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Overview
Why can’t I stop eating when I’m so great at everything else?
Are you a successful, loving woman who can’t stop reaching for pizza and chocolate cake? Does the idea of a diet-free life sound like a pipe dream? Have you recently overeaten, then regretted it? Are you convinced that a bag of chips and a box of cookies are the best comfort for dealing with stress? If your answer is yes, there is a different way to ‘do life.’
In Goodbye Comfort Food, Robin Rae Morris, a licensed mental health professional, shares an upbeat, engaging, and proven process to help you eat to nourish your body.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Why you turn to food for comfort.
- To eat when you’re hungry. Stop when you’re not.
- How to end the yo-yo weight cycles.
- The shocking revelation that there are no good or bad foods.
- Why never going on a diet again can be the best decision you’ll ever make.
If you’re ready to stop relying on comfort food to get you through the day-to-day buy this book today!
“My clients with food issues are laughing and relating to this book in a way that brings them hope and supportive tools to use every day.” —Wendi Carter, LCSW, counselor and life coach
“Robin’s insights are like the combination of your best friend, confidant, expert and equal.” —Dr. Deborah Walters, author of The Supreme Remedy
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781642792812 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/10/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 66 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Favorite Comfort Foods and Why They are a Brilliant Choice
They don't call it comfort food for nothin'! Let's talk about what they are. C'mon, you know your mouth is already watering. Your mind is planning for when you'll eat them. You can feel it so close, so let's name names!
In no particular order, our cast of characters includes, but is not limited to:
• Fried chicken
• Teriyaki chicken
• Chicken alfredo
• Pasta with meatballs
• Pasta with tofu
• Pasta with parmesan
• Pizza with parmesan
• Brie, cheddar, or goat cheese on bread
• Sourdough bread, 14-grain bread, or cinnamon raisin English muffins
• Blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, carrot cakes, and lemon pies
• Bacon and eggs. Bacon and everything.
• Fruit *
* Fruit. No. Just kidding. I once had a therapist tell me "If you have to eat for comfort, try eating fruit." I thought, You just don't get it.
And now I realize how much she didn't get it. Not only have I never met a single comfort food eater who wants to soothe with sliced fruit, the physiology isn't there.
Our go-to comfort foods of choice are brilliant. They are the foods that will dampen our physiology so that we literally feel less emotion and stress. Additionally, since most of our comfort food choices involve sugars and carbohydrates, our brains will begin to crave even more of them, which keeps us trapped in a comfort-food feedback loop that becomes progressively harder to break.
Then there's the marketing that surrounds us. A recent advertising poster outside of the local Starbucks featured a photo of a whipped cream topped caramel coffee drink below which was written, "Made to Crave." Like that's a good thing. Well, maybe it is for Starbucks. Yet my point is that as if it weren't difficult enough to break a comfort food, emotional eating cycle, everywhere we look, we're encouraged to reward ourselves with foods that increase the very cravings we're trying to overcome. C'mon, "you deserve a break today." And you do, you deserve the opportunity to break away from foods and habits that momentarily sweeten your life, yet ultimately steal your soul, well-being, energy, and positive sense of self.
Speaking of giving yourself a break, before you go any further in this book, the first thing I'd like you to do is to congratulate yourself for choosing comfort food. It's a brilliant way to deal with the world: simple, effective, and efficient; a dependable problem with a dependable response and dependable outcome.
Something up? Something uncertain? Grab a two-foot submarine sandwich and down that puppy in one sitting. Go ahead. No one's judging. Ok. You might be judging yourself, but not in that moment, because in that moment, there is the experience of "yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum" in every quickly inhaled bite.
Yes, we love comfort food. And we long for a way out of this mess. There is a way out of turning to food when life throws you a curveball, your boss expects overtime, your kids are a mess, and your life feels unmanageable.
There is also the possibility that, once a comfort food woman, the desire (whether quietly nudging you or urgently screaming at you) to turn to your favorite comfort food in times of trouble and turmoil will never completely go away.
What will change, I promise you and I know you don't and shouldn't believe me yet, is that no amount of comfort food will ever be worth your peace of mind, clarity of thoughts, and ease of taking fruitful action. (Which I guess is where the fruit actually comes in.)
CHAPTER 2Welcome to Heaven, Then Hell
Helen has had a hard day at the office. Despite a recent promotion that originally left her elated, she is now overwhelmed at no longer being part of the team, but instead giving her first performance reviews to people who used to be her co-workers and pals.
Her first performance review required putting a pal on a performance plan. It was a tense meeting. It ended in polite and politically correct statements addressed to one another. At the end of the meeting, Helen thought, "We used to share with one another. Now, we're speaking corporate speak — the kind of language we used to make fun of!" Helen felt the pang of lost connection.
Helen returned home, put on her PJs, skipped dinner, pulled out a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Therapy ice cream and a package of Walkers shortbread cookies shaped like adorable Scottish Terrier dogs, and cuddled up in a blanket on the couch. Netflix, and comfort food, take her away!
She simultaneously watched the newest installment of This Is Us, while the ice cream melted away her cares. The smooth, buttery cookies added just a bit of crunch. The creamy goodness and buttery crunch became one with the emotional catharsis of people living an intense TV life. Suddenly, Helen was in heaven.
She polished off another pint of ice cream, the entire package of cookies, and three more episodes before falling into bed in a kind of sluggish, tired coma.
Helen wakes the next morning with a surging sense of dread. She is going to have to go into work and do a second performance review. The terror about that has no immediate buffer, and since she overslept and is still feeling stuffed from the previous evening, there is no room, nor time, for food to comfort her now. She tries on three outfits before she finds one that semi-fits.
The things she thinks about herself as she looks in the mirror are demoralizing. She is anxious and grouchy and has a food-hangover. Suddenly, Helen is in hell.
Hell has been described as a fiery place where the bad get their comeuppance. Yet, people who use food as comfort know that h*** is everywhere, any time, you look at yourself in disgust and think, "I did it again."
Unknown to many is a second heaven. One that is arguably better than the first. This is a heaven that offers a ladder out of hell. Each rung of the ladder is a solidly defined step. Your task is to grab onto the ladder to advance to the next rung. Soon, yet not without effort, you will have arrived at your definition of living a life that is your heaven on earth.
This book will give you seven practices to help you climb out of hell. They are called practices because you can do them daily without having to quit your job, leave your family, join a monastery or a circus, or take any other extreme measures. For now, nothing has to change except for the faintest hope that there may be a way out of emotional eating. The way out is built on practice, which includes failure, bumps and starts, and truly delicious moments of success. The way out is built on practice, not perfection.
CHAPTER 3The Tyranny of Mind, Body, and Soul
It all started in the summer between second and third grade. I spent six glorious weeks with my grandmother during which I learned the joys of freshly fried bread dough smeared with butter and dipped in sugar. I explored nightly the comfort that came from eating toasted tuna fish sandwiches before bedtime. These were made from thick slices of homemade white bread and eaten while watching The Big Valley television series. I'd eat the sandwich while nourishing my crush on Michael Landon. I returned home at the end of the summer. At my back to school visit with the pediatrician, he said that I had "gained too much weight for my height and age."
"I'm fat," I told my mother. "You're beautiful," she said.
It was a nice try on her part. Yet she wasn't fat, none of her friends were fat, and none of mine were either. My body — I — was different. The teasing from other kids and woeful, sobbing trips to the Sears Chubby Department to purchase clothing confirmed that this kind of different wasn't a good kind.
At thirteen, I decided enough was enough. Well, actually I decided enough was too much, and put myself on a 600 calorie a day diet. I remember being light headed if I stood up too fast and the silent pursed-lipped standoffs when my father would say, "Just eat." I remember trying to hide the fact that my fingernails started getting dents, then holes in them. Back to the pediatrician and lots of boiled liver for my efforts.
There must be a better way. I was stumped for a few years on this, yet eventually I cracked the code. Long before it was known and named, I came up with a spiffy way to eat everything I wanted — which was by then quite a lot due to many years of deprivation and diets — and not gain too much weight. My great insight into how to pull this off is known as bulimia, a form of overeating followed by purging. I'm not proud of this; yet at the time, it certainly seemed better than another starvation diet. And hey, no boiled liver.
After college and diets and disordered eating, I had come to a place where I wouldn't say I ate "normally," but I had figured out what worked for me. Part of learning to do that also helped me come up with a few shortcuts in other areas of my life. For instance, I learned that if a guy couldn't deal with the fact that I would eat an apple in two to four sittings, it wasn't worth starting a relationship with him. But I digress.
I had graduated in psychology and had gotten my first career position as a counselor. I did not specialize in eating disorders. I felt I'd lived enough of that and found myself fascinated by the realms of psychosis and mania.
I remember visiting a client in the psych ward who had tried to strangle herself while manic. It was good to see her, and good to see her alive. Surviving the attempt had brought a new determination to deal with her mania and its life-crashing episodes. As I looked at her, I noticed that there were tiny red dots around her eyes.
"Your eyes?" I asked, after we had talked a bit.
Looking away from me, she said, "The strangulation attempt, it ... it, um, cut off oxygen and burst blood vessels in my eyes."
Immediately I teared up. My heart ached for her and for myself too. I recalled a time, in my twenties, when I'd gone to the emergency department looking a lot like her. I had eaten so much that I vomited, hard, and repeatedly. I had those little red dots around my eyes.
It had never dawned on me that overeating was a way of strangling myself. Yet, looking at her, knowing the Universe had brought me a mirror of sorts, I knew this to be true down to my bones.
Overeating, or undereating, or whatever other compulsive forms my eating has taken, was a physical strangulation of my existence. It was right there in the eyes, the doorway to the soul.
It was a mental and emotional strangulation that cut me off from facing my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs when they were painful, uncomfortable, unsettling. It was a way of being in which I was convinced "I can't," so I stayed un-empowered and played small on the inside, in my internal world. It was a strangulation that cut me off from myself, and from anything one would call God or The Universe.
It was my first revelation of just how much distance there was between my deep internal longings for healthy eating, and what appeared to others on the outside. I could, at times, look like I played big, yet in actuality and in essence, I had learned to play, and stay, small. To stay within the tiny circumference of those small red dots.
From the opportunity to see clearly the self-imposed tyranny against my own body, came the beginnings of true freedom.
Freedom, and relief came in the form of working through eating issues with others. I attended workshops where we would laugh, cry, hug, and heal. I think it was the laughing that did it. It was sitting in a group of people, hearing one strange and slightly bizarre eating habit after another, all of which were simultaneously foreign and familiar, that led me to turn my counseling focus toward emotional eating.
After years of counseling clients and speaking to local organizations about how to refresh and refuel their lives, I had quite a tool kit. I realized it was time to open up that tool kit and create a program that would bring freedom to those suffering from emotional eating.
It began with a handful of clients. I showed up with seven practices and they showed up with willingness and a desire to get a result that had been eluding them. Together, we practiced and polished the program into the form you will find in this book, and the one that I teach both one on one and in groups. I found that learning a set of structured yet flexible daily practices helped clients create healthy eating habits, naturally lose weight, curb emotional eating, and gain positive energy.
In my first book, Devour Obstacles for Dinner, I lay out tools that can be used by anyone for a myriad of situations, such as resolving relationship issues, finding your passion, overcoming depression and anxiety symptoms, creating mindfulness practices, and achieving both long- and short-term goals.
This book you have in your hand is more specific. It is for you who suffer from out of balance eating. This book is the one in which we — you and I — journey together toward being as great at food as you are at all of the other amazing things you pull off in your life. We are talking about freedom from emotional eating.
This freedom is my wish for you, Brave One. This freedom, not despite your eating issues, yet actually because of and through them. This freedom, and the positive energy for your life and your path it will open. Are you ready to leave emotional eating behind and start playing big?
Kat, as all of Katrina's friends call her, is a woman who plays big. She's an awesome mom of two beautiful children, a wonderful and loving wife, a dedicated and successful manager. She's a fun and supportive friend, always there to host a party or lend a hand. By all external standards, she is playing big.
Until I ask her a question about self-care. Her normally animated face goes blank. I can hear the gears of her mental apparatus turning, trying to click-in to the question. Finally, she gives up answering it, and says this instead:
"Give me a role and ask me to extend, or over-extend, myself for another, and I can perform at a consistent 110%. Ask me to spend time taking care of myself, and, as good as that sounds, it just as much confounds. How would I take time for myself when others still have so many needs, when there are more school or work assignments that call my name? Even if I did decide I need time for myself — that this would help me in overcoming my eating issues — words like self-compassion and self-care sound nice, but I couldn't begin to really wrap my head around what that actually looks like in my life. I'm certainly not able to think about self-care in my daily life!"
Kat speaks for many of us. For many of us who struggle with food, our struggles have roots in learning to put others first, to be giving and sweet and nice, and to always put people at ease. Those can be lovely lessons that help us support others and get along well in the world.
Yet these lovely lessons have a darker underbelly. They teach us that we are capable and we are good when we give to others. This can eventually undermine our sense of self and our trust in our capabilities. I mean, if we want to know and trust ourselves, we need to put the focus, support and help on ourselves. To the extent that isn't okay to do, we learn to keep the focus of our activities on others.
Meanwhile, we subtly learn to distrust our deepest instincts and wisdom. It's important that this is subtle, because otherwise we could, we would, rise up against such treatment. Instead, we come up with an ingenious solution to such a conundrum.
We learn to play big for others and play small for ourselves. We learn how to never be "full" of our convictions, passions, proclivities — our essence. Instead, we end up turning to food to fill us up in ways it cannot do, so that no matter what we eat, we are never full. Because food can fuel our lives, but it can't fulfill our lives.
Another way we learn to play big for others and play small for ourselves is to seek to control people, places, and situations. If we can restrict the variables, we can feel safe in a potentially unsafe world. We end up restricting food in our efforts to regulate our world — finally finding at least one thing that we can perfectly control, our eating. Yet too little food will be better at making us light-headed than it will be at making the world a safer place. So we continue to control our food, and wait and hope for the day when the world is finally safe, so we can present our true selves. But that day never comes in this scenario because our true selves need the freedom and space to move beyond restriction, to let go of control, in order for that unique individual essence that is you to play big.
So here is the good news about all of that. We only have to pay attention to our plates and the seven practices to change this state of affairs. Food, once your biggest stumbling block, and your "only real problem" becomes your active personal assistant. Your journey with eating, your struggles with eating, lead you to the path where you can choose to play big in the ways that are most deeply true for each of you.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Goodbye Comfort Food"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Robin Rae Morris.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Favorite Comfort Foods and Why They are a Brilliant Choice,
Chapter 2 Welcome to Heaven, Then Hell,
Chapter 3 The Tyranny of Mind, Body, and Soul,
Chapter 4 The Seven Practices for Lifelong Healthy Eating,
Chapter 5 Practice One: The Foundational Triangle,
Chapter 6 Practice Two: Slow Eating,
Chapter 7 Practice Three: I Have a Choice,
Chapter 8 Practice Four: The Art of the Pause,
Chapter 9 Practice Five: Practice, Not Perfection,
Chapter 10 Practice Six: Intentional Relationships,
Chapter 11 Practice Seven: Your Guardian Grace Advisor (GGA),
Chapter 12 Put Down the Chocolate Covered Peanuts,
Chapter 13 The Unexpected Epicurean,
Chapter 14 Permission Slips: Saying No, Saying Yes.,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Thank You!,