This week we instead of bringing you Michelle’s message in print, we are introducing our CEDRIC Video Blog.

Please click on the image provided to hear a few minutes of Michelle explaining the importance of the ‘Drill Sergeant’ and some steps to take to retrain your thinking and have an immediate and powerful influence on your behaviour.

I chose the ‘Drill Sergeant Dialogue’ to kick off our monthly video series because it is such an important concept to grasp.  Self-esteem is one of the very biggest areas to work on for complete recovery from your stressful relationship with food. It is the solid foundation from which the rest of our life practically falls into place.

Just recognizing the dynamic of the ‘Drill Sergeant’ dialogue is helpful and I thought this clip explained it well.  After you watch it, you may find just having a quick flashback to Michelle encouraging you to deal with your D.S in a different way will help you adjust your thinking that much faster when you are being down on yourself.

After absorbing the material at the weekend workshop myself, I practiced the process of rephrasing things to be more positive and encouraging and now when I want to quickly zap myself into coming from a positive place of love, patience, understanding with lots of great options in front of me, I just say “Be Kind.” Then I can quickly remember to adjust my thinking to override the negative thoughts.  It really does work if you practice the correct phrasing to play in your head to replace the negative stuff that is hindering you on so many levels.  After all positive breeds positive and vice versa. So do whatever you can to stay in the positive, even if it feels like just a baby step!

Have a watch of the video and then really get to know your own ‘Drill Sergeant’ so you can integrate that well-meaning but confused aspect of yourself and truly support yourself in ways that are kinder, more patient, forgiving and encouraging.

If you want to read more about the ‘Drill Sergeant’ just search that term on our blog and you’ll find lots of great articles that help you to change the way you relate to yourself. From there it’s a hop, skip and a jump to forever changing the way you related to food.

Enjoy the Video Clip!  You can see more clips at CEDRIC’s YouTube Channel

Janice

Hello!

This is Part V in our Diet Mentality series (visit The CEDRIC Centre blog for immediate access to all articles in this series).

If you’re new to our community, welcome! You’ll fit right in here if you are an emotional eater, find that you binge, restrict, or struggle with anorexia, bulimia or some other stressful way of relating to food and want to learn how to stop.

All righty! In the past few weeks we’ve covered:

1. The perils of both just arbitrarily restricting the amount of food you’re “allowed” to have regardless of your true hunger levels; and
2. Of feeling obligated to eat what is placed in front of you – whether or not you like it and whether or not it is too much.
3. We’ve also addressed the stress of labeling foods as good/bad legal/illegal and the nasty consequences of doing so.
4. And last week we talked about what happens when we get stuck in rules about when we can eat rather than just listening to our body’s natural cues of hunger and fullness.

Whew! We’ve covered a lot already and we’re only about half-way through the key characteristics of The Diet Mentality. No wonder it’s such a quagmire and that we need guidance and support to find our way out!  That’s what my team and I are here for. So read on and take another step toward the light.

This week’s Diet Mentality trait is a BIGGY!

You engage in all or nothing thinking regarding food and meals. Meaning:

You set strict goals and guidelines for yourself and if you waver from them at all or miss a step/day/meal you feel like a failure and make harsh judgements about your lack of willpower and inability to follow a plan. Continue reading “How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part V ©” »

This is Part II in our Diet Mentality series. If you’re new to our community you can just start here or you can hop back two weeks to the discussion of The Diet Mentality and statistics and then look at last week’s key Diet Mentality point to make sure you’re up to speed. Either approach will be helpful. Just do what you can.

Another key indicator that you’ve got some Diet Mentality going on is if you feel obligated to eat what is placed in front of you – whether or not you like it and whether or not it is too much.

This might not seem like it has anything at all to do with dieting. But it has everything to do with the co-dependent mindset and all or nothing thinking that under pin The Diet Mentality.

You see, if you are so concerned with what other people think or what they would feel that you would compromise your body’s needs and not be authentic about what you like or what you need it is highly likely that you do this in other areas of your life too.

This is very dangerous as this way of being in the world creates great anxiety and insecurity because you really don’t trust yourself to take care of yourself and put your own needs first. This is, ironically, often why we start dieting, binging, purging or engaging in full blown eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder in the first place.

Continue reading “How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part II ©” »

One of the hardest things for people to do, especially people who have received any co-dependent training, is to hold themselves to the core value of honesty.  The reason for this is twofold:

1.  We often (usually) don’t even know what we truly feel and want and need. We might know something doesn’t feel right or good or okay but we have our inner critic immediately judging our feelings and so we mistrust our emotions just as we mistrust our hunger and fullness cues.

2.  We are scared crapless to piss people off! Let’s just admit it! We don’t want to upset anyone. We don’t want to be the bad guy. We don’t want anyone saying anything about us that isn’t nice and warm and fuzzy. And so we bail on ourselves.

And just in case you’re still wondering if this applies to you: If you have any food and body image stress, or if you binge, or struggle with restriction (dieting or anorexia or orthorexia (an obsession with eating “clean”), or purging (through exercise, laxatives, or vomiting) you can guarantee that you have a high dose of co-dependent training.

Continue reading “Let’s Be Honest” »