might have provided you with a visual of an “appropriate” portion of pasta, if you eat 2/3 of it and sense comfortable satiety, then stop eating and leave the rest.

So if you have been affected by portion distortion and super-sized restaurant meals, then by all means, check out Portionmate™. But ultimately, you need to learn to trust your body and your internal signals. To learn more about intuitive eating, just click here. You’ll be happy you did!

Your turn to take action: How have you been affected by portion distortion? Let me know in the comments section below.

Am I Always So Bubbly and Happy?

As I sat down today to write my post for the iEat Mindfully™ blog, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to write about. But then it came to me. Earlier today, I was told for about the 10^th time this week, how bubbly and happy I am. “Am I always like that, my client asked me?” And I realized, yes, when I am teaching my clients about intuitive eating, I absolutely am giddy, bubbly and oh, so happy.

You see, for years when clients came to me for help in losing weight, I would create a healthy eating plan that fit into their lifestyle. It included foods they liked, times they should eat, and even recipes. My clients did very well…when they “followed” the meal plan. But what happened when they didn’t “follow” the meal plan? Or when a life event, stress, or bad day at the office had them dipping into the cookie jar. Out went that healthy meal plan.

I dreaded the sessions when I would weigh a client and the rest of the session revolved around why they only lost 1 pound, or why they gained ½ pound. I got so burnt out….I just wasn’t enjoying my work any longer. This is when I knew I had to find another solution for my clients who struggled with chronic dieting and overweight/obesity, which I believed would in turn bring the passion back into my work.

That is when I found intuitive eating. After spending time researching, studying, learning, and applying the principles of intuitive eating into my own life, I slowly worked it up into a program that would help transform my client’s lives. It wasn’t easy at first. Trying to get people to trust me that they should give up the “diet” or the “meal plan” wasn’t easy.

I quickly realized it really was more a matter of whether they could trust themselves. After years and years of dieting and listening and following what other people/diet programs told them to eat, when to eat and how much to eat, well I guess it’s only natural that one would lose trust in themselves.

Fast forward to today…I am helping many people learn to regain that trust in themselves; to shift their mindset away from a diet mentality; to listen to their internal hunger and satiety signals. The light bulbs that go on in their heads in our sessions are truly inspiring to me. The “aha” moments are like no other.

So, yes, I am always bubbly, giddy and happy when I am working with my intuitive eating clients. That’s what happens when I am doing what I love to do…when I am passionate about the transformation that I help my clients achieve. Thank you to my wonderful clients. I absolutely love working with you!

Your turn to take action: If you would like the light bulbs to go on for you, head on over to http://www.talkwithbonnie.com and we will schedule a time to talk.

Eating for Wellness, Not Weight Loss

When you are a child, there are so many exciting things to experience every day, and meals and snacks are just a part of the routine. Life is not driven by your meals and snacks and whether or not you will eat the “right” or “wrong” food. There is pleasure in the friends you are with and the joys each day brings.
When you focus too much on eating and dieting, food begins to control your life rather than being a part of your day. You find yourself cancelling your lunch date with your friends because you are afraid there will be nothing on the menu that you “can” eat. You find you are lacking energy to do daily tasks because you are eating very little calories because your plan “told you too.” These are all food rules that you are following to hopefully lose weight and they are removing the pleasurable experiences from your life.

Instead of focusing on your food as a tool for weight loss, focus on it as a tool for wellness. Food is fuel. It should not prevent you from living your life, but rather it should help you live your life. For example, do not skip breakfast because you are worried you will overeat the rest of the day. Have a hearty nutritious breakfast such as oatmeal with fruit and nuts or scrambled egg whites in a whole grain tortilla. You will see how much energy you have to start your day and will find you are not “starving” by lunchtime.

Promise yourself you will not miss plans with friends because of the venue they are eating at. Be mindful of your hunger, order something that you are going to enjoy, but honor your fullness and know when it’s time to stop.

By making food a positive force in your life, you will end that unhappy relationship and be on your road to wellness AND weight loss. Your decisions will no longer be controlled by food, but what you want to do and what you want to eat. As long as you keep the principles of intuitive eating in mind, you are good to go!

What is one food rule you live by that does not coincide with eating for wellness, and how will you change it?

iEat Mindfully™ Program Launch

Welcome to the online launch of iEat Mindfully^TM! First, let me congratulate you for taking the first step to learning how to banish diets forever and move past yo-yo dieting! You will never have to go on another diet again! You will learn to reclaim what you were born with… and that is to be able to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied.

I want you to know that if you are a chronic dieter then you have been a victim of dieting. It’s not your fault that the diets didn’t work. The diets are what have failed. I will help you to understand how your body works and how to reclaim the ability to trust your body again.

From years of dieting, you have been taught what you “should” or “shouldn’t” eat but this puts you right into the diet mindset. Diets don’t work; you likely figured that out if you are a part of this event. And, the right mindset alone doesn’t work either.

So what DOES work? The real key to getting a healthy body you love is to use a tailored solution that combines three essential ingredients: a healthy mindset, nutrition education and caring support!

Throughout this program launch, I will share with you 5 steps to a body you love without dieting. You will find those steps at www.facebook.com/BRGDieteticsandNutritionPC

Let’s get the conversation going!

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