CEDRIC’s Weekly Update for Week 23, 2010
Welcome to the CEDRIC Centre’s blog. This is the best place online to make lasting and complete changes to your stressful relationship with food, as well as any other stressful circumstances whether in relation to your self-regard, your relationships or your career.
Many would say that we are the experts in getting you from “I’m stuck” to unstuck.
Our very simple, quick, and effective method for removing all the barriers to your success, while simultaneously teaching you new ways of approaching food and other stressors, works for every harmful coping strategy and for every age, male or female.
So whether you overeat, restrict, purge, drink, procrastinate, get stuck in harmful or unsatisfying relationships, feel unfulfilled in your career, or struggle with family connections, our method will show you, simply and speedily, how to create the change you seek in all areas of your life.
Don’t waste another day feeling stuck and stressed out. Regardless of what you may have tried in the past, I can guarantee you, you’ve never tried this because if you had, you wouldn’t still be seeking a solution. Guaranteed!
CEDRIC’s Weekly Update
Hello out there!
It’s been a supremely busy week here at CEDRIC! Wow! We’ve had many new clients reaching out to us from different parts of the world (thank you Skype!) who are exploring the many different services we have to offer. It finally feels like my dream of a centre that provides a sense of community and connectedness for those who struggle with food and body frustration is coming true!!
Last night I gave a presentation to a large group of counselling professionals in Victoria. And I will be traveling to Kelowna and Calgary in the Summer (or early Fall) to present to professionals and to the general public there. We may even hold our very, very first 3-day transformative workshop in Kelowna and Calgary. There definitely seems to be a lot of interest, and I can appreciate it’s easier for me to travel to you than for all of you to travel to me! If you’re interested in an event in your city, or if you live in Kelowna or Calgary and want to be kept informed of events, let me know.
Clearly, people are getting interested in what we have to offer and with our individual counselling, our workshops, our book and other materials and now our new Web-Based program for complete recovery, we are finally able to offer what seems to be the perfect blend of counselling support, resources, peer connection (as much or as little as you like) and healing at a price that everyone can truly afford. Yay!!!!!!!!
In case you didn’t read the article from last week, entitled “Review Time” I’ve included a piece of feedback I received from a reader about their experience of the article. Our blog and newsletter provide you with free tools every week so that you can start to better understand why you do what you do with food and what you can start to do to achieve complete freedom.
Don’t buy into the old bogus story that certain professionals still push, and therefore, certain of your friends and family might still believe, that once you’ve got an eating disorder, you’ve got it for life. That is so untrue and I find it ridiculous and frustrating that people are told such things. It is akin to the old story that the world is flat, or that cigarettes are really good for you!
It is so very common for people who work with us for just a few months to walk away with complete freedom – that lasts! Sometimes a person’s process takes a bit longer, but never are they stuck with a stressful relationship with food for life.
You see, most approaches to eating disorder treatment never actually help you to understand the underlying triggers, separate from food and body image, that you experience in your day-to-day world. You just can’t be truly successful in any lasting way with just a meal plan and some medication to level out your emotions. The problem isn’t solved, just masked over. And what will happen if for some reason you forget or want to stop following your meal plan? Have you learned to trust yourself around food and to eat when hungry and stop when full? Likely not.
Complete and lasting recovery from any harmful relationship with food such as dieting, compulsive overeating, bulimia, and anorexia requires you to be able to trust yourself around food. And that’s really not that hard to do when you are able to understand why you developed that stressful connection in the first place and what you can do, now, in the present to attend to that underlying trigger in a way that truly demonstrates respect for you.
So, if you’re on the sidelines wondering if, after all the other things you’ve tried, you could possibly be successful and truly free, the answer is a resounding YES!!! You just have to try something that actually works! And here we are!
Here’s Judy’s feedback from last week’s article:
“I love how you simplify this! I have spent my life in the all-or-nothing mode, and now I see how this thinking is affecting so many aspects of my life. I would have never identified it as having anything to do with my out-of-balance eating behaviours! Very enlightening. Practicing telling myself the truth is like whacking my way through dense underbrush one step at a time. The all-or-nothing way has become such a well worn pathway, and a hard one to leave behind. Thank you Michelle.”
Thank you Judy! I’m so glad that this clicked for you!
Have a great week everyone.
Love
By request I am writing this week on the topic of Internal and External Locus of Control. Chapter 11 of my book, Food is Not the Problem: Deal With What Is! is entirely dedicated to this topic as it is a key piece in the puzzle of why you use harmful coping strategies and why it’s so hard for you to stop.
One of my favorite authors, Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Four Agreements talks about the ancient Toltec philosophy which has four basic tenants:
The Diet Mentality of our society says that the way to be externally acceptable is to have breast augmentation, liposuction, no noticeable body fat, and a million dollars. It is not only unrealistic and unnatural, but it is also unhealthful. Ah, but the Drill Sgt. in you doesn’t really care, because the most important thing to him is meeting your needs for security and acceptance. And he believes that those needs must be met outside of yourself and can only be met when you have total acceptance and approval from everyone. He’ll worry about your quality of life and your health and wellness later. Right! Any of you who have been playing the Diet Mentality game for long will know that “later” never comes. From the Drill Sgt.’s perspective, there is always something more that you need to change/do/be in order to secure your place in the world. The only way the Drill Sgt. knows how to do this is to continue to pressure you to look a certain way so that you will finally get the approval and sense of security in the world that you so desperately seek.
Letting go of the dream of perfection doesn’t mean giving up hope of having everything you desire.
It is actually the doorway to finally stepping free of the old all-or-nothing thinking that has kept you stuck in unsatisfying jobs and relationships and has kept you chained to food and body image focus as the answer to your insecurities and dissatisfaction with life.
The story that there is a “perfect” and that you have to be it or else is what keeps you from living happily, passionately, and purposefully in this moment.
If you haven’t yet read the previous installments in our Self-Care Journey, please visit them here:
Hello Members of the CEDRIC Community! I hope you had a very productive week and that you were able to make some time to explore your values and principles in the ways I suggested, and maybe a few new ones of your own.
This week we are going to pick up your key roles work from two weeks ago and weave your values and principles into your primary goals to ensure that the goals you’re putting effort into will provide the outcomes you truly value. This is fundamentally important to your recovery from any harmful or frustrating coping strategy as it provides you a solid foundation on which to stand in the face of any storm, and it gives you a sense of peace in your tummy rather than anxiety and insecurity. If you have to compromise your integrity and values to achieve a goal, it’s not at all worth achieving, so set it aside as quickly as you can.
Newscaster Erick Thompson asked some great questions around society’s increased need for CEDRIC’s approach and Michelle’s calm answers were clear, concise and gently worded, providing the viewing audience with an example of the gentle way issues around eating disorders are handled at CEDRIC. 
