Free Teleclass Coming Your Way!

After taking a summer break, I'm happy to announce that my free teleclass series is starting up again in September. The next free teleclass is on a specialized topic: Emotional Eating, Overeating, and Success After Weight Loss Surgery. If you are someone who has had weight loss surgery or is considering it, this call is for you.

The teleclass takes place Wednesday September 3, 2008 at
3 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, and noon Pacific time.

If you can't attend, don't let that stop you from registering. The call will be recorded and registered participants will receive access to the class recording after the call. If you've never attended a teleclass before, they're easy. You'll just dial in on the phone number you will receive when you register (you are responsible for any long distance charges) and when prompted you'll be given an access code to enter.

You can go here to register and when you do, you'll have an opportunity to submit a question that you would like addressed. I'll try to get to as many as I can on the call. Hope to "see" you in class!

Take good care,

Melissa

Don’t Sabotage Your Weight Loss: Slow Down!

Not taking the time for our own needs and self-care often turns out to be a direct path to overeating, stress eating, and weight gain.

All the women I know are busy, busy, busy. We try to do too much. We think that we can somehow squeeze extra hours out of the day.

We skimp on sleep, eat on the run, and steal from our own self-care time in order to get to the things on our “to-do lists.”

Big mistakes.

When we don’t allow time for what we really need or desire, it’s tempting to use food to try to “fill in the gaps.” A quick snack or a “treat” becomes the reward that’s supposed to take the place of the real need or desire we didn’t allow ourselves to address.

The problem is, food just becomes a band aid. Eating and food don’t really solve the problem. Eventually the desire or the need comes back and we start the vicious cycle all over again.

If you want to take control of emotional eating, if you want to lose weight and keep it off, then it’s vital to address this cycle head-on. It’s essential to learn about the tools that help you slow down and find ways to really feed your needs—in a way that chocolate and French fries never will.

Take good care,

Melissa

PS: If you haven’t signed up for my free Self-care package, now would be a good time. Just enter your information in the top right corner of this page and I’ll send you a short weekly audio each week for five weeks. These to-the-point lessons will help you create more balance and more focus on YOU in your life—no matter how busy you are.

Emotional Eating Problem Solving: Top Ten Reasons for Getting Stuck

A few weeks ago I was sorting through school work and papers that came home in my fifth graders backpack at the end of the school year and had been left in a pile. In his math folder I found this great handout: "Problem-solving Top-ten List." It's intended to help students who are stuck on a math problem, but I found it to be great life advice and very applicable to eating and weight loss battles. What do you think?

Top Ten Reasons For Getting Stuck in the First Place:

1. You tried to rush through the problem without thinking.

We are often great at rushing into new weight loss programs and diets hoping each one will be the magic answer. Clients often tell me how they've picked programs in the past that weren't compatible with their tastes or their schedules or their preferences and that they probably knew from the beginning they wouldn't want to continue with long term.

2. You didn't read the problem carefully.

We don't just run into this difficulty with math problems. In many life situations, if we don't clearly understand the problem, we might choose a problem solving approach that isn't going to meet our needs. In the Emotional Eating Toolbox(TM) 28-Day Program, I encourage users to take the time to understand their unique situation. Taking the time to understand your reasons for overeating and the types of solutions that will work for you is essential to not getting stuck further down the road.

3. You don't know what the problem is asking for.

Again, this doesn't just apply to math problems. If we're working to solve the wrong problem, we aren't going to get anywhere. If you are struggling with emotional eating (stress eating, boredom eating, or eating when you are lonely or upset), no food plan or diet in the world is going to fix that--because it's not about the food--it's about figuring out what to do with the feelings.

4. You don't have enough information.

I often tell me clients that if they feel like they aren't getting anywhere, or if they feel like they are beating their head against the wall, odds are that there is a part of the problem that isn't being addressed. The Emotional Eating Toolbox(TM) spends a significant amount of time showing you how to collect information about yourself, about your hunger, and about your relationship with food so that you can solve the eating problems once and for all.

5. You're looking for an answer that the problem isn't asking for.

If you overeat because you are bored or stressed or anxious or angry (or any other emotion), the problem isn't about food choice. The answer the problem is asking for has to do with finding new or better ways of responding to your emotions, your stress, and your needs. The weight loss industry spends billions of dollars convincing us that if we follow a certain diet we will be beautiful and happy. I meet far to many of my clients because they feel like they haven't been able to be "strict enough" with themselves. They are angry with themselves because they haven't been successful with weight loss plans that stress deprivation and willpower and denial.

The truth is that diets aren't the answer for this problem. Enduring change and enduring weight loss happen when we make changes that work with our lives--not when we try to maintain behaviors that leave us hungry and grumpy and feeling like we are missing out.

6. The strategy you're using doesn't work for this particular problem.

I'll say it again. Diets tell you what to eat. Often, being on a diet will increase the amount of time and energy someone spends focusing on food. Diets don't teach you how to change patterns of emotional eating or overeating when you aren't hungry. They don't teach you how to feed yourself and expand your life in ways that won't leave you feeling deprived. Users of my program are often surprised at first how little time they spend focusing on food. The program doesn't count fat grams or calories or carbs. The program helps you target the reasons you feel hungry and the reasons you eat when you aren't. The program helps you GET OFF the diet rollercoaster and put food in a much smaller place in your life.

7. You aren't applying the strategy correctly.

If you've been dieting for years, it can be hard to move out of the mindset of deprivation and blaming yourself when the diet doesn't work out (even though the diet was probably doomed to fail in the first place--remember--a diet is the wrong strategy). Using the tools in the Emotional Eating Toolbox(TM) takes practice. Often users initially have a hard time looking at their eating patterns and their emotions without feeling the old self-blame, shame and guilt.

One of the biggest benefits that Toolbox users and coaching clients note is being able to stop feeling guilty and bad all the time. That's HUGE.

8. You failed to combine your strategy with another strategy.

If we try to fit ourselves into a strategy or a program instead of finding a strategy that fits and works with our specific individual situation, we're likely to get stuck. Cookie cutter eating plans and programs are problematic because we are all different. For instance, the Toolbox program guides you to your own answers and strategies through the work you do and the answers you provide about yourself.

9. The problem has more than one answer.

There is no one magic cause of weight gain and there is no one magic answer for weight loss. People's paths for taking control of their emotional eating will be different. Once you have the basic set of tools, you will be more successful if you learn to use them in the way that complements your personality, your strengths, your struggles, and your life.

10.The problem can't be solved.

Emotions and tough times are real. We might not like them but we can't just wish them away. Trying to ignore or bury emotions doesn't work well in the long term either. The truth is that there is no diet or food plan that is going to help us cope with tough emotions. If we forget about the emotional part of our eating and simply focus on the food, we're going to get stuck and we're likely to fail. And then we are likely to blame ourselves--which isn't helpful either.

There ARE powerful tools that can help anybody get through the emotions and situations that they struggle with. When we learn them and practice using them it's easier to put food in it's place, make choices that feel good about eating, and put more energy into creating the lives we really want to be living.

Take good care,

Melissa

Is perfectionism sabotaging your weight loss?

Is perfectionism sabotaging your weight loss or your relationship with food? It might be. Trying to get it "perfect" can actually make emotional eating much worse.

Do you wake up in the morning thinking “today is a fresh start (with food)?”

Does your newest approach to eating inevitably fall apart because you’ve “blown it” and feel your efforts were ruined?

If you deviate from your plan for your eating, do you react by overeating even more?

Do you have expectations for “ideal eating” that are so unrealistic or rigid that you could never imagine sticking with them for a lifetime? Or—do you begin to feel deprived just thinking about how you “should” eat?

If you answer “yes” to these questions, chances are your inner perfectionist is having a field day sabotaging your relationship with food.

The truth is, nobody gets it “perfect” (whatever THAT is). An all-or-nothing approach will sink weight loss efforts fast. On top of that, not only are we destined to fail if we expect perfection, but our inner perfectionist usually contributes a double whammy by heaping on the guilt and self-blame when we DON’T get it perfect. For many of us, that alone can be a recipe for emotional eating.

Question for the day: Do you have an inner perfectionist and if so, how is she or he getting you into trouble or making life harder? What tools do you have to take back the reins and put the perfectionist--and food--in it's place?

Take good care,

Melissa

Creating Enduring Change With Emotional Eating: Maintaining

The most consistently neglected part of the weight loss process is the phase of “maintenance.” Without solidifying our ability to maintain, our chances of creating lasting change in our relationship with food or enduring weight loss are slim. Change is not a one shot deal.

Just as quitting smoking involves a lot more than throwing your cigarettes in the trash, conquering emotional eating is something we do over and over again, in big and little ways, as we build new patterns and tools for coping and new ways of being in our worlds.

Many of my clients come to me after significant periods in their lives when they’ve walked on the road they want to be on. They’ve taken charge of their relationship with food. They’ve found the groove of eating the way they wanted to eat. They’ve lost the weight and felt the excitement and the satisfaction.

And then something happened.

Their focus on food and eating increased. The activity level decreased. The cravings changed. The weight came back. And now they are feeling defeated and tired and they have a bit (or a lot) less hope then they did before. They're usually feeling pretty guilty and mad at themselves which makes things even harder.

Change is not a one shot deal.

You probably know how it works. You’ve made a successful change. You feel proud. You feel like celebrating. Or you decide you really don’t need to be quite so disciplined anymore. You start to slack off or you loosen the reins a bit. Is this a bad thing? Haven’t you earned it? How do you know?

Maintenance is not something that happens automatically—AND maintenance is the stage where all the hard work can pay off, or can start to unravel. Most of my clients are very clear that they know HOW to make changes. They know how to lose weight (if that’s their goal). What they struggle with is keeping it off. What they don’t want to do is lose the weight and then have to lose it AGAIN.

Working at maintenance isn't as dramatic or visibly rewarding as starting something new. Because "maintaining" is the goal, you aren't seeing the motivating external changes or smaller numbers on the scale. Your clothes fit the same way everyday. But putting a firm foundation for long term maintenance in place is crucial. Sometimes this is the phase where extra support and accountability can pay off big.

My advice to you: don't hesitate to get the support you need to establish a solid foundation of maintenance. You've worked too hard to create the changes you've begun to put into place. What do you need to do to make sure that you don't short change yourself?

Take good care,

Melissa

Mistakes That Sabotage Weight Loss and Contribute to Emotional Eating: Part Two

The term emotional eating is used a lot, but not everyone understands what emotional eating really is.

Emotional eating is eating and overeating that occurs when we use food as a way to cope with a feeling, situation, or a need that is not physical hunger. Emotional eating is eating that happens when we want to eat but our bodies don’t really need the fuel. Common kinds of emotional eating are “nervous eating,” eating when you are bored, using food as a “reward” (to feel good), or eating when you are lonely. Because this kind of eating isn’t tied to a physical need for food, it can easily cause weight gain.

Here are three things everyone trying to lose weight needs to know about emotional eating:

1. Many people don’t know that they are emotional eaters. How’s that? Well, emotional eating isn’t always as straightforward as feeling a feeling (“I’m anxious”) and then making a choice to eat. Here’s the tricky part. Over time, if you’ve learned to use food as a way to cope with certain feeling states or situations, your brain can stop identifying that you are eating for emotional reasons. Here’s an example. If when you’re stressed, you reach for a snack to comfort yourself, over time, your brain stops telling you, “You are stressed and you are going to try to cope with it by eating a cookie.”

Over time, your brain may start skipping the emotion and move directly to interpreting that stressed feeling as physical hunger. You might not even realize that you are feeling stress. Your thinking will go like this: Something stressful will happen and you will start wanting a snack. You might even feel physically hungry. Food, not stress, will be the central thought in your mind. If you are someone who feels hungry “all the time,” emotional eating could very well be playing a hidden role.

2. Emotional eating and self-blame, shame and guilt go hand in hand. If you are feeling “out of control with your eating,” odds are that emotional eating is happening. The problem is, if emotional eating goes unrecognized, or if we don’t take it seriously, it’s easy to fall into a trap of guilt and self-blame for not being able to “stay in control” of your eating.
Shame and guilt are never helpful when it comes to long term weight loss. They tend to breed isolation, negative self esteem, decreased hope, and ultimately more emotional eating and self-sabotage. If you are struggling with emotional eating and you don’t learn the tools you need to cope with the feelings, the odds are that you will continue to feel out of control with food.

3. If you don’t take control of emotional eating, it can take control of your weight loss plans. Research studies of individuals trying to lose weight find that people who eat for emotional reasons lose less weight and have a harder time keeping it off. The journal Obesity recently published an article concluding that successful weight loss programs should teach clients how to cope with emotional eating in order to improve the clients’ ability to lose weight and not regain it.

If emotional eating is something that you struggle with, it’s important to know that no diet, no fitness program, and no weight loss surgery will fix that for you.

Taking control of emotional eating requires learning new effective ways to cope with your emotions. It’s not about the food.

It’s also important to know that learning new tools to cope with emotional eating can be one of the most rewarding and life-changing gifts that you can give yourself. Learning new ways to cope with life issues and feelings allows you to tackle life head-on. When you do this, food becomes simpler, and your life grows bigger, and ultimately, more rewarding.

Take good care,

Melissa

Mistakes That Sabotage Weight Loss and Contribute to Emotional Eating: Part One

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they are trying to take control of their overeating is to deny their hunger. This is often the result of lots of bad diet advice. It goes something like this: "The hunger is all in your head, you don't really need any more food, it's "just" emotional hunger, so ignore it and don't give in to it."

This advice might work in the short-run--sometimes. In the bigger picture, it is NOT a recipe for success.

I'm here to tell you that the hunger IS real. When we feel hungry even though our body doesn't actually need fuel, we need to respect that we are thinking about food for some reason. The odds are that we are hungry for something. It might be stress relief, or a break, or love or even excitement or sleep.

Our job, if we want to take control of emotional eating is not to deny the hunger, but to acknowledge it, respect it, and develop the tools to identify whether it truly is a hunger that will best be fed with calories, or whether we hunger or yearn for something else, and we're just using food as a stand-in. Make sense?

It's only by respecting and exploring our hungers and feelings and needs that we can start to develop better strategies for feeding ourselves--strategies for meeting our emotional needs, our feelings, and our desires.

This can be tricky, and for many who struggle with emotional eating, it's a whole new world. Some of us have gotten so good at addressing our emotions, needs and desires with food that we don't even register the emotional part anymore--our brains try to convince us that we REALLY ARE just hungry for food. What we may need then, are more effective tools for clarifying and responding to those hungry feelings. Lots of people need help with that--and a good coach or emotional eating program can be the best resource we provide ourselves. What we really don't need is to ignore what is going on. Because if we do, the thing we are hungering for--whatever it is--never truly gets fed and never really goes away. And if we haven't figured out any other way to cope with it, eventually we overeat, blame ourselves, and the cycle begins again.

Take good care,

Melissa

The National Mindless Eating Challenge

Last year I blogged about (and recommended) Brian Wansink's book Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think . The book has great insights, tips and strategies for curbing eating we don't even know that we do. It's really an interesting and helpful read and an invaluable tool if your goals are to have more control and awareness of your eating.

Now, in conjunction with the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, Brian is offering another great (free!) resource: The National Mindless Eating Challenge.

When you sign up for the challenge (did I mention that it's free?), you fill out a brief survey about yourself, your goals, and your lifestyle. As the website says, this isn't a challenge based on height and weight and BMI, it's about taking steps that allow you to become more mindful of the way you eat, and make food choices that leave you feeling healthy, and give you the energy you want to have.

The program allows you to choose from a variety of goals. Again, this is not a weight loss challenge, although you could definitely use it to develop some habits that will help you lose weight. Don't tell anyone, but I chose "improve my family's health without their knowledge" as my primary challenge goal.

Once you've completed the survey, you will receive concrete suggestions about how to make small, relevent changes to your behavior that are customized to your survey responses. The program provides a checklist that you can use to track progress, periodic emails, and new challenges each month. I like the way the program had me chose achievable goals and actually asked me to do some strategizing around potential hurdles I might face in achieving them.

Finally, I love this quote from the Mindless Eating Challenge website:

"Food is such an important part of our life and our world, it shouldn't be the source of frustration and concern that it is to so many people. Our hope is that we can help you (and your family) make small, painless changes that can help you eat better and enjoy food more."

I've just started the challenge, but so far I give it two thumbs up!

Melissa

Emotional Eating Program for Weight Loss Surgery Patients

People sometimes mistakenly think that weight loss surgery is a quick fix. Not true. Bariatric or weight loss surgery is a tool that is sometimes helpful in helping people take control of obesity and lose a significant amount of weight. However, as all weight loss surgery patients learn, the surgery is only one tool of several they will need to lose weight, keep the weight off, and live the life that they truly want to live. One of the areas I specialize in is helping weight loss surgery patients acquire the other tools they need to make weight loss permanent.

Many weight loss surgery patients continue to struggle with emotional eating after surgery. Sometimes this is an issue immediately, but often it is over time that the emotional eating habits (and the weight) start to come back.

The Emotional Eating Toolbox (TM) 28-day program is a self-guided program that is very adaptable for weight loss surgery patients and that bariatric surgery patients have used successfully to take control of their eating and maximize their success with bariatric surgery. In fact, Bariatric Support Centers International (BSCI) reviewed the program and now features it on their website for members.

The Emotional Eating Toolbox(TM) Deluxe Program for Weight Loss Surgery Patients was designed for weight loss surgery patients who want to use the Toolbox program but would like more personalized support, accountability and coaching through the process. This deluxe program includes the Emotional Eating Toolbox(TM) 28-day program, four weekly hour-long coaching groups led by me and attended by other weight loss surgery patients (these small groups are held by phone so that you can participate from anywhere you are), and an individual coaching session with me to help you really fine-tune and customize your work on the program.

Sessions of this special program begin on April 17 and on May 29. The deadline for the April group is approaching quickly, but if you sign up by April 16 (assuming space is available), we can get you your materials in time for the first group meeting.

Take good care,

Melissa

How your iPod can help you take control of emotional eating

A lot of overeating (and emotional eating) happens when we use food to try to "feel better" or improve our mood or our day. Interestingly, music can be an incredibly powerful tool that can serve the same purpose--and doesn't cause weight gain.

At a conference recently, I experienced a very convincing demonstration of the power of music. We were shown a short three minute video, filmed from the perspective of someone walking on a trail through the woods down to a beach. There were no people visible in the video, we only saw the journey through the eyes of the person walking.

We watched the short movie twice. The first time, the video was accompanied by a soundtrack of "scary movie music" (think Jaws and waiting for the shark to break the water). We were all on the edge of our seats, anxious and waiting for something horrible to happen. Then we were shown the video again. This time the music was bright and happy. Watching the video, I noticed the sunny day and the beauty of the woods. It was peaceful and I wanted to be there. I wanted to BE the person walking down the trail. Music changed the mood and created a completely different experience. The music MADE the movie.

Think about it. Music can touch us in powerful ways. A certain song can transport us instantly to a different time or place. Music can elevate our mood. It can be incredibly motivating (think about the theme song from Rocky). Music can relax us and even help us slow down our heart rate.

Belting out the right song can be a great way to work out our anger (Alannis Morrisette anyone?), our hurt, our sorrow or our determination (I knew a woman who prepared to defend her doctoral dissertation by listening to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive). Music can soothe us. The right music can feed our soul.

An IPod or mp3 player is a great way to carry a library of music with you and make it instantly accessible. I have this Zune but the teeny-tiny green iPod Shuffle has also caught my eye. Listening to the music on my mp3 player can instantly change how I feel when I run and can make doing boring paperwork a peaceful and enjoyable experience.

Think about it. How and when could you use music to enhance your life, decrease your stress, and maybe even reduce your urges to overeat?

Take good care,

Melissa

Are You Dreaming Big Enough?

Often, emotional eating happens when people are trying to fill unaddressed gaps in the rest of their lives. Emotional eaters tend to be some of the most giving people on the planet--to everyone but themselves. Taking control of emotional eating also involves taking a close look at the rest of your life. Are you giving yourself what you need? Are you feeding your mind? Your body? Your spirit? I promise it will be much easier to avoid the munchies if you are feeding yourself high quality stuff in these other areas.

Do you dream big? Do you dream at all?

I talk to so many people who have been jolted by the realization that they've been so busy chasing their lives and doing everything that's "expected," that they've stopped moving towards creating what they really truly desire.

So many people have wonderful dreams that are buried just beneath the surface--a book they'd love to write, a business venture they'd like to pursue, a race they'd like to sign up for, or a trip they want to take. If only.

If only they had: more time, more motivation, more get-up-and-go. If only they weren't so busy, or if only they had--more money, more connections, more support. If only they could get organized, or if only they could get some time to think. If only they could figure out the first steps.

Here's what I know:

1. The bigger we allow ourselves to dream, the more we accomplish and the more we start to see what is possible.

2. We don't have to be any more amazing than we already are to do amazing things.

3. We don't have to know exactly how we are going to make our dream come true in order to start pursuing it. But we do need to HAVE the dream. We do need to have to have a clear intention that we're going to do whatever-it-is and we do have to create space in our life for our dreams to emerge.

4. Big dreams usually don't require immediate big steps. Small, steady, consistent steps tend to create the most solid and enduring results.

My coaching challenge for you:

1. You've heard this from me before--set some goals.
It is vitally important to put what we want into words. Set goals that are concrete and goals that you can get excited about--both short term and longer term goals. Think about what you WANT to do, not what you think you SHOULD do. Choose goals that make you smile when you think about achieving them.

2. Ask yourself how and when you can commit time to your dreams.
If you need to create some space, ask yourself what you can give up, say "no" to or delegate. Even if you only have fifteen minutes a day or one Saturday afternoon a month, claim your time. Schedule it for you and write it in your calendar.

3. Ask yourself what you need to get started.
Do you need a boost in motivation or some inspiration? Do you need an actual place to work on your dream? A supporter or a mentor? More information?

Don't expect yourself to solve this problem in one fell swoop. Try to define one small step you could take towards obtaining what you need. Write the step down and set a date by which you'll accomplish that piece.

4. Take Action.
Sharing our goals is one of the most powerful steps you can take. Add a comment and share your dream or your goal and your first concrete step.

Take good care,

Melissa

Another free teleclass: stop overeating and keep the weight off

It's time for another free teleclass with more great tools to help you take control of emotional eating.

This month's topic is: How to REALLY Feed Your Cravings So You Can Lose Weight.

Thursday, March 27, 2008 at 7pm Eastern, 6pm Central, 5pm Mountain and 4pm Pacific time.

In the class, I'll teach you five ways to feed yourself what you are really hungry for that won't cause weight gain and should make weight loss easier. Trust me, these are NOT gimmicks or diet tricks. That's simply not what I am about. These are the real tools that you need to know to be able to lose weight and maintain weight loss.

Teleclasses are easy to attend. Once you are registered, you'll get an email with the phone number to call. You simply dial in and provide an access code. Note that you will be responsible for any long distance charges.

Attendance at these calls has been growing dramatically each time we offer one, so register early to hold a spot. If you can't attend, don't worry, the calls will be recorded and I will provide the recording to enrollees after the call.

Go here if you'd like to sign up.

Hope to see you in class!

Melissa

MTV is exploring the impact of yo-yo dieting

MTV is reportedly doing a show focused on yo-yo dieting and on the challenges of trying to maintain weight loss. A producer with the network contacted me recently seeking help with an episode they are filming. The producer with True Life, a reality show on the network, told me that the episode is intended to be a show about the world of someone caught in a battle with his or her weight. True Life doesn't want to depict extremes or eating disorders in this episode. They want to show the day-to-day world of someone trying to successfully change their weight.

Interestingly (and true to life I think), the producers were finding that people are less willing to share their battles to maintain weight loss after they have lost the weight then they are to share their current weight loss attempts.

This makes sense to me. Losing weight is hard. Making permanent weight changes is even harder--and yet that reality is often under-emphasized or not talked about at all in weight loss plans and programs.

Change experts recognized that learning to maintain new behaviors and life changes is a separate and very important part of the change process. If a weight loss plan doesn't address that part of change--and do a really good job--then the odds of keeping weight off decrease dramatically. Unfortunately, many people don't recognize how important this maintenance stage is and most people don't address it as a distinct phase in the weight loss process. When the weight starts to come back on, we don't tend to think, "Oh, I must need more tools, more help, or something else to help me really solidify the changes I've made and master this maintenance phase." No, what often happens when the weight starts to come back on is that we blame ourselves and feel like we failed (again).

Shame and guilt frequently accompany weight regain, making us less likely to seek the help or tools that might get us out of the shame trap and back on the path we want to be on. It's an incredibly painful place to be and I can understand why people would be reluctant to share their vulnerability on national television.

I have no idea what the True Life episode will be like once it is filmed, but I hope they do a good job and I hope they talk about this shame trap and its potential pitfalls. Because once we know about the trap, and once we know that it's not just us that feels that way, it's a lot harder to get isolated and trapped in it.

Take good care,


Melissa

Weight Loss Surgery and Overeating: A Free Teleclass

In case you missed my free teleclass: Taking Charge of Emotional Eating After Weight Loss Surgery, there is still time to listen to an audio recording of the class. Just click on the link to access the recording.

There are serious misconceptions out there about bariatric surgery being "a quick fix" or an "easy solution." Not true. Weight loss surgery requires a major investment--and not just financial--in order to develop a successful post-surgery lifestyle and to attain weight loss that lasts. Gastric bypass, lap band, and other bariatric procedures all require patients to develop new relationships with food and additional coping tools. In the teleclass I talked about some of the common mistakes people make and tools that can make things a lot easier.

We talked about:
why ignoring emotional cravings is a big mistake
how shame and guilt can sabotage your weight loss
why it's not selfish to take excellent care of yourself
why curiosity is an incredibly valuable tool for taking control of emotional eating.

Take a listen if you are interested. Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts, your struggles, and your successes.

Take good care,

Melissa

Take small steps for enduring weight loss

It’s one thing to read about the alarming increase in obesity in our country. It’s a stunning thing to see this visual depiction of the growing problem on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website—check this out:

Obesity Prevalence Map

Despite the millions of dollars being spent on weight loss every year, we are dramatically moving in the wrong direction, and clearly the advertising enticing us to try the newest “quick fix” isn’t helping the way the ads promise it should.

So what to do? The need for long term, enduring solutions is greater than ever. When we see a huge problem, we are tempted to think big. The problem is, big changes usually overwhelm. It is important to remember that the path to permanent change is so often achieved through consistent but small, reasonable sized steps. Rapid drastic changes don’t fit easily with our lives and they often don’t last.

This week, I challenge you to come up with one small reasonable step that you can take to improve the health of you and your family. Select a step that you can imagine sticking with for the next ten years—not a short term fix.

Think reasonable and think realistic. Think about improving something about your lifestyle just *one notch*. Think about a pace that you can live with.

The change you select might be serving plates in the kitchen instead of at the table, or leaving the salt shaker in the cupboard. It might be cutting the sugar you put in your coffee in half or cutting your TV time by 30 minutes to do something more active. Maybe you’ll decide to always take the parking spot half a row farther away then you need to. Be creative but think honestly about who you are, what your family will tolerate and what you can commit to.

Leave a comment and let me know what you committed to. Let's start changing the map!

Take good care,

Melissa

Free Teleclass for Weight Loss Surgery Patients on Emotional Eating

Join me for a free teleseminar!

Free Teleclass: Taking Charge of Emotional Eating After Weight Loss Surgery: The importance of using the right tools to conquer emotional overeating

We had such a great teleclass last month, I’ve decided to offer another. This time we are going to focus specifically on emotional eating issues after weight loss surgery. It's a huge issue—one that many weight loss surgery patients struggle with and an issue that can lead to lots of unhelpful shame and guilt.

Learn the mistakes people make and the tools that help people take control of emotional eating and maximize their success after weight loss surgery. This teleclass will take place on Wednesday, February 20 at 3:00pm Eastern, 2:00pm Central, 1:00pm Mountain, and noon Pacific time. There is no cost for the class, but you will be responsible for the long distance charges to dial in.

For more information about the class (including how you can listen to a recording even if you cannot attend), go here.

Hope to see you there!

Melissa

Why Diets Don't Work

A huge mistake that people make when trying to overcome emotional eating and lose weight is that they go on a diet. It’s ironic, because millions of marketing dollars are spent telling us that a diet is exactly what we should do. The truth is, we know that diets don’t work. In many cases, diets can actually take you farther away from the things that you need to be successful at taking control of emotional eating and creating a healthy relationship with food.

Diets do not create long term weight loss. There is evidence that diets can actually lead to binge eating and evidence that long term dieting and yo-yo dieting actually lead to weight gain. Among other things, diets are missing one of the most fundamental tools for taking charge of emotional overeating. In my emotional eating programs and the life coaching I do, I emphasize the importance of learning how to listen to yourself. This is an incredibly powerful tool, because, when you do it well, you are able to access the wisdom only you have about who you are and what your body needs. A diet not only doesn’t teach you that, it can really damage the listening ability you already have.

When you can listen to yourself you can learn from yourself. You can learn to identify when you are hungry and when you are full. You can learn to identify what you are really hungry for—whether it is hunger for food or hunger for something else. When you learn how to listen to yourself appropriately, and when you have the tools, you can tell—and you only get this from listening to yourself—what tool you need to get you through the spot you are in.

Diets don’t teach us to listen to ourselves. Diets tell us what to do. Diets don’t help you to be in touch with your body or your feelings or your needs. They don’t help you learn about your unique individual needs and preferences.

The truth is, there is no one truth that works for everybody all the time. Diets, because they externally prescribe a way of eating without considering who we are, actually put us more out of touch with our body, our appetites and our needs. Diets themselves can create a whole tangled web of complications. Lots of people who have dieted for years (and are still struggling with their weight by the way), tell me they no longer have any idea whether they are really hungry or full. They’ve been trying to eat the way someone told them to for so long, they are out of touch with themselves.

There are ways to overcome emotional eating and there are ways to lose weight and keep it off. The first step to success is realizing that dieting isn’t one of those ways.

Take good care,

Melissa

Taking Control of Emotional Eating Class: You can listen in

Yesterday I presented the first of a series of free teleclasses I will be running in 2008. We had a great class--and the feedback was incredibly enthusiastic. Thanks so much everyone! We covered a lot of ground, including some huge mistakes people make in trying to lose weight, take charge of emotional eating, and make lasting changes in their relationship with food. If you missed the call and would like to listen to the recording, you can go here.

Will Your Resolutions Stick?

I just heard that only 15% of people who make New Year's resolutions manage to keep them. To be honest, that number seems a little high to me. There is a huge difference between a New Year's intention and a well thought-out goal that is fueled by our passion and sense of purpose.

Too often, people set resolutions that are really "shoulds" that have been defined by somebody else."Shoulds" don't usually create much of a spark inside us. They even sound boring, and it's hard to create momentum or motivation around a goal that bores us. A goal that has personal meaning--that we would be willing to fight for if we needed to--that's a different kind of proposition.

How is this related to emotional eating? Well, first of all, the most "healthy" goal can come from either a place of passion or a place of "because I'm supposed to." If you have a goal related to your eating or your weight or your relationship with food, I challenge you to put some thought into how you can really give it meaning. If weight loss is your goal--what's driving it? What's the passion behind it? If you want to lower your blood pressure, ask yourself "Why?" Give yourself a reason that you are really going to be willing to show up for. Do you want to ride a bike again? Live long enough to enjoy your retirement? Be able to jump on your kids' trampoline?

If you want to stop overeating, ask yourself "Why?" If you successfully put food in its place and got on with your life, what would you do with all the extra time and energy and brain space? If you create a goal that you are excited about, you'll have won half the battle.

Here are some great resources for your revamped exciting goals:

Resolution Coaching Groups: Transform your Resolutions into Realities (go to the link to hear an audio recording and get more information)

Free Teleclass: Taking Care of Emotional Eating Once and For All

Take good care,

Melissa

Free Teleclass: Taking Control Of Emotional Eating (once and for all)

Ending emotional eating requires self respect—a lot of it. It also requires some real work. Unfortunately, it’s often different work than people think. Every year, especially this time of year, a lot of energy and frustration is wasted, trying to apply the wrong techniques to achieving weight loss. When these inadequate techniques fail, people often incorrectly blame themselves, instead of the technique. Self-blame diminishes self respect and contributes to a vicious cycle that works against efforts to conquer emotional eating, lose the weight you want, and get on with the life you want to live.

As we move into another year, lots of us are thinking about goals and resolutions and changes we’d like to make. Fantastic. I love fresh starts, but don’t throw out your wisdom with the New Year. There are lots of new books you can buy and diets you can start. Unfortunately, most of them won’t honor the wisdom and knowledge only you carry from living your entire life with your body and your mind. Most of the diet products and books and programs don't provide the techniques and the tools that are appropriate for conquering emotional eating.

Join me for a free teleclass on January 16 at 3pm Eastern (2pm Central, 1pm Mountain, noon Pacific Time), Taking Control of Emotional Eating (once and for all): The five mistakes that people make when trying to lose weight and conquer emotional overeating. I'll do my best to provide you with valuable information that can help you pursue your goals wisely and avoid wasting your efforts on frustrating techniques that are unlikely to meet your needs. Just click on either link above to register and get more information.

Take good care,

Melissa