Stop the diet, lose the weight!

By Debra O'Donnell, L.C.S.W., L.M.F.T.

Ever know a woman who hasn’t been on a diet?

Ever started your own diet and given up?  Ever reached your goal weight and then regained it?  Ever gone on a binge and felt depressed afterward?  Ever been told by your doctor that you need to lose weight (as if you didn’t know)?  Ever said “I cheated” after going off your diet, even by 1 cookie?  Ever felt as if not only your eating, but your life is out of control?

I can continue to ask questions, but all the answers would lead to the same point: diets don’t work.  If you’re eating when you’re not physically hungry, you’re emotionally eating, and no diet can solve that problem.  And if you don’t stop eating when you’re physically full (not stuffed), no diet can solve that problem either.

I’ve worked with eating disorders for over 20 years and am convinced that whether you want to lose 5 lbs or 305 lbs, emotional eating will get in your way.  Binge Eating Disorder is the most common eating problem in the U.S., and is probably increasing.  The crucial key to stopping binge eating is to identify what you’re feeling when your body isn’t physically hungry but you want to eat anyway.  The next step is to learn to address the feeling before you take the first bite.  You know, of course, that once you taste the first morsel of that chocolate chip cookie, all bets are off.

Diets can be helpful only in conjunction with a sincere and committed effort to identify, feel, and respond to your emotional needs without food!    Tweet this.

If you engage in this process with sincere determination you can look forward to liberation from your food demons and an enhanced sense of well-being.  You will lose weight because you’ll be eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full.

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So, the next time you want to eat when you’re not hungry, try completing this statement first:

“I feel …… because…..”

Do this every time you feel the compulsion and you just might not go for the Rocky Road, but for something else that will hit the right emotional spot.

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