Posts Tagged 'rebalancing'

Laura’s Story: Help for Anorexia, Orthorexia, and Chronic Dieting

Posted by mmorand on December 7, 2012

Laura was 19 when she first came to see me for help for anorexia, orthorexia and chronic dieting. She was wafer thin, and with the exception of her face and hands, every inch of her yellowed skin was covered in layers of thick clothing. It was June.

She sat across from me, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes firmly attached to a spot on the floor that seemed to have captivated her interest rather keenly for a tiny speck of lint. Her opening volley, which she directed generally towards my side of the room through clenched teeth, was something along the lines of:

“I’m only here because my mom thinks I have a problem and she said if I came to see you once she’d lay off and leave me alone.”

(more…)

Tags: anorexia counselling, anorexia nervosa recovery, Counselling for restricting food, Eating Disorder Counselling worldwide, eating disorder treatment, Overcome Anorexia for good, rebalancing, self esteem, Vancouver Eating Disorder Help

Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Anorexia and Bulimia, Complete Recovery, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

Maryanne’s Recovery From Daily Binging and Purging

Posted by mmorand on October 5, 2012

Read about how she transformed from Daily Binging and Purging to Peace and Freedom in 6 Months

Her Last Resort

Six months ago Maryanne called me, feeling totally down and stuck. A 30 year old, divorced mother of 2 children (10 and 12), she said, through tears, that I was her last resort. I’ve been at this work long enough, and have my own eating disorder history and longstanding recovery so I understood what that statement meant. It meant she was desperate. She’d tried every diet out there and maybe even some sort of residential treatment or ‘weight loss retreat.’

(more…)

Tags: anxiety, binge eating, bulimia, compulsive eating, counselling for binge eating, eating disorders, growing, natural eating, rebalancing, Recovery from binging & purging, self esteem, triggers

Posted in: 2012, Complete Recovery, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self, Uncategorized

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

Posted by mmorand on July 28, 2012

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…)

Tags: bad body thoughts, body image, bulimia, Chronic dieting, eating disorder treatment, insecurity, overeating, overweight, rebalancing, self confidence, self esteem, self love, self-conscious; eating disorder help, underweight

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

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How to Let Go of Self-Judgement

Posted by mmorand on June 6, 2012

Hi Everyone,

The easiest way to let go of self-judgement and set about the sometimes challenging but also fun and exciting experience of truly living life to the fullest, is remind yourself daily of the following premises until they simply become the way you live your life; no reminder necessary.

The truth of human nature is that there is always a valid reason for why we feel and behave as we do.
Your feelings are always perfectly appropriate for what you are telling yourself about the situation or person that seems to be triggering them.
Your behaviours are always just a reaction to what you’re feeling, which, as I’ve said above, is just your natural response to what you are thinking/how you are perceiving the situation at hand.
Therefore, it makes no sense whatsoever to judge or shame yourself for how you feel or what you do.
What does make sense however is to learn:

a) To immediately identify what you’re thinking (ie. what’s triggering you to feel and behave as you are) and then;

b) How to quickly assess whether your perception is accurate or not, or whether you need more information to decide.

(more…)

Tags: acceptance, all-or-nothing thinking, altering behaviour, anxiety, binge eating, body image, bulimia, drill sergeant, emotional eating, forgiveness, rebalancing, recovery from eating disorders, self esteem, self love, self worth, self-judgement

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

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Basic Statistics on Dieting Video

Posted by mmorand on March 24, 2012

Basic 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’

Tags: anorexia, binge eating, bulimia, Chronic dieting, compulsive eating, dieting, eating disorder clinics, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeating, rebalancing, recovery, self care, the diet mentality

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

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The Diet Mentality Vs. Natural Eating – Podcast Format

Posted by mmorand on March 17, 2012

The 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.

Tags: binge eating, bulimia, Chronic dieting, compulsive eating, dieting, eating disorder clinics, eating disorders, healthy eating, natural eating, overeating, purging, rebalancing, the diet mentality

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

How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part V ©

Posted by mmorand on March 3, 2012

Hello!

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:

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.
We’ve also addressed the stress of labeling foods as good/bad legal/illegal and the nasty consequences of doing so.
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…)

Tags: acceptance, all-or-nothing thinking, anorexia, anxiety, binge and purge, binge eating, Chronic dieting, compulsive eating, eating disorder treatment, emotional eating, natural eating, rebalancing, self esteem, self-judgement, triggers to use food to cope, unreasonable expectations

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

Posted by mmorand on February 17, 2012

Welcome! 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…)

Tags: binge eating, Chronic dieting, compulsive eating, counting calories, eating disorder clinics, eating disorder treatment, healthy eating, natural eating, obsessing about weight, rebalancing, reducing calories, restricting_food, the diet mentality

Posted in: 2012

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Posted by mmorand on February 10, 2012

This is Part II in our Diet Mentality series. If you’re new to our community you can just start here or you can hop back two weeks to the discussion of The Diet Mentality and statistics and then look at last week’s key Diet Mentality point to make sure you’re up to speed. Either approach will be helpful. Just do what you can.

Another key indicator that you’ve got some Diet Mentality going on is if you feel 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 might not seem like it has anything at all to do with dieting. But it has everything to do with the co-dependent mindset and all or nothing thinking that under pin The Diet Mentality.

You see, if you are so concerned with what other people think or what they would feel that you would compromise your body’s needs and not be authentic about what you like or what you need it is highly likely that you do this in other areas of your life too.

This is very dangerous as this way of being in the world creates great anxiety and insecurity because you really don’t trust yourself to take care of yourself and put your own needs first. This is, ironically, often why we start dieting, binging, purging or engaging in full blown eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder in the first place.

(more…)

Tags: all-or-nothing thinking, binge eating, body image, compulsive eating, eating disorder treatment, eating out, insecurity, natural eating, peer pressure, rebalancing, the diet mentality, triggers

Posted in: 2012, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Natural Eating 101, Relationship with Others, Tips for Natural Eating

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Posted by mmorand on February 3, 2012

One 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…)

Tags: acceptance, body image, bulimia, Chronic dieting, compulsive eating, diet mentality, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeating, rebalancing, restricting, self-judgement

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

Laura’s Story: Help for Anorexia, Orthorexia, and Chronic Dieting

Maryanne’s Recovery From Daily Binging and Purging

Read about how she transformed from Daily Binging and Purging to Peace and Freedom in 6 Months

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

How to Let Go of Self-Judgement

Basic Statistics on Dieting Video

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

The Diet Mentality Vs. Natural Eating – Podcast Format

The Diet Mentality vs. Natural Eating

How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part V ©

How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part III ©

How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part II ©

How To Get Free Of The Diet Mentality Part I ©