Archive for Relationship with Food

All or nothing thinking

Posted by on All or nothing thinkingThis week we are reviewing the theme of ‘all or nothing thinking’ and the simplest way to help our readers to shift out of their old, deeply ingrained, all or nothing thought habits and into a more open, expansive and peaceful state of being and thinking. In a nutshell, if you’re not feeling compassion for yourself and the others that you’re interacting with in that moment (whether in your mind or in reality), you’re in all or nothing thinking. It’s that simple. You may want to read that last statement a few times to make sure it sinks in.  Then read on. You can test this theory for yourself over the next few days any time you notice that you’re feeling anything other than peaceful. Whenever you notice you’re feeling anxious or unsettled; judgmental of yourself or others; blaming; resentful; impatient; etc., or using your food coping strategy (which is a clear indicator that you’re overwhelmed) simply stop and ask yourself: “What am I telling myself about this situation or person that is creating this distress?” Then stop and think, really think, about what you just told yourself.  Is it true?  Are you certain? You will always identify that you have just been telling yourself an all or nothing story. (more…)

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Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

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The Logic of Binging

Posted by on Logic of BingingHave you ever wondered why you, or some of the people you care about, seem to feel compelled to do things that they say they don’t want to? Do you ever find yourself doing things like overeating, or calorie-counting/dieting, or drinking a bit too much, or spending a bit too much, or procrastinating on things, or isolating rather than socializing? Well if you’d like to finally understand what’s really going on behind the scenes (in your head!) to make you behave in ways you know aren’t good for you or that will ultimately cause you stress, read on. In order for you to completely understand why you do what you do and what you can do to begin to think, and therefore, behave, differently, I’ve put together a kind of step-by-step flow of logic that will help your brain shift out of confused, stuck thinking and into rational, reasonable thoughts that will influence you to behave in ways that will enhance all aspects of your life. ’Cause, let’s face it, you know that some of the things you do aren’t the best choices, you may even have tried to stop or cut back or make some big lifestyle changes. But if you haven’t understood what’s really driving you to do those things in the first place, you can’t be successful for long, and instead will likely feel more stuck and hopeless rather than inspired and confident. If you’re at all a believer in the concept that your thoughts create your reality, the following logic flow will help you to feel more solid and grounded in clear thinking. This means you will be confidently more present in the world and able to enjoy your food, drink, exercise, free time, and socializing more while being less likely to use any of those substances and behaviours to cope with stress or emotions such as anxiety, anger, insecurity or sadness. The following is a list of basic premises you must accept in order to heal from any stressful patterns of thinking and behaving and live life to the fullest. I encourage you to read this over on a daily basis for a week and you’ll be amazed at the shifts that occur in your relationship with yourself and with others, with little or no effort on your part. (more…)

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Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, Complete Recovery, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101, The Law of Attraction, Tips for Natural Eating

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The Secret to Making Your Dreams Come True

Posted by on Making Your Dreams Come TrueToday, (11/21/11) for me, was one of those days that we might dream about for years and years, hoping it will come true but truly wondering if it ever would. Perhaps from our little girl selves at the age of 8 or 10, and then again, with greater emphasis and clarity in our teens, and then early 20’s and maybe during some dark times too, that dream would keep us plugging along, one seemingly cement-laden foot in front of the other. Today I had the experience of educating a group of 160 nursing students on The CEDRIC Method. Now, that in and of itself is rather frickin’ cool! Getting to educate up-and-coming front line health care providers on a respectful, simple, effective way of perceiving and supporting their clients who may struggle with eating disorders or substance abuse issues is an incredible honour. Period. That’s a pretty cool day. But, it gets better! It was at a college that I went to many years ago. At that time I was a grade 10 drop out. A pot smoking, binging, isolating, depressed, anxious, insecure, totally – and I mean to-ta-leee – codependent young woman who couldn’t make eye contact with anyone without breaking out in hives! I used to literally slink onto campus, keep my head down in class and try not to interact any more than necessary with any other students. I could relate to the teachers amazingly well – even was asked and agreed to attend staff functions (aka pub crawls!) from time to time. But I felt so totally fat, gross, and just plain geeky with my peers (aka the cool people), that I didn’t make one friend in 4 years. Not one. (more…)

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Posted in: newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, The Law of Attraction

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Anxiety and Eating Disorders

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Anxiety and Eating Disorders


This brief article will help you to appreciate the connection between anxiety and eating disorders. Eating disorders of any kind,whether binging / overeating, emotional eating, anorexia, bulima, or orthorexia or others all have an underlying root of anxiety that is triggered by a combination of painful life experiences and confused thinking. 

It is the confused thinking part of the equation that really has the most lingering impact.

Long after the traumatic or unsatisfying event has occurred, the confused thinking will be telling and re-telling us stories of what’s wrong or unacceptable about us that triggered that traumatic event to happen in the first place and how we will always be lacking.

This thinking creates chronic anxiety and insecurity and influences our choices and our interactions with the people in our lives, thus keeping that old trauma and that confused thinking alive and well long after the triggering situation has ended.

Too often we focus on the most obvious issue (the food, what we weigh, how much we’re drinking etc.) and try to make changes to that without understanding that those behaviours are truly just symptoms of the combination of painful past experiences and confused thinking that are triggering anxiety and insecurity that we are then responding to with the food, alcohol, overspending etc.

In other words – when we are stuck in harmful coping patterns we think it looks like this:

Binging makes me feel bad which makes me not like myself and feel insecure and anxious. If I stopped the binging I’d feel less anxious and insecure and things would be better so let’s impose a diet and control my food and it will all work out. Right?

I imagine your life experience is evidence that this is not the case. Mine sure was.


In reality what’s really going on is this:

I have some painful experiences in my past where I felt unsafe or unimportant or unloved. I interpreted these events as being about something wrong or lacking in me. This made me feel anxious and insecure. This led me to interact with others in ways that made things awkward because I didn’t feel safe sharing myself fully with others. This led me to assume that I was right and that there was something wrong with me which made me feel more anxious and insecure etc. etc. etc.  The side-effect of me feeling so anxious was that I reached for food (or drugs, alcohol, internet etc) to cope with my anxiety and to numb and soothe myself. 
Because the thinking and anxiety have been a part of my brain and body for so long they didn’t stand out as the root of the issue – it is the behaviour that is more obvious and the consequence of being overweight or intoxicated that stands out and so I assume it is the problem.
In reality, my thinking and the emotions that those thoughts trigger is my real problem. And if I really want to change my food/drinking etc. I need to learn the tools I need to change how I think.


If you’re ready to learn how to change the way you think and therefore change how anxious and insecure you feel and naturally change the grip food has on you, send me an email mmorand@cedriccentre.com  or visit our web program or products pages and get started learning the tools that will change your life for good, today.

Love Michelle

Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, and Binging, Anorexia and Bulimia, CEDRIC Centre, Complete Recovery, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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Feeling Safe is The Key to Eating Disorder Recovery

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Feeling Safe is The Key to Eating Disorder Recovery



It is a fact that feeling safe is the key to eating disorder recovery. And the key to feeling safe is to have a way of trusting that you are thinking clearly, seeing the situation / person at hand clearly; that you have a set of values that are reasonable and principles that make sense that guide your actions towards yourself and others and which you see yourself turning to whenever you feel anxious or unsettled or have sensitive decisions to make.

If you don’t have that package of trust in your clear thinking and values that ground you you will continue to feel insecure and anxious in the world and in your relationships with others and you will continue to lean on coping strategies – confused stress management tools like eating disorders, binging, dieting, drinking, isolating and procrastination to try to numb and soothe yourself.


Invite yourself, if you feel up to it to ask yourself what you remember about your younger years (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood). Who were your primary role models for relationships?  What kinds of things did they do and say to you, themselves, or others when they were angry or sad or scared or wanted you or someone else to do something for them?

How respectful, direct and clear were they?

And how did they respond to requests from you? Did they shame you, berate you, judge you? Or did they acknowledge your need and discuss the different ways that they would be willing to meet your need, in a respectful, calm manner?

Verbal and physical abuses are traumas.

Most everyone has experienced the humiliation and damaging effects of verbal abuse.

If our ego strength and our sense of esteem are solid when these events occur (ie. we are an adult, solid in ourselves; or a teen with very good support and these events are an extreme exception and not the norm), we can slough it off or work through it with some help.

If we are already feeling a lack of security and acceptance in our world, every experience of verbal abuse, for example: Judgements, name-calling, put-downs, and yelling will constitute a drama.

Physical abuse; slapping, hitting, spanking and outright beatings, or threats of the same, regardless of their purpose in the eyes of the punisher, are traumatic events.

Neglect is trauma. The act of having your needs and your Self ignored or devalued is traumatic.

So, don’t tell yourself that you were never abused or traumatized. Sexual assault or beatings are just the most extreme forms of trauma we experience as young and powerless people. There are many forms of behaviour that will not meet our needs for safety and respect and which will lead us to feel hurt and traumatized. 

The more dependent on the person we are, the greater the experience of the trauma and the more our mind will seek to both self-blame (make it about us) and to numb ourselves from the situation (through the use of coping strategies like binging, dieting, eating disorders, drinking etc.).

If you’re stuck still, feeling a lack of confidence in yourself or in relationships that trigger you to feel unsafe or insecure, let me help you step free of that pattern of thinking that is keeping you stuck.

Change can be fast and simple when you have simple tools that work and a skilled guide.

Reach out and let’s get started creating healthy relationships, solid self-esteem and get you trusting yourself to see the world clearly and handle things fairly.

Love Michelle

Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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Building A Balanced Life is Key to Recovery

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Building A Balanced Life is Key to Recovery


It’s possible that you are feeling anxious and insecure often in your life, or that you hear yourself say things about your frustrationg with certain situations and relationship(s) which are clear indicators of unmet needs, and yet you are still ignoring those emotional cues of unmet needs which leads you to feel overrun, unbalanced, and to use food or other substances to cope. If you’d like to stop binging or struggling with diets and weight loss, or drinking, or any other harmful coping strategy then it’s important that you know that building a balanced life is key to recovery.

It’s a simple fact, like it or lump it, that as long as any aspect of your life remains unbalanced or your needs are unmet in certain areas, you will use your coping strategies.

For example. Those of  you who have a disordered relationship with food, unconsciously use thoughts about eating or about what you weigh, and the act of eating or of restricting (and possibly purging through extreme diets, laxatives, exercise or vomiting) as a means of self-medicating and self-soothing. The chemistry you create in your body with the thoughts, sensations, and behaviours associated with your coping strategy of choice (drinking, binging, purging, drugs, t.v. etc.) raises your dopamine level artificially and temporarily triggers feelings of release, peace, nurturing and comfort.

Only problem is, as you know, that sensation is short-lived and soon you’re needing another fix to numb the negative chatter in your brain and the emotional sensations of anxiety and depression that accompany it.

The key to stepping free for good from any eating disorder or addictive behaviour is to have a 2 pronged approach which teaches you how to relate to your substance/coping strategy of choice is a natural, balanced way while also teaching you how to build solid self-trust and self-esteem.

The solution is simple and can be speedy when you have a skilled guide with simple tools. I can help you step free of the chaos and create balance and passion like you’ve never known.

Reach out and let’s discuss what’s going on in your life now that you’d like to change and how we can make that a reality.

Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com

Posted in: and Binging, CEDRIC Centre, Complete Recovery, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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Body Focus Hides Emotional Pain

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Body Focus Hides Emotional Pain


When we automatically focus on what we are eating or shouldn’t be eating, calorie counting, and losing weight, whenever we start to feel anxious or unsettled about anything we effectively keep ourselves in a state of denial about painful experiences in our lives. Your emphasis on body focus hides emotional pain that you don’t want to feel or aren’t sure how to manage.  If you want to stop feeling so anxious, insecure and stressed about your body and food or any other harmful coping strategy like eating disorders, binging, drinking or drugs you’ve got to change the way you’re thinking about yourself and the world around you and not allow your instinctive brain to run free telling you stories of doom and gloom and of what’s wrong with you.

If you’re using any of those coping strategies I mentioned above it means you have a strong need for acceptance from others and will go out of your way to please others, even if it means sacrificing yourself.

This need for acceptance, coupled with feelings of low self-worth, keeps you stuck in a world of perfectionism, where your primary focus is on your body, how unacceptable you perceive it to be, and what life will be like when you finally have the body you desire.

As long as you believe that your body is the source of your unhappiness, you are able to stay in denial about the underlying causes of your distress.

What you fail to understand, because of past life events and your confused interpretation of them,  is that you are a capable human being, who can safely be responsible for your emotions and experiences, and who can learn to feel confident and secure in yourself and to show respect for yourself and your needs, without losing the support and respect of others.

Trust this. Just because you haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that you can’t create it. You don’t really believe you know everything there is to know do you?

You may be afraid that you can’t change but that fear is very different from an absolute fact and I know from my own experience and 20+ years as a counselling specialist that if you just show up and you’re willing to try something new, you will be amazed with how quickly and simply patterns that may have plagued you for decades change for good.

Reach out and let me show you how.

Love Michelle

mmorand@cedriccentre.com

Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

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When I Use My Tools, They Work! – Revisited

Posted by on “When I use my tools, they work! Things are easier, more peaceful. I just don’t feel the need to use food to cope when I use my tools.” I hear this a lot from clients. And it’s true. However, from clients who are a little new with the process, there is usually a “…but” attached to the end of it and the rest of the statement sounds something like, “…it’s just so hard to use my tools.” Or “….it takes too long and I don’t have the time or energy to do anything other than eat.” Or even “….what if they stop working? I need to hang on to my use of food to cope,  just in case my new tools stop working.” This is such an important topic, that we did an audio podcast on the subject as well. Read the original When I Use My Tools, They Work! article here. Listen to the When I Use My Tools, They Work! audio podcast here.

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Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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Relationships 101 Week 4

Posted by on Flags in a RelationshipThis article is part of a series: Relationships 101: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4. This week in our Relationships 101 series, I want to chat a bit about flags in a relationship. If I do say so myself, I wrote a pretty smokin’ section on this in my book so if you’ve got access to “Food is not the Problem: Deal With What Is!“ I encourage you to check out Chapter 23. It’s got lots of good education and tools on communication in relationships. I’m going to present an abridged and updated version of the section on flags here so you can get a good feel for the concept and begin to experiment with it yourself. The Flag System I am about to share with you a concept that is not in and of itself a communication tool. However, it is a fundamental tool for assessing the information you are receiving verbally and non-verbally from people in your life. Once you have assessed this information, you will be in a stronger and clearer place to determine for yourself how you want and need to proceed. By that, I mean whether or not you need to speak to the other person, and if so, what you need to say.  (We’ll address the what to say and how to say it in the next 2 weeks of this series of articles). (more…)

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Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, newsletter, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101

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Boundary setting

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Boundary Setting


In exploring your feelings about boundary setting and why you might feel resistant to it, it can be helpful to explore your beliefs too.

Think about a current relationship in your life where you often find yourself feeling anxious, insecure, overrun or resentful and then take a moment to consider your answer to the following questions:


What is it about this person or the relationship you have with them that triggers these feelings?

What would you like to see happening in this relationship that would reduce the anxiety and insecurity etc. that you feel with them?

What commitments would you need to make with yourself about what you will or won’t do in order to lessen those feelings of being overrun or of resentment?

What would you need to ask them for or tell them you will or won’t do in order to make that happen?

What thoughts and feelings surface when you consider setting those boundaries with that person?

Are you fearing judgement, anger, labeling as needy or high maintenance; or maybe you fear that they would reject you?

Why are you settling for patterns in your relationships that don’t feel good to you?

Where did you get the idea that you are not worthy of being treated with dignity and respect? That you are not worthy of getting what you need and desire in your relationships?

And then considering whomever gave you those ideas or treated you that way in your past ask yourself this:

Why am I willing to believe that they were healthy, functional, ‘right’ people?  

What do you know now about them and their lives that could, if you allowed it, change the way you interpreted those events? Maybe they were struggling with their own depression and self-esteem. Maybe they were abused as children and lacked the ability to be nurturing and considerate of your feelings. 

Allow yourself to see the truth of these relationships. And then think about the present and ask yourself:

If those people who taught me to feel so worthless and afraid we not 100% well or secure in themselves, why am I continuing to live my life as though they were right to treat me badly and as though there really is something wrong with me?

Stop living in the past. Let yourself see the reality of the present and find relationships that will mirror what is true about you – you are worthy of love and acceptance and of peaceful, loving, fun relationships. You are worthy of asking for what you need.

Let’s get started!!!

I’m here to help.

Love Michelle
mmorand@cedriccentre.com

Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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