Posts Tagged using food to cope

How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight

How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight


This article ‘How Your ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ Impacts Your Eating and Weight’ will help you to understand exactly that, and I’ll give you some specific examples for how you can start to trust yourself to think clearly and make choices that you really feel good about.

As I enjoy the peace, the safety, the trust and confidence I feel in my body and in my world, the warmth and love I share with my colleagues and friends, and the time…..yes, the time, it seems so long ago, that there was a time when I truly felt like I had no time. I wasn’t on death’s door by any means, but I sure lived as though a demon was chasing me. Before my own recovery from emotional eating (some may prefer to call it binge eating disorder or overeating, whatever you call it – that’s what I did – 24/7!), I lived in a state of chronic, high-level anxiety. I also felt so fat and ugly that I believed that if someone, anyone, saw me eating anything, they would judge me as fat and gross and bad, and they would be right. Of course, when I examine that story now, it’s just silly. What did I think? Did I think that because I had extra weight on my body I wasn’t allowed or entitled or needing of any food whatsoever? Well, actually, yeah. I did believe that I should just starve myself until I was “good enough” and then I could eat something. Of course I couldn’t actually sustain my self-imposed hunger strike for very long. It always ended, as it would for any human on the planet as studies have shown, with a great big binge. This is where my insecurity and low self-esteem turned into a full blown eating disorder with me trying to control my anxiety and insecurity through restricting food in the hopes that I would one day be thin enough to be acceptable and lovable and to never, ever, no matter what, be abandoned or rejected or judged by anyone. Of course, being thin was going to bring me the love and security and accolades that I so desperately sought. Everything would be better when I was thin. Right? Not exactly. (more…)

Posted in: 2013, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Uncategorized

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The Importance of Honesty in Overcoming Overeating

overcoming overeatingOne of the hardest things for people to do to overcome overeating, especially people who have received any co-dependent training, is to hold themselves to the core value of honesty.  The reason for this is twofold:
  1. We often (usually) don’t even know what we truly feel and want and need. We might know something doesn’t feel right or good or okay but we have our inner critic   immediately judging our feelings and so we mistrust our emotions just as we mistrust our hunger and fullness cues.
  2. We are scared crapless to piss people off! Let’s just admit it! We don’t want to upset anyone. The way we’ve been trained to see the world makes it so if someone is upset (sad, angry, scared) by something we did or said it means we’ve done something wrong; we’ve been mean; we are B.A.D.! And we sure as heck don’t want to be the bad guy because the bad guy gets ostracised, rejected and judged and that’s not good! We don’t want anyone thinking, feeling or saying anything about us that isn’t nice and warm and fuzzy. And so we compromise ourselves and so the pattern continues.
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Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Self, Uncategorized

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CEDRIC Centre Mindful Eating Info Package

CEDRIC Centre for Mindful Eating Info Package

The CEDRIC Centre’s specialized program helps people of all ages to lose or gain weight and to maintain a natural weight for their bodies, for life without diet and rigorous exercise regimes. We teach you how to establish a healthy relationship with food, yourself and others, how to deal with stress, anxiety and depression in ways that boost self-esteem and allow you to feel more secure as you focus less on what you eat and weigh.  See intro video for the CEDRIC Centre Mindful Eating Info Package. The CEDRIC team provides counselling in person in British Columbia, Canada, as well via skype and phone worldwide.  We offer 3-day Workshops, Hard Copy and Downloadable  Resources sold separately or accessed through our Online Program and incude: CD’s; DVD’s; Workbooks; Teleclasses, Lessons, Assignments, a book entiled, Food Is Not The Problem – Deal With What Is by CEDRIC Founder and Director Michelle Morand, MA, RCC and more! (more…)

Posted in: 2012, Audio CDs, Audio Downloads, Audios, Book Downloads, Books, Content, Product Bundles, Product Bundles, Self-Help Services, Uncategorized, Video, Video, Workbooks, Workbooks, Workbooks - Downloads, workshops

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Positive and Negative Coping Strategies – Video Format

This week we have a new video for you of Dawn Cox going over Positive and Negative coping strategies with students at Camosun College in Victoria during a lesson on Eating Disorders. It is a good, quick review  with examples of each.  Dawn reminds us of how important it is to recognize strategies for what they are and set yourself up with lots of positive coping strategies that you can rely on in your ‘tool box’, so you don’t end up using food or other negative coping strategies. “Coping Strategies reviewed by Dawn Cox, CEDRIC Eating Disorder Counsellor for Victoria” Enjoy the Video!

Posted in: 2012

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Reasons Why Childhood Obesity Is On The Rise

reasons why childhood obesity is risingHello all, If you or someone you know has an interest in health and fitness for children I encourage you to check out this site! There is a lot more great information about eating issues in addition to the reasons why childhood obesity is rising. Below is the link for an article that site creator Len Saunders posted recently using key info and quotes from me. If you like it please pass it on! Have a great day!     Topic: Reasons Why Childhood Obesity Is On The Rise Question: Provide a few sentences why YOU think childhood obesity is on the rise. I want your opinion, not something you read. On the surface, obesity, whether in adults or children is the simple and natural outcome of eating more than our body requires given the amount of energy we are burning. The more we continue to allow ourselves as parents and as a society to focus on the surface the more this problem will continue to grow because we are missing the most important piece of this puzzle: Why are children (and adults) eating more than they are hungry for? Yes, the kinds of foods our kids are choosing is a factor; the proximity to junk foods, ie. sugary treats and processed carbs is higher than ever before and that naturally has an impact. But the amount of food our kids are ingesting is not in response to their hunger and fullness cues. If it were they would not be obese. (more…)

Posted in: 2012, Relationship with Food, Relationship with Self

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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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The first step to thinking rationally (and never using food to cope again).

thinking rationally about foodThis week I want to share an article with you that will get you thinking in a whole different way. If there are ever times these days, when you find yourself feeling stuck between agreeing with someone else’s perspective or holding your ground and honouring your thoughts / feelings / experience, then it is highly likely you’ve been trained to think in an all or nothing way that sounds something like this:
  • If I acknowledge any validity in what you are saying that means I am completely negating my perspective and that makes you “right” and me “wrong.”
Or, put another way:
  • If I let you know that I understand why you think and feel as you do that means I’m saying it’s right or okay and that means you won’t take the time to acknowledge or validate my perspective, nor will you see any need to grow or change (if your perspective/approach doesn’t work for me).  In other words if I acknowledge that I understand you it means I am agreeing with you and therefore I am agreeing to things continuing to be as they are; agreeing that you are “right” and therefore I am “wrong.” I’m not okay with how things are therefore I can’t acknowledge your perspective.  (This, by the way, is the mentality that leads to most of the divorces in our society).
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Posted in: All-or-Nothing Thinking, newsletter, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101

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Why Am I So Defensive About What I Eat?

Why Am I So Defensive About What I Eat?


Okay! This week I’m sharing a simple exercise that you can use to examine that lovely trait: Defensiveness and we’ll answer the question: Why am I so defensive about what I eat? It’ll also help you with the close cousin to defensiveness: Making Excuses. This exercise will help you take the first step to feeling more confident about your actions and less reactive to the comments and questions of others. Sound good? Then read on.

Often we get blindsided by certain comments or expressions or situations in general and, if we’re not grounded we can find ourselves reacting and feeling anxious and behaving as though we have to “prove” that we are right or that we are decent people or that the other person is wrong. 

This tactic only ever makes us feel vulnerable, insecure and small. And it is an experience that will inevitably lead us to use our food coping strategy either by getting angry with ourselves and restricting or by feeling small and powerless and binging to numb out and nurture ourselves. Either way we lose. So, let’s do some reconnaissance this week on this pattern.

Notice:
  1. When you feel like you’re put on the defensive (you’re being attacked or judged by others).
  2. When you’re suddenly anxious or feeling insecure with someone.
  3. When you feel like to have to have the “right” answer on the fly.
  4. When you hear yourself explaining your reasons for certain choices or actions or beliefs in a tone other than peaceful and chill.
  5. When you hear yourself justifying your behaviour; arguing about your rightness; rather than just acknowledging it didn’t work for the other person or that you dropped the ball, forgot, or chose not to follow through.
When you notice these indicators of defensiveness and excuse making, start by zipping your lip. Even if you’re in mid-sentence. Stop talking!  Excuse yourself (no pun intended), leave the room/situation as quickly as you can. You can say something like “I need to think about that, I’ll get back to you.”  And go! (more…)

Posted in: Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101

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Who Says? Review

who saysHello! Before I dive in to this week’s article which is a response to a question/sharing from a newsletter reader I thought I’d share a piece of feedback I received that will help you to appreciate the value of giving this a try: “Recently I made a comment and was judged for it.  I felt terrible because this is an issue I have had before and I want so badly to be a person who is accepted and thought well of. When I went through the questions I realized that the person who had criticized me was likely insecure too and it wasn’t JUST about me.  It was a helpful exercise.” That’s great news!! I love hearing how just a few minutes of conscious, structured exploration can bring such peace and clarity!! Yay! And now for this week’s question and answer from Anna. “I so desperately want to be a gracious person but it seems I am always coming out with some comment that is less than gracious or some overreaction.  I envy my neighbour who is truly gracious and even though I observe how it is done I can’t get there myself and often feel judged for my reactions and beat myself up repeatedly about this.  I realize you can’t become someone else overnight but my progress is so slow that sometimes I feel I am peddling backwards. On the other hand if I’m constantly on guard and managing my image I feel like a boring flat person.” Thanks for taking time to share your observations and frustrations here Anna. (more…)

Posted in: Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self, Relationships 101

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The Solution to Nighttime Binging

Solution to Nighttime BingingFor this week’s article I am responding to a question from a reader, Anna, who, after reading last week’s article, Back to Basics, wanted some more specific information on how to overcome nighttime binging. “I get an overwhelming sense that I need to eat at bedtime.  It is almost like an obsession.  I have not figured out what thought is triggering this yet. (At other times of the day it seems easier to figure out the thoughts that precede such events.)  If I assume it is really hunger and decide to have something small, I am right into a binge and cannot stop with a reasonable amount. Any ideas?” (more…)

Posted in: 2010, CEDRIC Centre, Relationship with Others, Relationship with Self

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