Posts Tagged CEDRIC Centre
Posted by mmorand on October 31, 2009
It seems like my last article on needs (“Having needs doesn’t make you needy”) struck a deep chord in many readers. That makes perfect sense. It is the fundamental issue. The only reason you ever use food to cope, no exceptions, is because you have needs that aren’t being met in some area of your life and you’ve told yourself that you’re not allowed, not deserving, or just not capable of getting them met, no matter what you do. These stories you’re telling yourself lead you to feel depressed and anxious, lethargic and frantic, in other words, they overwhelm you.
And when you’re feeling overwhelmed about something you believe you can’t do anything to change or resolve, the only thing to do is to find a way to diminish or discount the impact of that thing: to numb out.
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, body image, body/mind/spirit, bulimia, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, control, core beliefs, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, grounding, growing, healing, nurturing, overeating, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, workshops
Posted by mmorand on October 9, 2009
Hey out there! I was just getting ready for my day and my mind was reflecting on a few recent events in my life and noticing a commonality between them. So naturally I thought I’d share these reflections with you.
It seems that the overall lesson is that when life presents us with an opportunity to change a harmful pattern, we have two choices (assuming we’re conscious enough of the pattern to see it in the first place):
1. We can see the opportunity to do things differently and choose to do things the same old way anyway. Usually we make this choice out of fear of change or fear of angering or disappointing someone if we were to behave differently than they “expect.”
Or…..
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, body image, body/mind/spirit, CEDRIC Centre, core beliefs, drill sergeant, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, future, grounding, growing, healing, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self
Posted by mmorand on September 25, 2009
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.
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, body image, body/mind/spirit, bulimia, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, control, core beliefs, drill sergeant, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, grounding, growing, healing, healthy eating, insecurity, natural eating, nurturing, overeating, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self esteem, self love, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating
Posted by mmorand on September 3, 2009
Hello CEDRIC community members. I want to send you off on your long weekend experience, whatever that may be, with a quick thought to help ground and center you and to guide you in making decisions around food this weekend and beyond. At the very least it will illuminate some of your current barriers to having a peaceful relationship with food.
Whenever you are faced with a choice to eat ask yourself the following two questions:
1. Am I physically hungry?
2. Is what I’m about to eat going to support me to feel psychologically, emotionally and physically well after I eat this and tomorrow morning? If not, what will?
Grounding and Centering Exercise
Give this a whirl, see what happens. Let me know.
Love Michelle
Whether you prefer one-on-one counselling (in-person, by phone, or email), our intensive and transformative workshops, or the self-help approach, take action today to have a stress-free relationship with food. Sign up for our free newsletter today! Newsletter subscribers receive exclusive product discounts and are first in line to get on all the latest new at CEDRIC!
Tags: acceptance, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, body image, body/mind/spirit, bulimia, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, core beliefs, drill sergeant, eating disorders, exploring, grounding, growing, healing, healthy eating, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, tandem healing, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating
Posted by mmorand on September 2, 2009
Hello All! I hope you had a positive and forward-moving week.
This is week two in our series on Self-Care. If you haven’t read last week’s post, click here to access The First Step to Self-Care. Last week we explored the different roles you have in your life and took a look at what you currently do in those roles vs. what you expect of yourself or what you’d like to see yourself doing based on your core values.
Next week we are going to pick up where we left off with the identification and articulation of our goals and come up with three small steps that you can take over the next little while for each of your goals to ease your transition from “here” to “there.” Any lasting change to our thinking and our behaviour comes gradually. It just doesn’t stick if we try to rush it. That’s because we don’t have the understanding or the life experiences that help us see the value in sustaining that change when we rush it rather than truly embody it. We also need to learn to make space in our daily lives for these new and different behaviours and, when we already have full-to-bursting lives where many things are falling through the cracks, it takes some time to create the space for something new without simultaneously increasing your stress level (which rather defeats the purpose of any new life enhancing behaviour, I think).
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, body image, body/mind/spirit, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, core beliefs, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, future, grounding, growing, healing, insecurity, natural eating, nurturing, past, present, promises, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self
Posted by mmorand on August 27, 2009
Okay folks, we’re going to take a little journey together (if you’re willing). It is a journey to a place called “balance.” And we get there by walking a path called “self-care.” Say goodbye to your old patterns of behaviour. Say goodbye to harmful old relationships, places of work, and miscellaneous other people, places and things that undermine you and your sense of peace and happiness. Once you start down Self-Care Lane you won’t be needing or wanting to return. I guarantee you!
For the next month, we’re going to be putting one foot, gently but firmly, in front of the other to create a life that is balanced, peaceful, and honoring who you really are and what you truly deserve in life.
Our journey begins with you taking a few minutes to get clear on where you are now. Then we’ll take a look at where you’d like to be and fill in the spaces between step-by-step so you’ve got a clear path that leads you towards lasting change at a pace that is right for you.
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, body image, body/mind/spirit, CEDRIC Centre, compulsive eating, core beliefs, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, grounding, growing, healing, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, workshops
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self
Posted by mmorand on July 22, 2009
Life is beautiful. It is complex and it has many twists and turns, but it has a quality of freedom and the opportunity for constant self-creationism that, with the right mindset, allows each of us to feel exuberant, passionate, alive and fulfilled whether we are accepting a Nobel prize, giving birth, beginning or ending a relationship, washing the dishes or stuck in rush-hour traffic. But what about someone who doesn’t have the “right” mindset? What about someone who, however it came to be, doesn’t see the world as their oyster of creation but instead sees themselves as undeserving of what they desire; who sees themselves as “not good enough”? How do they navigate the stress of accepting an award, having a child, ending a relationship or that inevitable traffic jam?
Mostly likely they’ve developed patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving called “coping strategies” that allow them to feel some degree of safety and security in their world. Coping strategies take many forms. One primary coping strategy that many people in our society develop is a preoccupation with appearance and with their relationship with food, either in a restricting or overeating way.
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, body image, body/mind/spirit, CEDRIC Centre, control, core beliefs, drill sergeant, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, grounding, growing, healing, insecurity, nurturing, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, tandem healing, workshops
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, workshops
Posted by mmorand on July 21, 2009
All weight problems are simply a reflection of a lack of balance within. That’s all. Emotionally and physically you’re out of balance. Your priorities are skewed and they need to be tweaked so that you really embody the belief that your needs and your health are the most important things in your world.
Now, rather than feeling “outed” by this statement and that everyone you meet is going to “know” you’re out of balance, could you allow yourself instead to just accept the truth of it? Instead of trying to protect yourself from the truth of your lack of balance, how about asking the question: “What’s the fastest, most effective and lasting solution to this problem?”
(more…)
Tags: acceptance, anxiety, body image, body/mind/spirit, CEDRIC Centre, core beliefs, drill sergeant, exploring, forgiveness, grounding, growing, healing, insecurity, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth, tandem healing, triggers, workshops
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, workshops
Posted by Cedric on July 10, 2009
Excerpted from Food is Not the Problem: Deal With What Is!
When we actively begin the process of letting go of our old core beliefs, we frequently feel awkward, uncomfortable, phony, forced and inauthentic. I implore you: don’t judge this as an indication that you are doing something wrong or that you are doomed to fail at this recovery process. These feelings of discomfort and unfamiliarity are not bad, wrong, or in any other way inappropriate. The thoughts and behaviours you are asking of yourself are simply so very different from your “norm,” that is, from what you are accustomed to, that they naturally feel strange. And as human beings who have been schooled in all-or-nothing thinking, we have been trained to judge anything which differs from our regular experiences as wrong.
This is simply not accurate. If you continue allowing yourself to think this way, you run the risk of not witnessing and experiencing all the benefits of the changes which are taking place. You are judging your experience in the moment as bad or wrong because it feels strange or different from what you are accustomed to. If you find yourself heading down this path, I encourage you to remember that you have begun this process of change because you want things to be different – because you recognize that you have a need for a change in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours around certain things. This being the case, how much sense does it make to judge yourself as failing in your process because things are feeling different, when that is what you initially desired? (more…)
Tags: acceptance, body image, CEDRIC Centre, core beliefs, exploring, forgiveness, future, grounding, growing, healing, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, recovery, self care, self esteem, self love, self worth
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Self
Posted by mmorand on July 9, 2009
Traveling with an eating disorder packs a triple whammy for the already beleaguered spirit in desperate need of true rest and relaxation. Whether you struggle with dieting, overeating, purging or a general dissatisfaction with your physical form that prevents you from settling peacefully into the moment, a vacation can be a stress-filled experience that makes you want to just stay at home instead with the covers pulled high.
In this 3-part article, I will not deal with the obvious stress of the obligatory attempts at dieting in anticipation of any vacation that requires the baring of any skin above the elbow or knee. That is a topic for another day. Instead, I will address the 3 key ways in which traveling can challenge the tenuous grip most disordered eaters have on their relationship with food and weight: limitations/abundance of choice; change in routine; and the emotional impact of traveling. As I explore each of these confounding circumstances I will provide you with some suggestions on how to approach them in the most simple and life-enhancing way so you can relax and enjoy your well-earned vacation. (more…)
Tags: acceptance, body image, CEDRIC Centre, community, core beliefs, drill sergeant, eating disorders, exploring, forgiveness, future, grounding, growing, healing, natural eating, nurturing, past, present, rebalancing, self esteem, self love, self worth, triggers
Posted in: CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self