Posts Tagged Chronic dieting

‘Here’s a little trick for bad body thoughts and self-consciousness around weight/body image.’

A Snapshot of Your Daily Life (And What to do to Make it Better) We’ve all been there! You wake up feeling that same old anxiety begin to wash over you. Then you become conscious of your thoughts and they’re a churning blend of everything you need to do that day, all that you didn’t do (or didn’t do right) yesterday, and of food and of your body. Even if you had a ‘good’ day yesterday and ate what you were ‘supposed’ to, that voice in your head is telling you: “You’re still not there yet! You’d better not screw up today!” And even if you somehow managed to get ‘there’ and you’re the weight and body size you’ve always told yourself you’re supposed to be, because you got there through restriction and behaviours that are neither life-enhancing nor sustainable, that voice in the back of your head is saying “It won’t last!” And you haven’t even made it out of bed yet. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part X ©

Get Free Of The Diet MentalityHurrah! We made it! This is Part X in our Diet Mentality series. This series is my gift to you. The series will provide you with a clear, concrete sense of how your thinking about food and body image gets in your way. It describes what you can begin to do in each of the key Diet Mentality areas to begin to feel at peace within and comfortable in your skin. Last week I asked you to consider your answers to some questions about clothing and body image. What did you come up with? I imagine you realized you have some pretty impossible expectations of yourself. Or at least, expectations that are preventing you from just feeling comfortable and doing what you’d like to do in your life at this time. The story that you have to be anything other than what you are now in order to have comfortable clothing, get out there and do things, and be worthy of equal treatment is a very all or nothing and, therefore, paralyzing thought. Inevitably it leads you to feel even more uncomfortable, more stuck and depressed. This naturally leads you to want to eat those foods that will numb and soothe you and, at least for a brief moment in time, make you feel a little better. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Food, The Diet Mentality Series

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part VII ©

Get Free of the Diet MentalityHello! This is Part VII of The Diet Mentality Series, (visit The CEDRIC Centre Blog for immediate access to all articles in this series). Welcome new members of our community! You’ll fit right in here if you are an emotional eater, binge, restrict, or struggle with anorexia, bulimia or some other stressful way of relating to food and want to learn how to stop. Over the past 2 months now we’ve been exploring in detail each of the key aspects of thinking and behaving that make up what we at CEDRIC call The Diet Mentality. Last week we covered the topic of weight and how our attachment to a certain size or weight impacts us. I asked you to contemplate a brief series of questions to do your own inner exploration of this topic and from the feedback I received you learned a lot! Good on ya! This week we are going to begin a little exploration on another of your favorite diet mentality topics: Exercise! Don’t ya just love it!!! (more…)

Posted in: 2012, The Diet Mentality Series

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part VI ©

How To Get Free Of The Diet MentalityHello! This is Part VI 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 we’ve 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.
  5. My last article discussed the biggie of engaging in all or nothing thinking regarding food and meals.
This week we’re going to explore the topic you love to hate: Your weight! In the diet mentality perspective on life your weight is the central focus of your life. You base decisions about what you can have, do and be on how much weight you have lost or gained. Therefore, if you have gained a bit you feel deserving of punishment and will attempt to restrict yourself or isolate yourself. If you have lost weight you feel more deserving of “treats” and feel more positive self-regard. The truth is, once your self-esteem becomes attached to a number on a scale or a particular pant size you’re in big trouble. This is because now you’re attaching all your worth to one thing which makes any human obsessed about that one thing, which means we get in there and micro-manage that one thing and pretty soon we forget how to just be normal and natural and let our body do what it naturally does (eat when hungry, stop when full and be a natural healthy weight without effort). (more…)

Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Food, The Diet Mentality Series

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Basic Statistics on Dieting Video

Basic Statistics on Dieting VideoBasic Statistics on Dieting Video and Why it so Rarely Works for Anyone.


This video will quickly provide you with some interesting Basic Statistics on Dieting, including how they can lead to eating disorders for our Video Blog. 

Some of them will surprise you, others will be familiar. All of them will help you to understand why you’ve struggled with dieting and weight loss and body image.

Dieting for anything other than health reasons and from any mental attitude other than self-esteem and good self-care will fail. This is because if you’re not thinking about your long term health and overall self-esteem you will engage in diets that are extreme and therefore cannot be sustained for any length of time.

What we really need if we want to be successful in weight loss and in creating a relationship with food that makes us feel good mentally and physically is an approach to food and to self-care that comes first from trusting the cues that your body is sending you about how you feel and what that means about what you need.

In essence, good self-esteem is required before any change to a pattern in your life can be lasting. And good self-esteem comes from you taking the time to listen to how you feel emotionally and physically and responding respectfully and reasonably to those emotions and sensations.  If you learn to do this – and it isn’t hard – you will have no problems with overeating, emotional eating, binging, eating disorders or weight loss ever again.

I know this from personal experience and I’ve seen it time and time again in my 20+ years as a counselling specialist helping people to stop binging and lose weight. It’s the same for those who struggle with anorexia or bulimia or other forms of restriction and confused relating to food. 

Figure out what’s getting in the way of you feeling worthy of good self-care and worthy of love and acceptance from others, as you are and you’ll be your best, sexy, happenin’ self before you know it.

It isn’t hard, it doesn’t have to take long – you just need a good teacher and solid, simple, clear tools. 

I can help. mmorand@cedriccentre.com email me and we can talk about how things are going for you and what you can do to quickly and simply get a grip on food and weight for good.

Michelle



Once you’ve learned about the basic statistics on dieting, click on this link to purchase the full video or reach out to Michelle for an individual session or for more information on the best approach for you to completely step free for good from your stressful relationship with food and weight loss.

Just click on the image to hear a few minutes of an excerpt from Michelle’s presentation of  ‘Sidestepping the Food Emotion Power Struggle’ 

Posted in: 2012, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Self, The Diet Mentality Series

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The Diet Mentality Vs. Natural Eating – Podcast Format

Diet Mentality Vs. Natural EatingThe Diet Mentality vs. Natural Eating

For this week’s blog, we have a Podcast recorded by Michelle, in which she examines the dynamics of the Diet Mentality Vs. Natural Eating.

We’ve added a snippet of a written article on the subject of the Diet Mentality Vs. Natural Eating below – if you’d prefer to read just click on the article link and get access to a whole series of articles on the topic and tools for what to do to change your frustrating relationship with food for good.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast, just  click on the image to hear a few minutes of Michelle explaining the importance of changing your way of thinking if you have been stuck in The Diet Mentality vs. Natural Eating, and to start  listening more to your body instead of what some diet is telling you to eat and when to eat it, and more during the 11 minutes. Enjoy!

Article Snippet:

Natural Eating 101 The Diet Mentality vs. Natural Eating

When you eat naturally, your body comes to its natural weight without rigorous exercise programs and without dieting or restricting. And it stays there.

With natural eating, you can have any amount of any food(s) around you at any time and you don’t feel the slightest urge to overeat/binge. You can have a cupboard full of your “bad” or “trigger” or “binge” foods and forget all about them; so much so that they go bad and you have to throw them out! Truly. I have experienced this transformation myself and I have heard this very same statement from hundreds of clients who now live natural eating every day. If your relationship with food is not that, you’ve definitely come to the right place and you are definitely ready for the CEDRIC Method.

This week we are going to talk about The Diet Mentality.  The following checklist is your own personal assessment tool to discern whether you have The Diet Mentality. Whether you engage in formal dieting (follow a program of some kind) or just don’t allow yourself to have certain foods because you need to lose weight, you are in The Diet Mentality. If you’ve been engaging in either of those approaches for more than 2 weeks, you will have already begun to lose your trust in your body’s signals of hunger and fullness and feel less comfortable just being around food and in your body. It’s ironic that this Diet Mentality that is meant to help us lose weight and feel better often sets us very quickly on a treadmill of food and weight preoccupation that can be very hard to get off of without support and guidance.

So, if this topic hits home with you at all and you’d like your relationship with food and your weight to feel more secure and confident and peaceful, I encourage you to stay tuned as we explore the key tools and information you need to step out of The Diet Mentality completely and forever and live in that peaceful place we call Natural Eating.

The following is a handout that I give to most of my clients as it helps them to identify certain ways of thinking and behaving that they may just think are normal or even a part of who they are but which are actually learned thoughts and behaviours that are a part of the harmful Diet Mentality.


Posted in: 2012, Natural Eating 101, The Diet Mentality Series, Tips for Natural Eating

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part V ©

Get Free Of The Diet MentalityHello! 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. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, CEDRIC Centre, The Diet Mentality Series, Tips for Natural Eating

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality, Part IV ©

How to Get Free of the Diet MentalityWelcome, This is Part IV in our How to Get Free of the Diet Mentality series (visit The CEDRIC Centre blog for immediate access to all articles in this series). If you’re new to our community and find that you binge, restrict, or struggle with anorexia, bulimia or some other stressful way of relating to food you’ve come to the right place to learn about why you do it and what you can do to stop once and for all. So far in this article series we’ve discussed the perils of both just arbitrarily restricting the amount of food you’re “allowed” to have regardless of your true hunger levels, and 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. And last week we talked about labeling foods as good/bad legal/illegal and the nasty consequences of doing so. In case you’re not aware (because you’re new to our community and to this process), The Diet Mentality is at the core of your stressful relationship with food. It is the way of thinking and behaving with food that arises from confused thinking and stressful situations in your past, present and future. As long as you continue to believe that The Diet Mentality has any merit, you will continue to struggle with food and body image and with those underlying stressors that are triggering this way of thinking and behaving in the first place. On that note, this week I want to educate you on another core trait of The Diet Mentality: You restrict eating to certain times of the day – whether you are hungry or not. This means both eating at traditional mealtimes when you are not hungry and not allowing yourself to eat after a certain time of day despite feelings of hunger. (more…)

Posted in: Complete Recovery, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Food, The Diet Mentality Series, Tips for Natural Eating

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How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part III ©

Get Free Of The Diet MentalityWelcome! If you’re new to our community and find that you binge, restrict, or struggle with anorexia, bulimia or some other stressful way of relating to food you’ve come to the right place to learn about why you do it and what you can do to stop once and for all. This is Part III in our Diet Mentality series. You can just start here or you can hop back a few weeks to the initial discussion of The Diet Mentality and statistics and then look at the previous Diet Mentality points to make sure you’re up to speed. Either approach will be helpful so don’t sweat it if you just want to read from here. Just do what you have time for, it will be enough. So, we’ve already discussed the perils of both just arbitrarily restricting the amount of food you’re “allowed” to have regardless of your true hunger levels, and 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. This week we’re going to discuss two points rather than just one as they feed in to each other and keep a nasty cycle of food preoccupation and self-recrimination going full tilt. 1.   You label foods as good or bad – legal or illegal.
    2.  Your thoughts about having certain foods lead to negative self-thoughts and judgements. The problem here of course is that #1 naturally triggers #2 should you think about or, gasp, actually have one of those forbidden/bad foods. Then that makes you buy into #1 even more which creates even more judgement and labeling of yourself as lacking willpower which undermines your self-esteem and leads you, typically, to feel so hopeless and overwhelmed that you just give up and eat those ‘baaaaaad’ foods which then, in our Diet Mentality mindset makes you ‘reeeeeaaaaally baaaaaaaad.’ (more…)

    Posted in: 2012

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    How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part I ©

    Get Free Of The Diet MentalityOne aspect of The Diet Mentality that you must be on the lookout for in order to step free of that old way of thinking and step into an effortless relationship with food and a natural weight for your body without dieting is the pattern of restricting the amount of food that you are ‘allowed’ to have. In a rational, functional relationship with food, what you are physically hungry for is what you are ‘allowed’ to have. And the only one who ‘allows’ you is you. Not the other people you’re eating with; Not Jenny Craig; Not Dr. Bernstein; You! Your primary responsibility where food is concerned is to wait until you are hungry to eat something. Your next responsibility is to learn to stay present while eating and to identify and listen to the cues of comfortable fullness you are eating naturally.  You are not responsible to buy into anyone else’s ideas of what you should have or how much. (more…)

    Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self, Tips for Natural Eating

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