How to release inner tension without food Overeating is often triggered by a build up of anxiety, inner stress, and tension. Chronic anxiety and tension feels tight, hot, and pressured in our bodies - like we're going to scream, hit something or … [Read more]
How safety helps you grow out of overeating
Safety is the single, most important, most crucial ingredient for healing, whether it's healing the body, overeating, food addiction, sugar addiction, weight loss, or any painful food pattern. According to developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon … [Read more]
Core emotions that can feed overeating
Like an iceberg, what drives overeating lies below the surface. Overeating is often an attempt to feel safe and connected in the face of isolation, fear, overwhelm, or pain that feels too much to bear. When our nervous systems feel overwhelmed and … [Read more]
Softening the resistance that arises when you want to change
One of the most frustrating aspects of healing food "stuff" is how we get stuck in resistance. We recognize something that would help us - for example, eating less sugar - and yet as soon as we recognize the benefit of acting in this way we … [Read more]
Where’s your craving “emergency kit?”
As emotional eating expert Melissa McCreery says, we need a mix of "quick and dirty" strategies and long term strategies to shift a pattern of overeating or sugar bingeing. Quick and dirty strategies are so crucial because, as Viktor Frankl … [Read more]
How acceptance works to change “stuck” habits
Acceptance is a challenging practice, as it asks much of us: accepting ourselves, others, our feelings, our challenges, our limits, and life itself. We tend to resist acceptance, because in accepting "what is," we grieve what isn't. We grieve all … [Read more]
How to care for yourself when you’ve gained weight
One of the practices I teach to heal the roots of overeating, binge eating and sugar addiction is grounding: giving yourself regular, rhythmic self care so you feel nourished, vital and strong. When we go through a difficult time, we often need … [Read more]
How to “rock your cravings to sleep”
One of the questions I hear most often is, "How do I prevent a binge?" Cravings are a topic that brings up a lot of anxiety for people, and understandably so. From experience, they've found that controlling cravings doesn't work - it creates … [Read more]
Tools to stop an oncoming binge
El Arroyo is a Mexican restaurant in the town where I live, Austin, Texas, and is known for its humorous signs. This one made me smile. When you’re bingeing (or bingeing and purging), you’re caught in a highly stressful state. Our higher … [Read more]
Befriending depression
I've had depressive and anxious tendencies for most of my adult life. It's something I've done my best to hide from others, as it creates feelings of deep shame, separation and loneliness in me. This past week, I couldn't hide. I was feeling … [Read more]
Making peace with depression
Life is so hard. How can we be anything but kind?" - Jack Kornfield I made a big, very public, embarrassing work mistake recently, and I felt like hiding out. Instead, this mistake became an opportunity to open up and share what had really been going … [Read more]
Finding compassion for your hunger
Do you judge yourself for being hungry? On my daughter's 10th birthday, I picked her up from school to take her out to lunch at the Chinese buffet. As we nibbled on moo goo gai pan, I looked up from my food and observed all the other people in the … [Read more]