Excerpts
Introduction Have you ever wondered why some people can keep many of their favorite comfort foods in the house, eat a small portion at a time, and save the rest for later? Perhaps they even forget that they bought those special imported cookies or chocolates and, God forbid, they go stale. Those same folks can go to a buffet or social gathering with an abundance of delectable foods and fill up one level plate, go back for a small amount of dessert and that's it. They're done. They don't go back for seconds and thirds. And they don't keep thinking about food. If having too many favorite "trigger" foods around overwhelms you and leads to mindless or excessive snacking, overeating or bingeing, then you've picked up the right book. You probably prefer to keep your cupboards and refrigerator bare of too many favorite comfort foods because they call to you when they're in the house. If these foods are in the house for the kids, your spouse or company, you're keenly aware of them, right? Most likely, you have to prepare yourself when dining in restaurants or attending social gatherings or holiday meals where there will be many of your favorite foods. Lack of planning on your part can lead to feeling food focused, overeating, and the accompanying remorse, guilt and shame. And let's be honest--sometimes you come home after overindulging at social events and eat more! Maybe you've convinced yourself that your excesses aren't really all that bad. You love good food--perhaps you even label yourself a "foodie." Is that such a crime? Everyone you know eats and drinks to excess at times, so what's the big deal? It could be worse--you're not shooting heroin or gambling yourself into bankruptcy. Truth be told, you've picked up this book because you're tired of feeling out of control with food and of the control it seems to have over you. You've had enough food hangovers for one lifetime. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind you know that your life feels out of balance and that your excesses have something to do with it. You suspect or you know that your health is not optimal. You may not be satisfied with your weight. Perhaps you feel guilty about and ashamed of your eating behavior--at times you hate yourself for it--and you're tired of having a poor body image. Take heart; you're not alone. I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to feel so "food focused" all the time. I spent a good portion of my life stuck in a cycle of overeating comfort foods, gaining weight, and dieting. I found it especially difficult to stay away from my favorite foods like bread, scones, muffins, crackers, chips, cookies and candy and caffeinated beverages like diet soda, coffee and tea. I wasn't able to keep my favorite foods in the house for any length of time. Inevitably, I would feel obsessed with them and overeat or binge and then throw them out. For many years, every time I brought them back into the house for a trial run, in any quantity larger than a single serving, I'd do okay for a day or two and then, unable to think about anything else, I'd start feeling compulsive and, well, you know the drill. I was definitely an emotional eater. I had difficulty regulating my emotions and I could get stuck in painful emotional states like anxiety, anger, sadness, hurt, shame, loneliness, frustration, depression or hopelessness for long periods of time. Food altered my brain chemistry and it helped numb the pain of unpleasant emotions, self-doubts and other negative thoughts. It also helped relieve stress. And because food is pleasurable and exciting, it was a good distraction. It temporarily filled up an inner emptiness and restlessness I regularly felt. Throughout my overeating days, I always believed that eating and maintaining our ideal body weight should be easy, comfortable and intuitive. I knew that we weren't designed to count calories, carbohydrate or fat grams or to weigh and measure food, or our bodies, for that matter. We all have a phenomenal machine that does all those behind-the-scene calculations for us; a machine that signals us with hunger pangs, cravings and fullness cues. We all have an ideal weight, not overweight and not underweight. After all, our earliest of ancestors did not count calories or weigh and measure food and they maintained their weight in an optimum range. And so can you! I'm guessing that like me, you've tried to improve your relationship with food many times. You've been on every diet and eating plan known to mankind. But you've found it difficult to stick with restrictive eating plans. Even though you initially lose weight and feel a renewed sense of control, hope and motivation, at some point, a craving or a discomfort stirs and this sends you right back to that tried-and-true form of comfort, soothing, pleasure, relief, excitement, and distraction. You know others who have conquered these demons, but for whatever reason, you haven't yet been successful. Perhaps you've concluded that these folks have more willpower or are more disciplined than you. Or that they have less stress. Or that they have a nurturing partner, close friends and a loving family and you don't. Or that they have more balanced brain chemistry or better genetics. Or that you have an "addictive personality." And while these factors may well represent pieces of the overeating puzzle, there is a more important piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked. The seeming control others exhibit around favorite comfort foods may actually be the result of the quality of the caregiving they received as infants and small children, how their brain circuitry, brain chemistry and stress-response mechanisms developed in a nurturing environment, and the self-care skills they acquired early in life. Mastering the skill of self-regulation depends to a large extent on experiencing consistently kind, supportive and nurturing early interactions with our caregivers. Overeating is a Complex Behavior We all enjoy eating and, on occasion, will eat when not hungry or overeat just because the food is incredibly tasty or because it enhances our personal or social experiences. Enjoying food beyond simple sustenance is a normal part of life. It becomes problematic when we overeat to such an extent that there is significant weight gain or health risk. All overeating behaviors (mindless or excessive snacking, overeating at meals and bingeing) are the result of complex interactions between emotional, cognitive, biological, neurological, social and spiritual factors. Temperament and constitution, genetically inherited brain and body imbalances, insufficient nurturing, traumatic childhood experiences, chronic stress, chronic dieting and the easy availability of high-calorie, nutrient-deficient food all play a role. Overeating may seem like a simple act, but it's actually a complex behavior. Its resolution requires a comprehensive, multidimensional approach. When we regularly eat in the absence of physical hunger cues, routinely choose unhealthy comfort foods, or eat beyond full, something is out of balance somewhere. These tendencies suggest that we are missing important self-care skills generally learned in childhood. We may be lacking the ability to connect to and be mindful of our internal world--to consistently regulate uncomfortable emotional and bodily states, calm and soothe ourselves and address our unmet needs. We may find it difficult to reframe self-defeating thoughts and self-belief distortions and practice self-acceptance and self-love. Perhaps we never learned how to effectively grieve losses and disappointments, remind ourselves of our strengths and resources and hold hope for the future. Without these skills, regulating our behaviors and setting effective limits with ourselves can feel like a daunting task. In my book The Emotional Eater's Repair Manual , I covered these self-care skills in depth. I also covered key body-balancing principles (such as adding whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods to your eating plan and addressing body and brain imbalances) and soul-care practices (like practicing mind quieting exercises and learning to let go.) I introduced the reader to the very important self-care skill of self-connection, which simply means going inside regularly and checking in with your inner world of emotions, bodily sensations, needs and thoughts and accessing an Inner Nurturing voice capable of reassuring and comforting you and helping you meet your needs. Mindfulness Changes Your Brain and Your Response to Stress Throughout my own journey of recovery from emotional eating, I was slowly piecing together the self-care skills, body-balancing principles and soul-care practices I had been missing from childhood. And as I practiced these, I noticed that something was happening to my brain that I wouldn't be able to articulate until years later when I began to understand the neuroscience behind the changes I had experienced. Scientific discoveries of the last twenty years have demonstrated that the mindful, self-reflective skills I was practicing were activating and connecting the self-regulatory circuits of my brain, and in so doing, actually changing the physical structure of my brain. And as new brain circuits develop and strengthen, they facilitate more adaptive responses and behaviors, creating more resilience and well-being. All of this translated into better handling of stress and less obsessive thinking and wayward eating. Through therapy and the intentional exposure to other kind souls, I began to learn the language of self-nurturance --unconditionally loving, affirming, validating, supportive, compassionate, empathic, calming and soothing words and phrases that could actually turn my mood from anxious to calm; from despair to possibility and hope. I would write these phrases to myself in my journal and I was amazed that, over time, something was shifting inside. Slowly, I was developing the voice of my very own Inner Nurturer and with it, self-acceptance and self-love. I found myself turning less often to external sources of comfort. As I strengthened this inner voice, I no longer felt obsessed with or compulsive about food. My weight and mood were stabilizing. I felt less overwhelmed. I procrastinated less. My inner chaos and outer clutter diminished. I felt more emotionally balanced than I had ever been in my life. And as a side benefit, my relationships were improving; I was able to meet more of my needs on my own and was more emotionally available to others. Connection and intimacy began to replace the emptiness and loneliness I had lived with for so long. You Can Learn to Nurture Yourself and Rewire Your Brain After the release of The Emotional Eater's Repair Manual , I received emails from readers all around the world, informing me how helpful the skills, principles and practices were and most importantly, that they never knew they could nurture themselves or how to do it. Over and over again, participants in my seminars, workshops, emotional eating groups and Twelve-Week Emotional Eating Recovery Program mirrored these sentiments and shared with me that they felt encouraged by the notion that learning to nurture themselves could be the way out of a lifetime of food and weight obsession. In this book, I'm going to expand on the concept of mindful self-nurturance and share with you the seven skills that comprise the practice I created called Inner Nurturing. While it isn't necessary to read The Emotional Eater's Repair Manual prior to reading this book, if you are struggling with emotional eating, you will find the skills, principles and practices of my first book an invaluable first step. My goal in this book is to show you how to nurture yourself by building and strengthening your Inner Nurturer voice and related skill set. You'll learn to soothe and comfort yourself, calm your stress-response apparatus and grow and strengthen the regulatory circuits of your brain. You'll learn to meet your needs without turning to food or other substances or habits. And as an added bonus, you'll enhance your resiliency and sense of well-being. Given that our early childhood environment has a powerful impact on brain development, and that you can't go back in time for a "redo", it would be easy to feel hopeless about your chances of altering your brain's functioning, improving your self-care and your response to stressors, and resolving eating challenges. But it turns out that there is good reason to hold hope. Neuroplasticity is a term used to refer to the brain's ability to reconfigure itself--to establish and to dissolve connections between its different parts, in response to experience. Your brain is an incredibly resilient and "plastic" or moldable organ and many circuits continue to develop and expand throughout our entire lives. Research suggests that even into old age, our experiences can actually change the physical structure of the brain. In other words, it's never too late to grow neural fibers and improve self-regulation. The good news is that you can learn to nurture yourself with the lovingkindness and self-compassion that you deserve, rewire your brain for optimal long-term emotional health, handle stressors with more ease and give your wayward eating the boot. Excerpted from When Food Is Comfort: Nurture Yourself Mindfully, Rewire Your Brain, and End Emotional Eating by Julie M. Simon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.