How to Stop Overeating, Overcoming Overeating

Reinventing Yourself: Part 2

FRIDAY, JULY 23, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

Emotional eating is a way of interrupting the natural conversation that is taking place within you, between your mind and your brain. Your brain continuously sends you messages in the form of feelings and thoughts and makes a demand on your mind to think in order to sort them out and figure out how to respond. This is the way that people grow, change, mature and recover from their childhood experiences as they go through the phases and stages of adult life.

If you put the "mute" button on by overeating or binging, you shut off the flow of wisdom and intelligence of your own brain, and the maturation process comes to a halt. The normal process of reinventing yourself in little daily steps doesn't happen, but the need to reinvent yourself doesn't go away. You are aware that you have to change in some way, but you don't do it because you are too scared to try. Then you get behind in the personal development work you need to do.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 21 Comments

Reinvent Yourself

FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

Emotional Eating is not simply a bad habit, but a symptom of a much more complex human phenomenon that involves all parts of your mind and life.

Recently a well respected figure in the world of adult development died, Dr. Robert Butler, someone who I knew professionally, but not personally. He too wrote about the life cycle and the issues of adapting to the various phases of adulthood. His primary focus was on post retirement, where my focus has been on mid-life crisis.

His thesis is that people have to "reinvent" themselves many times during the course of life, and that this is especially important if one is going to enjoy healthy aging. Although we haven't used that particular term, that is core of what we do here. In order to fully break the emotional eating habit and free yourself from binging, compulsive eating or the food obsession, you have to reinvent yourself!
>>Read more.

Permalink | 17 Comments

To Eat too much or To Be Free?

FRIDAY, JULY 09, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

The comments on last week's blog were perfectly timed, they were all about independence from past events and perceptions that reinforce the tyranny of food. A good theme for the Fourth of July week. Thank you all, for your willingness to share openly. Today I am going to focus on the comments that illustrate the theme of freedom.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 14 Comments

Reality is Your Friend

FRIDAY, JULY 02, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

We've been looking at the childhood influences of the past that have led to the current obsession with food. Last week, I asked for comments about what is going on in your life now, that you would like to wish away. We all know that wishing for things to go away will not provide relief from a food obsession. However, it does brings to the forefront the situations in the present that trigger us to overeat. And if we look closer, it will give us clues to the qualities we need to own and develop to live more fully in the present. Particularly those qualities we have hidden due to the painful family dynamics from our past.

Let's look at some of the comments so we can see the link between the past, the wishes of the present, and the growth that needs to be completed before the obsession can be cured.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 12 Comments

Using Food to Disappear

FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

I would like to continue the exploration of how the events from our past have set us up for the current food obsession. And how important it is to "open these doors" and walk through them with a new perspective. The following comment from last week, by Bonita, vividly captures the essence of the problem, which is using food to "disappear."

"There was always so much shouting at our dinner table when I was a kid. My mother took a lot of time cooking beautiful meals - German cooking, rich food, always much more than we could eat. She was a good cook, but my Dad used suppertime as a fault-finding mission. First he started with the cauliflower and then moved on to the kids. Food and criticism in our house went together like hot dogs in buns. Mom always said her good food was wasted because it went down our throats in lumps. You can't even call what we did eating. It was more like stuffing ourselves to the point of oblivion. Who tastes anything when there's a gun pointed at your head? And why would you even need to know when your stomach was full? That wasn't the point of eating. The point of eating in my house was to avoid what was going on around me, and once you got past the third pork chop, it worked!"

There it is, as real and clear as it can be. How one learns to override the biological signs of fullness in order to go beyond them to achieve a state of oblivion. How else could one disappear from a repugnant and dangerous reality at a family dinner table.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 15 Comments

Blinded by the Obsession with Food

SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

Every time I see a new patient come into my office with a food obsession, I am reminded of how durable the obsession is, and how difficult it is for the person to see what is really going on. From a therapist's perspective, what I am about to describe may sound obvious. However, the person who is struggling with the food obsession is practically blind, when it comes to seeing the source of the obsession.

A woman in her 50's came to see me after reading my book. She is an educated and intelligent woman who has a small profitable business and is happily married, with an adult son and four grand children. However, she was feeling totally desperate.

"I've been losing the same 15 pounds on and off for the last 40 years! I've tried every diet and nothing works. But I'm not ready to give up."

She went on to describe in a very tearful and painful way, her life history with a father who tyrannized her and a mother who couldn't protect her. Her siblings gave in to the father but she remained the rebel of the family. She was constantly getting herself into trouble but never giving up or giving in to her father, who was occasionally kind to her but more often brutally angry with her. This is a familiar story to me, since many of my patients who have an obsession with food also have a difficult family history that continues to cause them a great deal of emotional pain.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 15 Comments

ALMOST CURED

FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 2010 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD

A patient came in to see me the other day who I hadn't seen for three months. She was doing well and in the final stage of being "cured" of her food obsession. She decided to scheduled this appointment to "reach a higher level" and to complete the process.
However, in the three days just before her appointment, she had a little relapse.

I remember when she started to gain weight right before a visit back home. She was afraid that her sister would be too envious of her for having both a good life, and her weight under control. She was willing to be fat and angry at herself in order to ward off the envy.

I mentioned that: "It appears that your old fear of success has come back to haunt you. Success was dangerous for you then, and still is now, but probably for a different reason." This time she was asking for a deeper insight to deal with her core fear of success.
>>Read more.

Permalink | 12 Comments

HOSTED BY...

As a psychiatrist who has worked with thousands of overweight people over four decades, I can understand how much you suffer when you are overweight or think of yourself as fat. Not only do you suffer from the physical and medical consequences of extra weight, but I know that you also suffer from painful feelings, such as disappointment, hopelessness, and guilt.

This program will help you learn the mental skills you need to stop overeating. Because, most of the time, you are really not hungry for food but for something else.

As you uncover and demystify your hidden triggers to eat, you will diminish their power over you, until one day you wake and the cravings will be gone! The new thinner, healthier, happier YOU will emerge.

JOIN NOW!