Posted by Cedric on April 8, 2009
I read an article in a local mag recently that was touting the use of food journals as being key to success in losing weight. I am incensed by publishers that give writers free range to put out this kind of information when it is nowhere near the approach for weight loss. This kind of general advice seems harmless enough and I can understand how it could be perceived as being helpful but I take it personally when people suggest that my issues can be solved so easily.
If all it took was to write down everything that I eat, recording caloric intake as well as nutritional content, I would have done it a long time ago. Unfortunately, the things that make us rely on food for comfort or problem solving run deeper and more complex than that and in my case, focusing three times a day on my mealtimes with a critical analysis of each one’s contents would just trigger me with food cues MORE!
Not only that, but who has time to plan, prepare, eat a meal, and then record the entire meal. Food journals are purported to make for more personal accountability. The article criticizes and diminishes the overweight by referring to them as underestimating their intake, and panderers of their indulgences. What scientists who advocate food journals don’t take into consideration are all the social, personal and emotional issues that the person with a food disorder is up against. Taking a person who should be gentle with themselves, who should feel redeemed and appreciated and instead, making them feel less than, in light of all their former failures at weight loss, is hardly a solution that stands a chance of being any use at all. (more…)
Hello CEDRIC Community Members. In this article we are continuing with our goal exploration and creating small, doable steps to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
If you’re just joining us as a community member and want to take part in this series about self-care and forward momentum, I recommend you follow the link to the first article in this series and build from there. You’ll get much more out of the process and it will transform your current use of food to cope. We have two more weeks (after today) of the self-care series and then we’re on to other key bits and pieces of the recovery and freedom process. Eating when you’re not hungry, eating more than you’re hungry for, not allowing yourself to eat enough, and purging are all harmful ways of coping with the world and the stress it currently presents to you. They are learned patterns of behaviour. They are not who you are. They are behaviours, and behaviours can be changed.
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If you haven’t yet read the previous installments in our Self-Care Journey, please visit them here:
Those of you who have worked with the CEDRIC Core Beliefs booklet are probably familiar with these stages, but seeing as how June is ‘Natural Eating’ month, we thought that you might enjoy a quick reminder to help you grab the nutshell of where you are in your process, right in this moment, taken from our Natural Eating booklet. 
The thing about having an issue with weight is that it translates to an issue with food. This relationship is something that is mismanaged and misunderstood by the best of them, but when you are dealing with personal challenges, the relationship gets even more murky.
There are so many opinions in the western world for the person who is having self esteem issues around the fact that they are considered overweight or are gaining weight.
There just as many options as there are opinions for the person who is dealing with this and they come from all sides as our culture invests a fortune in keeping the superficial issue of body image in the forefront of the collective consciousness.
We have people on tv, in white coats, claiming to be specialists. They give us the gears for being hefty by informing the population that we are ‘less than’ if we don’t buy their plan for salvation, hook, line and sinker. We hear about Food for nurturing and Food for self numbing as an opiate. Martha Stewart tells us that we need to be making the meals pleasing to the eye, Rachel Ray says we should be making four course meals in half an hour to measure up. Even Oprah, who is a cultural icon in today’s world, has her own kitchen staff that includes a world class chef so she has NO idea what she’s eating as she’s passed that on to her dietitian and yet her weight STILL has more ups and downs than a staircase.
How can a little person from small town wherever, with shoelaces for a budget, compete? How can we get away from the constant berating that we are living with a ‘problem’ and if we aren’t constantly doing something about our ‘problem’, we may as well move to the Tennessee Ozarks into a decrepit trailer park right now. Its bad enough that the reality is our bodies need food for fuel and three times a day or more, we better gas up or we won’t have to worry about it, we’d be dead! How does one address mealtime without confusion when messages are coming at us from everywhere with an opinion of how to think? 
