Six Reasons Dieting Fails for the Food Addict

Before I released excess weight for good and became known as a certified eating disorder specialist (CEDS),  I spent nearly three decades at various arms of diet centers such as Weight Watchers, Ediets, Twelve Step programs, mostly as the recipient of diets initially and worked as a clinical psychotherapist/addiction psychologist certified as an eating disorder specialist later. But a more accurate title for that job in my earlier days might have been certified diet failure doctor and uninformed therapist: while I lost a great deal of weight and showed the way to thousands, I’d watch one after the other go through the revolving door of failed diet plans.

Like the ongoing dieters, I too joined the up and down weight loss program initially. And while it may not be possible to pinpoint what exactly makes for a great weight loss program, it’s pretty easy to identify some of the avoidable mistakes that can virtually guarantee your weight loss and release of food addiction that will get relegated to a success story. See these mistakes below:

1.     DIET CENTER  HOPPER

Mary joined every weight loss center known to mankind with white knuckle determination and gritted teeth. She was going to lose the weight no matter what. And, of course, the no matter what turned into another failure.  Whatever food program you lose weight with is the very same one you will maintain with. If you can’t figure out how to make the “diet” doable for everyday life, you’re probably not on the right food program for a food addict.

2.     DIET BOOKS

Although hundreds of diet books line the shelves of bookstores, virtual and brick and mortar, It’s close to impossible to eradicate every single little mistake in the diet that was not intended for long periods of time. But what’s not really forgivable are promises that you can eat an ounce of dark chocolate daily and a glass of wine with dinner once you reach a certain level in the program. A true food addict cannot indulge even a small morsel of sweetened chocolate and succulent red wine or they’re crashing. A cocaine addict wouldn’t have just a small smidgen of coke once they reached “maintenance” now would they? Of course not!

3.     DIET FADS

Start eating cookies today and lose weight! Yes, YOU read this right you can eat cookies and lose weight. Eat one cookie for breakfast, one for lunch, and a reasonable dinner, and you too can be thin. Diet fashionistas are the perfect candidates to lure to fad diets. The food addict begs, steals, and bargains, promising after this one last binge to never binge-eat again. So offer the cookie diet to the desperate dieter and she's roped in! But the truth be told, after lured, in a short period of time, after the "honeymoon"  has passed, the binge eating resumes. We are addicts and require real food every four to five hours and must avoid sugar, flour, and wheat to prevent a relapse, so fad diets must be avoided—they don't work—not ever.
4.     30 POUNDS OFF IN ONE MONTH DIET

Yes, you read this right. You too can lose 30 pounds in 30 days! Everyone’s winning at their weight loss with our nutritious packed boxed meals. All “gourmet” meals are prepared for you to take the guess work out of preparation. Yeah right. A food addict first would starve as there isn’t enough food in the small box and second, a food addict would go into a full-blown binge because boxed foods are notorious for hidden sugar, flours, and wheat.

5.     ERRORS OF IGNORANCE

Of course you think this time will be different when you go on the “miracle diet” because you are determined NOW. And you’re convinced the special grapefruit concoction, with Brazilian leaves proven to drop weight while you sleep, is a perfect fit for you. Trust me, there is no magical concoction of leaves, plastic suits that enhance sweat, or any other doohickey that works long term. It simply doe not exist not now—not ever. I swear!

6.     THE HARD SELL

Dante’s juicer is proven to cure you of all illness and restore your body to the size when you were a teenager. Millions of satisfied customers are now wearing bathing suits and win the lotto too.   Not.  There is no quick fix. A change of lifestyle, attitude, and a turn toward a Higher Source you have a good chance of success at your weight loss and releasing food addiction.

Yes, no doubt there are tons of promises of weight loss on every corner billboard, magazine, late night television commercial and broadcast on radio signals around the globe. But before I released excess weight for good and became an addiction psychologist,  certified as an eating disorder specialist (CEDS), I toiled nearly three decades making one "diet" mistake after another before realizing what makes a winner at weight loss and recovery and what keeps a person tied to diet mentality committing one diet error after another. It's your turn to stop going through the revolving door of failed diet plans and this time take charge, make a permanent step towards winning and put to rest the vast array of diet mishaps.

http://weightcontroltherapy.com/

Total Weight Makeover

"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I barely greeted Mary in the waiting room as she brushed her large framed body past me, marching to my office out of breath fretting, while mumbling she was ten minutes late.  Mary contacted my office a few months ago desperate to lose weight and get a grip on her obsessive volume eating. Mary is most focused on losing weight and less interested in the spiritual and emotional piece of her recovery journey. More than once she (and most of my eating disordered patients) requested to see my heavy pictures to confirm I truly once experienced the caged in desperation she did—that like her, nothing mattered to me except being thin. Reluctantly,  I pulled out two.


In the photo below I was 29 years old and on the upswing again with my weight. I recall gritting my teeth and saying to my best friend Yvonne, who was taking the photo, "Do you have to take a picture of a beached whale?" I rarely got roped into taking pictures because they represented my truth. I was fat. And with that truth I bought into the idea fat meant dumb—a total loser. What I didn't get during that photo shoot was that I was a sad young woman distracted with obsessions of food and weight to avoid living in the present life at hand. 

When I was twelve I began to notice I  spent the largest part of every day thinking about what I wanted to eat that I shouldn't and what I should eat that I didn't. The weight piled on and the diet sagas began. My obsession with weight was more sensational than anything that happened between me and boys, money, or girlfriends. I was totally absorbed in me so I could not be hurt by another person.


When I looked deeply into Mary's sad eyes I saw my own reflection of a once desperate me. I so wanted to save her, to pull her out of the misery she's swallowed up in—to convince her there is a better way than jumping on one diet after another.  Mary, like many compulsive eaters, believes if she loses weight she'll attract a desirable man and that all of her "issues" will miraculously disappear. But truth be told, what she's really doing is numbing out with food to avoid the chance of being rejected by someone, hence blaming the problem on the weight. A true vicious cycle. Mary claims she wants to experience blissful love but blames her excess weight from making her dreams come true.


Is this truly what's going on? Mary's rejected by men because of her body? Or is Mary blocking her emotions to men with food. Mary doesn't know how to engage herself with a person, only with food. Oh sure Mary had sexual encounters and short stint relationships but she avoided intimacy—surrendering totally to another with deliberateness to face, rather than run from, the worst of herself. She didn't dare allow herself to be vulnerable to another, instead she blamed food and her obsession with her body to take over present living. As long as Mary eats compulsively, her life is about what she eats, how much she eats, how much she weighs, and what she will look like, dress like, when she stops addictive eating. A scenario I was once quite familiar with.


Yes, it's true Mary grieves her unhappy childhood and will never be able to re-write the script. She missed it: a mother's love, a father's acceptance, sleep overs with girlfriends, the feeling that she mattered—that she was important to someone—anyone.  No, she will never get the childhood do-over she's been screaming about for fifty five years. Screaming and flailing fists is not emotional, spiritual, or physical healing.  Emotional, spiritual, and physical healing is another story—a different journey.


The first step in Mary's healing is to own the truth of her childhood story and acknowledge her losses—grieve about them. And to  know she is not her story. She doesn't have to define her existence as the little girl who was abused and never got the love she so yearned for, hence making it the same adult story.  To no longer identity with the lost child and begin living in the present instead of living in reaction to the past.

My second photo, I reluctantly showed Mary, was of me sitting under an orange tree on a breezy spring afternoon in South Florida trying to hide my body behind the baby—so ashamed to once again get caught in a picture. 


My focus today is on living my best healthy life not my weight or what I ate or failed to eat. I now recognize that my obsession with diets and weight was a game—it wasn't being thin I wanted, it was getting thin. It was a game of diet-binge-diet, only to once again binge.  I  would rush out to purchase a pile of junk food shoveling it into my mouth as fast as I could while simultaneously reading the newest diet book on the market. Mary does the same thing.


I want for Mary what I now know—and that is, diets don't work nor does diet mentality. When Mary lets go of the focus on her weight and the newest diet offered and instead puts her attention on spiritual and emotional recovery her gift is physical recovery. It works every time, all the time.


The last photo, which again I reluctantly bring to you the reader, is how I look today. Although I am not my body, that I'm much more than a frame, people want to see and know that it's possible to reach a "normal" weight (whatever that might be for you) without putting the attention on the weight.


This is the miracle.


Put your attention on your spiritual recovery; daily eat three meals and a half-meal consisting of foods that are whole and balanced; run, dance, walk, or do jumping jacks (whatever moves you); and connect to the Divine Source—and watch—watch for the miracle.










http://weightcontroltherapy.com/

Dieting on Empty: The Problem with Diet Mentality

I recently helped my patient Melinda sift through her New Year’s resolution, coaching her on diet mentality and how to make healthier food choices to quiet her binge eating. She is a voracious dieter, never trusting herself to put together an eating-for life formula to compliment her lifestyle. In short, she had all the makings of another New Year’s resolution diet fiasco—or so I thought.

Melinda didn’t stick with her diets, and after scrutinizing her timeline of expectation—lose two pounds a week on a 1300-a-day calorie diet—I can understand why.

It looked nothing like my own food-for-life formula, which offers a satisfying mix of balanced meals, exercise, meditation and prayer from an assortment of personal experience and quality recommendations from  patients I’ve spent years curating and tweaking for 23 years.

Melinda’s diet left her hungry, weak, and craving sugary and salty foods.

My patient could have groomed her assortment of diet rituals, but why should she? Like many patients, she was open to try a new diet with the promise of quick weight loss, but not especially determined to stay on it, and her initial experience failed to deliver the promised weight loss in a more efficient way.  The time and emotional energy she’d invested in it hadn’t convinced her on the positive results, and she wasn’t motivated on investing more time.

One of the greatest strengths of investing in balanced meals, exercise, meditation, and prayer is its ability to free the binge eater from diet mentality. For some it’s a way of making peace with years of on-and-off dieting and to release weight for once. For others, it’s a new full-proof formula encouraging food as fuel, exercise as energy booster, meditation and prayer to feed the spiritual hunger.

What  jumping off the diet-merry-go-around amounts to—weight loss, self empowerment, spiritual food, peace of mind—depends entirely on what lifestyle balance you prescribe.

Yes, embarking on clean eating and spiritual practice also poses problems for some. Learning to “feel” emotions rather than eat them requires a closer look at daily issues that were numbed by food. Jumping on a balance life  style formula is like winning the lotto—only instead of getting a pile of green cash—the winner pays taxes, learns of “family and friends” she didn’t know she had and the expectancy to clear everyone’s debt. The experience might be a pleasant one, but it takes work.

This initial flood of emotions and the effort required to address it stands between the dieter and the healthy formula it needs to make peace with diet mentality.

The list of successful patients continues to grow.

For dieters to turn over a new relationship with food, emotions, and experience a thriving, successful lifestyle, they must do the legwork. They must begin with a balanced breakfast, lunch, metabolic boost, and dinner; incorporate with daily exercise, meditation and prayer.

But no doubt people will lack the perseverance to trust that their body and emotions will respond. People lose patience when rapid weight loss doesn’t come, instead a slow and steady change of body, mind and spirit evolves over time.

Next New Year there will be no need of a New Year’s resolution promising to eat a meager 1300 calories only to give up due to starvation. Instead, Melinda will ring in the New Year with a svelte body and a clear mind and have no need to make a resolution at all because she adopted a lifelong plan that she can live with one day at a time.

Photo Taken By: Dr. Lisa Ortigara Crego

Revising Your Path to Releasing Your Obsession with Food…

Don’t you wish someone could tell you how close you are to finally resolving your weight issues and food obsession? Don’t you wish someone could say, “If you just keep at it and understand why you eat you’re certain to stop binge eating?”

Or even if it would be heartbreaking, wouldn’t it be nice to be told that you’re wasting your time going on yet another diet, so that you could move on, try another tack, or simply eat foods that bring you personal pleasure and release your obsession from food, with no other aim in mind?

I’ve counseled thousands of patients and spoke to large groups over the years. Even though I may not able to personally work with each of them, I can usually say something definitive about what their next steps should be. I often see when their diet is wasting their time.

No matter where you are on your own food path, it’s smart to periodically take stock of where you’re headed, and revise your eating plan as necessary. Here are some steps you can take to do just that.

Recognizing Yo Yo Dieting Isn’t Working

I’m often asked how I went from overweight to normal weight after years of bouncing up and down with my weight. Let’s be clear, I was the yo yo dieter of the year from early adolescents through my thirties. My weight and my relationship with food were a constant struggle for me until I began to understand my chemical reaction to certain foods. After years of trial and error, research, clinical knowledge, weight loss, and stability of weight, I recognized eating whole, natural foods free of sugar, flour, and wheat restored my moods and I instantly became calm and centered.

Eat Three Meals and One Half-Meal Daily

These days, I follow a simple formula breaking down each meal with structure (four meals a day each consisting of specific foods: fruit, protein, fat, vegetables, low fat dairy, and whole grains) and commitment rather than eating randomly. I also include daily exercise such as walking or biking along the ocean and try and live my life as a prayer.

Progress Not Perfection

No, I am certainly not perfect (and realize I sound as if this is so easy), and life is not always bliss. I would love to eat any food I want, but I realize the consequences aren’t worth the indulgence. I do get mad at life when I’m tired and work too many hours, or when I have to turn down an invitation to an event because the atmosphere won’t be conducive to my bringing my own foods, or when everyone will be eating a delectable piece of chocolate cake and I’ll be stuck eating a piece of fruit with yogurt. But, no matter what life struggles present themselves, I know that binge eating simply isn’t an option—nor are sugar, flour, or wheat on my food list, because I understand that the sleeping giant of addiction within will wake, and chaos will return with a vengeance if I ingest any of these. I compare my situation to that of a heroin addict, who can't have just a smidgeon of heroin; he must abstain completely to stay clean.

Make Room—A Higher Source Is Present

When I began to follow these specific guidelines—even when I didn’t want to—my negative mind chatter quieted, and for the first time I could become still, and hear God’s whispers. I connected to my inner strengths, and a spiritual understanding emerged in me. I found inner peace, God, and love. Love for myself, others, and the universe evolved inside me.

Not only was I calmer, kinder, and less self-centered, but I began to perceive a bigger picture. I saw food as real and not real: God’s food and man’s food. I chose food of the earth, sea, and air rather than processed and boxed. I turned to God, and the "noise" in my head ceased, and the addiction flattened. These days, I eat to live rather than live to eat. Healthful foods and a refreshed faith are now my fuel to retain optimal health and weight.

Last Thoughts

At the very beginning of this blog, I suggested it’s possible to release your obsession from food addiction when you let go of diet mentality if someone can lead the journey or point you in the right direction.

Here’s a little piece of hope: If your immediate thought was, I can’t live with obsessive eating any longer, then you are much closer to making peace with your food addiction than you might think. The battle is much more chemically imbalanced than you might think. Those who can’t be dissuaded are much more likely to reach their goals, regardless of the path they originally chose.


Photo by: Dr. Lisa Ortigara Crego