addiction2food

V olume 1 Issue 7

Offering helpful information, insights, articles, tips, recipes, humor and motivational tools to assist you in finding recovery from your addiction to food.

By subscription only! Welcome to your next issue of
""addiction2food"". You are receiving this newsletter because you requested a subscription. Unsubscribe instructions are at the end of this newsletter.

• Recommended Reading
• From the Editor
  
• Food for Thought
  
• Exercise and Fitness
  
• Inner Child's Play
  
• Guest Columnist: Debra Cohen, LCSW
  
• Food Talk
  
• Wisdom
• Classified Ads
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe information

---

The author's gentle, uplifting daily thoughts help people recovering from eating disorders find strengh and renewal in recovery. She invites readers to live life more fully, and encourages them to continue focusing on personal growth, not food, as they encounter the challenges of ongoing recovery

---

About the Author

BJ is a recovering food addict and a registered nurse. In 1989 BJ found recovery as an inpatient at Glenbeigh Hospital of Tampa. After returning home she discovered that her recovery resources were limited. But she knew that if one wanted recovery badly enough one could find it anywhere. So BJ set about finding and/or founding services which would primarily help her to grow in recovery but consequently helped many other food addicts..

BJ worked as a registered nurse for almost twenty years. Most of that time was spent working in intensive care, adult and child psychiatry, adolescent addiction and home health care. This experience was useful in establishing the "Eating Disorder Information and Referral Service" which was housed at a local Women's Center in Upper Michigan. It was there that she helped her clients find recovery!

Crisis

For an Addict, something's wrong when nothing is.
----AWS

Daily Meditations on
Healing Through Humor"
by Anne Wilson Schaef

Published by Ballantine Books, N.Y. , 1990

The idea?

Simply that first order of business each and every day was to, as he put it, "have fun by God!"

One of the things LTCOL Danielle understood was, regardless of how seriously we dealt with our jobs as members of the military, we would be more effective and moreMORE successful if we were having fun doing them.

It's an idea that sounds good, that is attractive to almost everyone, but that few people actually practice. It's not that they don't want to, mind you. It's just that they forget.

Sometimes having fun requires effort, some forethought, maybe even a little planning. The results can be tremendous, however, as we rejuvenate ourselves, shake-off the tension, and remember to laugh at life and to enjoy the wonder in the little things going on around us.

So let me ask: Are you having fun? If not, it's time to start...

Make a list of your top10 favorite fun activities. Maybe you like to read for fun, or rock-climb, or jog, or go sailing, whatever. Just make sure that the activities you list are things that you really love to do for fun!

Once complete, pick one of those activities to do this week and put it on your schedule. No ifs, ands, or buts! Make it an appointment.... even if you have to cancel something else. After all, that's the point!

Now it's just a matter of keeping your appointment with yourself to have a little fun.

Don't stop there, though. Next week, go back to your list and pick another activity and schedule *that* into your calendar. And do it again the next week, and the next, and the next.

Before you know it, you'll be having fun all of the time! You'll feel better at work and at home and your outlook on like will be more upbeat and positive. So get up, get going, and start having fun!

_____

Jim Allen is a professional life coach, speaker, and writer. Get more great ideas in you email every week by subscribing to Jim's weekly newsletter, THE BIG IDEA, by sending a blank email to: mailto:Subscribe@CoachJim.com (?©2001 Jim Allen & CoachJim.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)

Often we start to notice ourselves falling into anger, 
depression, self-pity or other responses to a work or home 
situation. Here are a few ideas to implement when in a 
situation where a knee-jerk reaction starts to arise.

Remember it is much easier to nip something in the bud than 
to deal with stress after it flowers into physical symptoms 
or a bad mood. If you get into a funk sometimes it can last 
for days and it's often hard to break free of it. When you 
can "catch" the negative moment beginning you have a great 
shot at stopping it from taking you down. I've found these 
helpful for myself as well as my clients:

Breaking out of moods:

1) If you feel a certain "mood" beginning (i.e. depression, 
 anger, discouragement) try to
do something physical such as 
 go running, swim, or even clean. It's good to do something 
 that will tune up your nervous and glandular system. We
 need to break the incarnations that set into our bodies. 
 It is similar to stopping smoking after one cigarette 
 rather than 20 years of smoking. Sometimes if you have 
 a shoe and it is worn out on one side you'll see that if 
 you put your foot in it, it leans in that direction. The 
 mind follows the grooves it previously was tracing out. 
 We have the power to "change the channel" and watch a 
 different movie.

2) There are two breathing exercises from yoga that are 
 very helpful to cultivate a neutral mind. One is called 
 "Alternate nostril breathing" and the other is called 
 "Breath of Fire".
These are explained in detail in the 
 booklet I wrote. You can also learn these from a yoga 
 class or video or write: mailto:yogabreathing@sendfree.com

3) Identify and write down the mental tape loops that you 
 finding yourself repeating. By knowing what these are you 
 can watch it instead of take it as your own identity. The 
 more you "see" the dramas the less you react from within 
 them. We all fall into our own melodramas and soap operas 
 and taking a bird's eye view can give us another perspective. 
 It helps us to not "buy into" our own story. Our inner story 
 is something we repeat to ourselves and others and gives us 
 our identity. It's good to step back and see which parts of 
 it are beneficial and which are messages from the past, 

other people or our old identities. Just as a computer 
 needs to have files deleted in order to operate more
 efficiently, so our minds need to have the extra "files" 
 emptied out so we have room for new stories, dreams and 
 aspirations.

4) Keep a notebook of inspiring anectdotes, quotes and tips. 
 This helps to boost one's spirit and also to feel connected 
 with others that have dealt with similar feelings. Put some 
 reminders on your refrigerator, desk at work, car dash
 board and other places so you can catch you mind and 
 re-direct it in a positive direction.


 Inspirational Samples

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not 
due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and 
this you have the power
to revoke at any moment.

 ~ Marcus Aurelius ~

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver 
five minutes longer.

 ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Get the Past Off Your Plate if You Want to Lose Weight

Getting the past off your plate may be the first thing you need to do if you want to lose weight, otherwise nothing else will work, according to author Brenda Crawford-Clark.

Her book "Body Sense Balancing Your Weight and Emotions" builds on the concept that core feelings connected to past experiences continue to trigger the use of food. The author helps readers identify when they first began eating or skipping meals as a way to get out of or to stuff those painful feelings such as loneliness, depression, guilt, fear, feeling not good enough or empty. Written by a therapist with more than 15 years experience, it features compassionate, real-life stories and prescriptive exercise to draw readers through a process that stops the continued interference of these feelings, and thus stop the need to reach for food.

The author also examines several possible contributing factors to food and weight issues, including trauma, physical and emotional abuse, loss, family issues, difficulties in handling conflict, allergies, hypoglycemia and chemical reactions within your body. Crawford-Clark provides a website "forgetaboutdiets.com" for additional support.

Her descriptive stories are drawn from composites of people she has worked with, except for that of one, Karen, who asked that her first name be used in "Body Sense" as yet another way of taking ownership of the changes she has made. She first began using the author's techniques in her mid-thirties. An incest survivor, she had suffered from extremely poor body image and unhappiness about her weight since childhood.

"I could not even go out to eat without being afraid people would make fun of me because of my weight," Karen said. "I let the scales tell me how to feel. I let my ex-husband dictate who my friends were and what I did. I was afraid to stand up for myself and tell him how I felt, for fear I would lose him and be all alone."

Karen said she noticed a dramatic change in her life when she began to stop the interference of overwhelming feelings from her past. Food and a focus on her body image was a way she had learned to gain solace, push down feelings of guilt and give herself a power surge. As she worked through the "Body Sense" process, she found new energy and was able to break old behaviors by slowing down, acknowledging what she was feeling and using the newly learned techniques to change.

According to Crawford-Clark, dieters are often sabotaged by a resurgence of core feelings linked to past loss or trauma. "Something triggers a similar feeling today and they experience the intensity of feelings that were felt during the long ago event. Naturally they will try to get out of that feeling as quickly as possible and many people defend themselves with food," she explained.

"Among those core feelings are guilt, fear, loneliness, judged, rejection, unworthy, out of control or controlled, bad and something is wrong with me," she said. "Diets and weight concerns actually reinforce those feelings eventually causing you to sabotage the diet to regain control."

Numerous experiences can contribute to the development of those core feelings, including abuse, childhood bullying, being an overweight child, chronic illness, accidents, death, miscarriages, abortion, financial strain and even loss of a dream, according to Crawford-Clark.

"However, once you identify the anchors to your weight struggles, then examine the current connections you can stop that interference in your life. Add that new strength to what you learn about your body's unique physical reactions and the workings of neurotransmitters and you'll soon be able to put aside restrictive diets," she said.

Karen, whose concern about her weight had developed into bulimia, said she not only has dropped her weight worries but has achieved many goals she had not thought possible.

"Never in my life would I have imagined I could feel this wonderful and as calm and peaceful inside," she added. "As I completed the exercises, little by little my hope increased. The negative chatterbox is gone.

"I am learning to go out to eat and just enjoy the company of a friend. I do not have to be conscious of everything I put into my mouth," she said. "I do not have to wonder if everyone in the room is looking at me when I leave the table. Now I say, 'What of it?" If I believe someone is looking at me, I smile. I think it's because they sense in me a change. They want what I have."

Newsletter Design By Newsletter Promote