Emotional Eating "Oprah Emotional Eating Roots?"

Oprah's new approach to eating includes looking at emotional roots. Clik here for the article.

Having teens look at emotional roots is like having the study the history of the world--it's useless in managing today's eating behavior. True some awareness may be interesting but it does little to deal with today's issues.

The problem is that emotional eating doesn't have to involve deep seated issues. For instance, boredom is a powerful emotion and leads to lots of people overeating. For that matter, happiness is a powerful emotion and leads to a lot of people ruining their diet and subsequently their success.

Psychotherapy is not necessary to lose weight as some would indicate. So if you've been thinking that to whip emotional eating you're going to have to go deep into your deep seated behaviors, you won't. And that's good, I mean great great news.

But again, before we delve into dealing with emotions it's important to look at our programming. In the last post we were looking at the word "Not" and found that there is at least one reason why the word should be avoided and that is because the brain skips over the word, "NOT."

The second reason: What happens when you tell a child to not to do something or that the child can't have something? The result is usually that the child will experience a temper tantrum.

How does this apply? See my next post for the answer.

Emotional Eating

Seems like some books about emotional eating do more to confuse the reader than they do to help. Click here and see how confused the person is who wrote the post. Questions in the book to determine if you're ready to "LOSE" weight are:
1. Does being thin feel safe to you?
2. Can you imagine yourself thin?
3. If someone gives you a compliment on your appearance, does it make you feel happy and confident or threatened and uneasy?"

From my experience, the answers to these questions are simply irrelevant. And when he talks about getting ready to deal with the emotional stuff, you'd think that deep psychotherapy is required. Actually dealing with emotions is a 1,2,3 thing and easy as pie. My book, the Scale Conspiracy leaves no stone unturned.

Are you an emotional eater? Most people who are overweight are emotional eaters at some time or another. However, until you fix your thinking problem, you'll simply waste any attempt to manage your emotional eating.

The last suggestion we looked at in my last post was the word "NOT" as in "I don't want to eat that!"

Let's see why.

To demonstrate this, I'd like you to stand where you are and follow the next suggestion. Ok, are you standing?

Now, Please do not stand! Let me repeat. Please do not stand!

What did you do? Did you sit down right away? Most likely not, if you're like most people you continued to stand and were confused as to what the suggestion really meant for you to do.

Why? There's only one word in common with "I am not going to eat that" and "Please do not stand."

What is the word? It's the word "not"

It takes three times longer to figure out a negative--a "not" So when you say, "I do not want to eat that" it comes out in the brain as "I am going to eat that"

In other words, the brain skips the "not."

And there's another reason why the word "not" causes you to want to eat, can you imagine what that is? I'll share it in the next post.

In fact, I'll share everything with you as time goes on. Click here for the Scale Conspiracy ebook for only $15. It'll clear up all confusion you might have about thinking problems, emotional eating, self esteem...

Emotional Eating and Habitual Eating--can you tell the difference?

Click here for an interesting post. It's worth reading. Must say that I find how they identify emotional eating rather interesting. I mean who decided that sudden desire to eat food is emotional? Why is it not habitual? Particularity if it occurs at a certain time of the day. No mention of that though.

The craving certain foods is supposed to be emotional. Who made this decision I wonder?
Why is it not habitual?

Your hunger feels urgent. Isn't that the same as a sudden desire to eat?

Paring of eating with an emotion? Maybe we have a winner here, but what to do about the emotion? No clue.

Maybe most people don't know that there are different kinds of overeating. Why does it matter?

The answer is that each type of eating is handled differently. I've learned that there are three types of overeating:
1. Habitual
2. Emotional
3. Self Defeative.

The same technique won't work for all three types. Through this blog you'll have an opportunity to learn the differences. Of course, if your thinking is askew it won't matter what type of eater you are or what technique you use for you'll have sabotaged yourself with your own thinking.

Emotional Eating "Another Suggestion for Failure"

Have you ever thought to yourself, "I shouldn't eat that," and then ended up eating it anyway? Of course you have. Why?

It's because of how the brain works that this is actually a suggestion to cause you to want to eat for two basic reasons.

Do you know why this is so?

Emotional Eating "Food as a Substitute for Love"

OK, I promise to give you the suggestions to replace "lose" from two posts ago.
How about using the word "shed" as in shedding weight? Or "getting rid" of excess weight, or "dropping" weight. Get the idea? Far more effective words than "Lose"

Getting in the frame of mind of emotional eating, click here for an interesting article which is about how some use food as a substitute for love. It's worth the time to read and then post your responses to the article here.

Emotional Eating Bandwagon

My last post was about the "losing" suggestion. Before I go into the alternatives to the word "lose" I want to have you take a look at the bandwagon.

Finally after decades of poor success with diets and Micky Mouse approaches, it's finally been identified that emotional eating is an important issue to handle. I've been empowering people since the 80's to deal with the stressors that contribute to emotional eating. To do so means to fix one's thinking problem (simply a prerequisite) and then delve into the emotions themselves--happiness, frustration, boredom, upset, excitement...

The bandwagon is full of professionals offering advice on emotional eating by simply recycling and repeating the same useless advice used for many decades--
For instance go to http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20090525/LIFESTYLE/905250317 and you'll see an article on a four step plan to end emotional binge eating. I summarized it; my comments are in italics.

Step 1: No food bans--don't limit yourself to any diets. This would be like the "no diet" diet.

Step 2: Discover what true hunger feels like. Wow, what's this got to do with emotions? Fact is that true hunger doesn't happen for six weeks after one stops eating. But this article is just focused on whether you just have a desire or if you're really hungry, i.e. need food.

Step 3: Move beyond the craving Take ten minutes before you decide to indulge, ask yourself what you'd feel like if you ate a pint of ice cream. Again nothing about emotions or handling stress.


Step 4: Find ways to cope The first mention of stress, but it's the same old stuff, i.e. go for a walk, dance, jog... for twenty minutes. Do yoga or meditate.
Make a list of healthy foods and put it on your fridge. Nothing really here that hasn't been advised a hundred times.

The worst thing that can happen is that one who is an emotional eater, does one thru four and ends up with the same results as simply being on a diet and coming to a conclusion that he/she can't manage emotional eating. Particularly so because none of this approach has anything to do with handling emotional eating. And besides, how many people have the luxury of twenty minutes to go jogging, relaxing, yoga, mediation anytime a desire to eat arises? I mean can you imagine walking down the board walk at the shore and being tempted to go into the candy store and instead saying to yourself, "I think I'm going to put on my sneakers and run on the board walk for twenty minutes instead of going into that store and buying some candy?" Let's get real. What's needed is an approach that can be executed within seconds which is what can be done by dealing with emotions directly.

Emotional Eating "More Thoughts on Losing Part III"

So we've learned to remember where we put things to avoid losing them. But that's not the only problem with the word "Lose."

Ever since kindergarten we've played games and we've always wanted to be on the winning side. No one wants to be a loser. There are no rewards for being a loser. In fact we work hard to keep from being a loser and no one wants to be around a loser.

The bottom line is that there is a tremendous amount of programming against being a loser or losing things.

Even though we consciously know we're using the word "lose" in association with getting rid of excess pounds, the subconscious mind is programmed against being a "loser."
There are far more effective words to use which I'll share in the next post

Emotional Eating "The Thought of Losing Part II"

We're talking about "I want to lose weight," and why else it could mean something else to your brain.

It's all about programming. How many things have you been programmed since childhood to "LOSE?"

None right. We focus on remembering where our belongings are so we don't lose them, right?
How does this work? You start your diet or weight loss program and lose ten or so pounds. A friend notices your weight loss and say, "looks like you lost some weight," which seems like a normal thing to say, but what do you have to do? You have to go find it, right and suddenly you're wondering what happened to all that success. But this isn't the only program we get about losing. Can you think of another program about losing?

Want to get a head start? You can purchase the best book, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) ever written about emotional eating now for only $14.95.

Emotional Eating "The 'Lose Weight' Suggestion Part I"

Ok, this blog is about emotional eating and I haven't really talked about emotional eating in my first two posts. In fact, it's a waste of time to talk about emotional eating until we define the thinking problem. For even if you had the key to manage emotional eating, there would still be a problem because how you think could undermine any progress you make.

For instance, the thought, "I want to lose weight," can actually be a hypnotic suggestion.
A suggestion to do what?

To understand it's important to look at how we've been programmed as youngsters with regard to the word "lose."

What have you associated with the idea of lose or the word lose since you were a youngster?

Want to get a head start? You can purchase the best book, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) ever written about emotional eating now for only $14.95.

Emotional Eating "Thinking Problem"

The brain is very much like a computer. It's hard to believe, but it will do anything you tell it to do.
If that's true, then why haven't you been able to get thin and stay thin? Obviously you've been thinking to yourself that you want to lose weight. So why is it that you're still overweight?
Maybe what you've been telling yourself has been confusing the brain or actually telling you to gain weight or stay heavy.

For instance, the thought, "I want to lose weight." Can you see how that suggestion, thought, or affirmation could actually contribute to you gaining back weight after you'd maybe had some success or actually keep you from getting rid of any weight? It's actually a hypnotic suggestion to gain weight. Why?

You can purchase the best book, The Scale Conspiracy, (in e-book form) ever written about emotional eating now for only $14.95.