What we experience as children and teenagers in school can stay with us for the rest of our lives.  If we’re fortunate, those experiences are fun, exciting, and filled with personal growth but that’s not always the case.  For some, memory lane is filled with pot holes, rusty nails, and dead ends.

As a psychologist and expert with weight and eating, I’m able to get to know people more intimately and help them discover what is at the bottom of their weight and eating problems.  In many cases, a weight problem isn’t as simple as just learning the most successful ways to eat and exercise.  Weight and eating problems are sometimes psychological issues rather than simply a matter of overeating and little exercise.  Oftentimes, negative experiences from our early school years can have a long-lasting impact on the person – getting in the way of their emotional and, sometimes, physical health.

Dale, a patient who developed an eating disorder shared the following story:  “I was an overweight child.  Although I’m not fat anymore, I don’t go to school reunions because I don’t have any good memories of those years.  My school days usually began with a feeling of dread.  It wasn’t a matter of IF I would get picked on about being fat that day but WHEN and WHERE.”  Because Dale was no longer overweight as an adult, people would assume that he didn’t have a problem anymore.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Long after the weight was lost, Dale struggled with eating issues and still perceived himself as fat.  In addition, the emotional impact of his childhood traumas continued to plague him as an adult.  His eating disorder interfered with his progress in college, his intimate relationships, and his general happiness in life.

Children don’t have the psychological sophistication to understand why they are being picked on and that it has little to do with them as people.  They have a tendency to think in more concrete terms.  So, if school mates are picking on them because they are overweight, they automatically believe that something is fundamentally wrong with them.  This belief can grow into believing that they are not worthwhile individuals and this loss of self-esteem is what is carried on into the rest of their lives.

It’s important for the adults in the lives of overweight children to be sensitive and vigilant for signs that they may be having problems at school because they are being treated unjustly about their weight.

A few things to keep in mind are:

• If your child is being picked on because of their weight, speak to them without judgment.  Show compassion and a willingness to listen instead of immediately providing advice.  Everyone wants to be listened to and to feel that the listener wants to understand.
• Focus on the emotional impact of the problem rather than on the weight itself.  It’s the feelings that are hurting.  The child needs help with dealing with the thoughts and feelings that are causing him or her to feel the way they do.  Problems with low self-esteem because of weight prejudice don’t go away from just losing weight – as Dale’s story above demonstrates.
• Deal with the weight indirectly instead of putting the child on a strict diet or criticizing them for what they eat.  This can only add to the problem.  Instead, learn to provide nutritious alternatives for the whole family and engage everyone in a more active lifestyle.  This way the child doesn’t feel “different” at home as well as at school and the changes will make him or her more successful with weight loss.
• Don’t be afraid to get guidance about how to best help your child. Talking to school officials and a skilled professional who specializes in children and teens can be of great service to a family.  They can make a complicated problem much easier to deal with.  When children are having emotional problems it’s usually more effective for the adults to seek help for themselves in order to learn what they can do rather than just taking the child to a therapist.

School is part of our culture and a place where we can learn to cope and socialize.  It’s also where we can experience some of the best times in our lives.  However, we mustn’t forget that, for some, it’s a place where emotional development can come to a standstill.  Let’s be aware of signs in our children that they may be going through difficulties at school that they may not be able to get through without our help.  Let’s help them get through the bumps in the road and come out of it feeling it was a good trip – one where their feelings of worth will remain intact despite the bumps.

A version of this article was previously published in the St. Petersburg Times

What do binge eating and World War II have in common? In the 1940s, the University of Minnesota wanted to find out the physical and psychological effects of starvation, in part to guide relief efforts
for famine victims in Europe and Asia at the end of the war.  The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, as it is commonly called, studied 36 young men who had been carefully screened to make sure that they were physically and psychologically
healthy.

During a period of six months, the men were placed on a severely
restrictive diet until they lost approximately 25 percent of their normal
weight.

During the course of the semi-starvation period of the study the men were
found to show side effects similar to those often seen in people with
eating disorders. The men became preoccupied with food — incessantly
thinking and talking about food and eating, collecting cookbooks and
recipes, and dreaming about food.  Another major side effect of the
restrictive diet was binge eating.  In particular, once the restriction was
stopped, the men started binging and gained so much weight, they weighed
more than they had at the start of the study.

Ultimately, however, the abnormal eating behavior and psychological
preoccupation with food disappeared as the men continued to have free
access to food.

Although these subjects were men who had no eating disorders or weight
problems prior to the study, they developed problems similar to those we
see today in people (mostly women) with eating disorders.
So what does this all mean?  The Minnesota Starvation Experiment is
considered a landmark study because it revealed that severe and prolonged
restriction of food can lead to serious psychological and physiological
problems.

Just as the study subjects went from being normal eaters to binge eaters,
so do many people in our society today binge because of rigid dieting.
Many people can relate to the symptoms reported in this study but few
people realize that restrictive dieting alone can create such problems.
Instead, binge eaters are blamed for having no willpower.  This is
unfortunate because too many people go around chastising themselves and
being criticized for something they didn’t mean to create.

Most of my patients who binge, when asked if they remember their first
binge, don’t hesitate to tell a tale of losing complete control over food.
More often than not, we find that the bingeing started shortly after an
attempt to strictly control eating.  They quickly see that, at one time,
they were a “normal eating person” — one who ate when their body told them
to and stopped naturally when their body felt they had had enough.
They may not remember when this happened but will acknowledge that, even if
it was when they were babies, their eating was once under natural control.
Then they started to take extreme control over their eating — usually
because they felt they needed to lose weight — and before long, they were
caught in a cycle of binging and dieting.

In the case of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment subjects, their eating
returned to normal because they were not restricted in their eating again.
Most binge eaters, however, attempt to control binging and weight through
rigid dieting, never realizing they are perpetuating their own pain.
Those who recognize the problem can make binging a thing of the past.
They learn that their behavior was a natural reaction of the body and brain
to restriction and deprivation.

So, if you have binging problems keep these thoughts in mind:
•       It’s not your fault.  Your dieting history probably has had more to
do with creating the problem than you thought.
•       There’s hope.  Getting back to normal control of eating requires some
work but the work is more about letting go of rigid methods than about
exerting more control. The body has a fascinating ability to stabilize
itself when we get out of its way.
•       Starving the body has an effect on the mind as well as the body,
leading to preoccupation with food, depression, difficulty concentrating,
and irritability.
• It pays to make changes in a healthy way, even if it takes time.

Previously published in the St. Petersburg Times

Stress is everywhere, and chronic stress is known to be harmful not only to
our emotional health, but also to our physical health. It can affect the
immune system (making us sick more often), the heart (causing high blood
pressure and other heart problems), and muscles (causing problems with
neck, shoulder, and low-back pain), to name just a few concerns.
It can also be linked to overeating, and so contributes to obesity.
Stress eating is a common problem in our fast-paced world, although many
people believe they are alone when it comes to this issue.  In reality,
most people have a tendency to overeat when moderately stressed.  That can
make controlling food portions particularly difficult.
There may be physiological reasons why we tend to eat more and eat certain
types of foods when we are under chronic stress.  For example, research
suggests that certain brain functions linked to chronic stress compel us to
eat. Stress can also compel us to eat faster, potentially increasing the
amount we eat even more.
The types of foods we’re more likely to reach for at times of stress are
the sugary and starchy favorites we might call “comfort foods.’’ These have
properties that affect the brain in soothing ways, making us feel better
and reinforcing eating when we are under stress. So you see — you’re not
alone. It’s just how our bodies are wired to deal with chronic stress.
It’s essential to identify whether stress is driving your overeating. If
you try to control portions with tricks like using smaller plates, but
don’t address the real reason for overeating, such tricks won’t help.
Here’s a quiz to help you decide if it’s stress that’s eating you:
• Do you get irritated over minor things?
• Do you often feel anxious, jittery, and “hyper.”
• Do people get on your nerves often?
• Is it difficult to control your temper.
• Is it hard to focus on and remember things?
• Are you constantly worrying and  thinking about the next thing you have
to do?
If you see yourself in these signs of stress and are having problems with
portion control, there may be a link. We can’t eliminate stress from our
lives but we can learn to manage it.
Here are some tips for reducing stress and portions:
•       Take deep breaths throughout the day, especially before eating.
•       Slow down eating by savoring your food.  Focus on the sight, smell,
and taste of your meal before swallowing it.
•       Try to be mindful if you find yourself feeling “hyper” and
purposefully slow down your movements and actions.  You’ll find that you’ll
still get plenty done.
•       Look at the big picture. Remind yourself of what’s really important
in your life.  Perhaps what you’re worrying about really isn’t as important
as you think.
•       Remind yourself of what chronic stress can do to your health.
•       Manage hunger by eating sensible meals on a regular schedule. Being
hungry just adds to any other stress you’re carrying around and causes more
overeating.
•       Watch the servings. A brain under stress thinks it needs more food
than the body really demands. So, if stressed, serve less than your brain
is telling you.  Wait 20 minutes after having eaten slowly. If you’re still
hungry, have a little more and savor that, too.
• Exercise has repeatedly been shown not only to be a great fat-burner but
also a highly effective stress buster and appetite reducer. Make the time
to use this powerful health tool.
• Do something relaxing every day. Sit outside, meditate, practice yoga,
play – do anything that makes you feel at peace, comfortable, and focused
on the present moment.
Take a deep breath, address the stress in your life, and start on the road
to a healthier lifestyle and natural portion control.

Previously published in the St. Petersburg Times

Most people with problems controlling their eating think that it’s caused by some weakness on their part. In reality the problem has more to do with the human brain.

Compulsive eating problems are not rare today, but for the person experiencing the problem, it feels like no one could possibly understand what it’s like. Sadly, the person with compulsive eating problems or binging often thinks that the problem would go away if only they could gain more control. The cause of most compulsive eating is a control issue, not a lack of control, but rather a problem with over-control.

Why Diets Fail

Ninety percent of dieting attempts fail and most of these dieting attempts involve diets that have the following in common:

1. Are too rigid – Rigid rules in dieting, such as dictating exactly what should and should not be eaten, do not teach a person how to change his lifestyle. Lifestyle change is important for lasting weight loss.
2. Eliminate particular foods or food groups completely – Usually the foods eliminated by diets are those that the person likes the most. This creates a situation of psychological deprivation that leads to diet failure, overeating, and even binging with the foods that were eliminated.
3. Do not provide enough calories – Not eating enough calories slows down metabolism and creates a situation where the body stores fat more efficiently and burns it more slowly. This is the opposite of what the dieter wants to achieve.
4. Dictate what to do but not how to do it – People know what they should do to lose weight (eat well and exercise) but find it difficult to get themselves to do it. Most diets just tell a person what foods to eat or not eat; a few suggest exercise. These things are “easier said than done” because there are psychological barriers that are common to everyone and can get in the way.

Dieting and the Brain

The human brain responds well to some things but not to others. Most diets are designed counter to how the human brain thinks, leading to loss of control of eating and ultimate failure of the diet. However, there are ways to approach weight loss that will lead to long-term success. These involve how the person works with their brain. The brain responds best to the following:

• Flexibility – The more flexible an eating plan is the more likely it is that a person can follow it for the rest of their lives, resulting in a lifetime of health and leanness rather than yo-yo dieting.
• Praise – Just like a child learns better if praised rather than put down, the brain is motivated, encouraged, and energized by praise, not punishment or criticism. Pointing out successes and efforts, no matter how small, will lead to more success in the long run.
• Small goals – Large goals are overwhelming. Breaking large goals down into smaller ones and focusing on one small goal at a time will prevent stress and, instead, lead to more motivation.
• Focus on behaviors rather than numbers (e.g. calories and weight numbers) – Behaviors are what make a person lose weight, not numbers.
• Adding things rather than omitting things – Psychologically, it’s easier for a person to think of adding things such as increasing the number of fruits and vegetable eaten, rather than omitting things like not eating sweets.

Anything that adds stress and focuses on negativity tends to make the brain resistant to a person’s intentions and goals. This is especially true when dealing with weight loss. Having control of eating is not so much a function of willpower or discipline but rather understanding how the human brain responds to characteristics of the weight loss plan being used. The smart way to go about losing weight and controlling eating is by working with, not against, the brain.

Copyright Lavinia Rodriguez. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

Most diets leave a person battling with hunger yet the most effective way to lose weight should not involve any struggle with hunger.

The body needs food to survive and one of the ways the body makes sure that it gets this fuel is through the feeling of hunger. For most people in developed countries, not having enough food is not a problem. Instead, people are more concerned with losing weight and controlling their eating. The body has a fine balance, however, and eating too little by ignoring hunger can lead to gaining weight rather than losing it. This is often what is behind the yo-yo pattern of weight loss and regaining typical of most dieters. Successful weight loss is not a matter of how little a person can eat, but how they balance their eating.

Not only does the body’s metabolism slow down if it’s not fed enough (leading to a body that stores fat readily and burns it more slowly), but ignoring hunger to the point of excess leads to out of control eating. Almost everyone has experienced the feeling of ravenous hunger at one time or another and its resulting feeding frenzy. A slower metabolism and overeating spell weight gain, not loss. Clearly, careful care of hunger is important in any plan for losing weight.

How to Eat Healthy Food Without Measuring, Weighing, or Counting

Diets that involve rigid measuring, weighing or counting never last. But there are simple and fun ways of improving nutrition without becoming a scholar on the subject.

Who wants to be bothered with studying up on nutrition to eat better or lose weight? Learning about vitamins and minerals, number of servings, and what food qualities affect what body functions can get tedious and boring.

Isn’t There an Easy Way to Improve Nutrition?

You don’t have to be a nutritionist or a biologist to improve your nutrition. All you have to do is:

1. Want to eat better.
2. Understand that learning to eat better is a process and needs to be done one step at a time.
3. Strive for continual improvement rather than perfection.
4. Be willing to experiment.

The 1-2-3′s of Better Nutrition

• One: Food Groups

The first thing to do to improve nutritional intake is to have a general knowledge of food groups. Most people are familiar with what these are:

• Protein/Meat Group-foods such as meats, eggs, beans
• Fruit/Vegetable Group-all fruits and vegetables
• Grains/Cereals Group-breads, pasta, cereals

Although the particular food groups differ depending upon the source, concentrating on the three basic food groups above will get you started in a good direction and keep you from feeling overwhelmed about how much to know. Remember it’s about increasing nutrition, not about perfection. Later, if you wish to learn more and continue to consume higher quality foods you can get into more details. For now, keep it simple. The psychology of change is important to success.

• Two: Color

The most nutritious foods have bright colors. Instead of boring ourselves with what vitamins and minerals are in different foods all we have to do is focus on color in the following ways:

1. Look for foods that have bright colors such as green, yellow, red, orange, and black. Fruits and vegetables are the most colorful foods.
2. Strive to make your plate colorful. A plate that has mainly beige and brown foods is not what we’re looking for. Make it look like a beautiful color wheel.
3. As you approach each meal ask yourself, “What colors have I eaten today? What colors am I missing?”
4. Strive to have a meal where most of the plate is composed of bright-colored foods.

By following the above, your nutrition will improve significantly and you will have had fun doing it. It’s that easy.

• Three: The Comfort Group

These are the foods that give you warm fuzzies – your favorite foods. It’s important to include comfort foods in any eating program as trying to eliminate them completely makes it more difficult to succeed at your goal. It’s one of the main reasons most diets are broken sooner or later. However, the focus here should be to see how your comfort foods can be made more nutritious. For example, if your comfort food is ice cream perhaps you can add colorful berries to add more nutrition and fiber. Experiment with your favorite cookie recipe to see what can be added or eliminated to add nutrition and still keep the flavor. Don’t eliminate these foods – just make them more nutritious.

Finally, experiment with different recipes to see if you can find ways to eat those nutritious foods you don’t like by disguising their flavor with other tastes. Sometimes mixing foods you don’t like with those you like a lot will make the whole dish taste good. Chopping less liked foods into tiny pieces to mix with other foods, also can be tried. Just don’t give up on something nutritious just because you feel you don’t like it. If nothing makes a disliked food taste good don’t eat it, but search for the same color elsewhere. It’s about making nutrition easy and fun.

Disclaimer: The above tips do not replace the advise of your health care professional. Consult with your doctor.

Hunger is a normal body signal.  The body uses hunger to signal when it needs fuel.  It’s possible, however, to mess up this natural and adaptive function and many people do it by stringent, yo-yo dieting and subscribing to dieting myths.

If a person has never dieted they don’t give a second thought to hunger.  They simply eat when they feel hungry and stop when they feel satisfied.  When a person listens to their body’s hunger, they start eating before the hunger gets too uncomfortable for them.  The more intense the hunger, the more the body pushes a person to eat.  After all, it’s the body’s job to try to keep the body alive and food is essential to survival.

The problem comes in when people get in the way of this natural system by doing things like ignoring hunger to avoid eating and or confusing other things such as thirst or emotions for hunger.

Most people can remember a time when they had natural control of food and ate primarily when they were hungry instead of fighting hunger.  Psychologically, the more we try to ignore hunger, the more preoccupied we get with food and the harder it becomes to keep from overeating.

Simple Steps to Control Hunger

There are simple ways to control hunger and they involve paying attention to hunger rather than fighting it. Just follow the simple steps below:

1. Use a hunger rating scale from 0 to 5.  Zero represents no hunger at all, while 5 represents a level of hunger when we feel “famished.”  This is when we have trouble thinking of anything else but food, we might even feel lightheaded, shaky, and irritable.
2. Several times per day, stop and rate your level of hunger at that moment.
3. The goal is to eat whenever your hunger gets to  a 3.  You feel hunger but it’s not intense and you feel in control.
4. Try to prevent hunger from going beyond a rating of 3.
5. If you find your hunger level to be above a 3, eat as soon as possible but focus on eating nutritious combinations of carbohydrates (such as whole wheat crackers) and protein (such as peanut butter, cheese, of low fat meat).  The combination of protein and carbs helps to get your blood sugar back up to a normal level and keeping it there longer rather than spiking up and then crashing again.  Eating only carbs or sugary foods tends to  leads to intense levels of hunger and compulsive overeating.

Hunger is nothing to be afraid of nor should it be ignored.  Controlling hunger is simple.  Feed your body when it’s telling you it needs fuel rather than when it’s screaming at you.  Enjoy.

If I’m not strict with myself I feel that I will lose all control and never be able to stop eating. What do I do?

This is a fear that many people have. They fear that if they let go of their rigid dieting ways that they will compulsively eat forever.  However, the data doesn’t support it. In practice, when people work on letting go of their restrictive rules of dieting that tell them they cannot eat certain foods and that they are bad if they break a rule, the opposite happens; their compulsive eating goes away. As you get rid of the psychological deprivation that you have set up through constant, rigid dieting, you become more and more of a normal eating person who’s body signals when you’ve had enough and tells you that it doesn’t want any more. It grows to be satisfied with less and less food until it reaches a normal appetite level. In my book, Mind Over Fat Matters: Conquering Psychological Barriers to Weight Management, I explain what psychological deprivation is, how we create it through rigid dieting and rules, and how to eliminate it so that you can follow through with eating in a way that will cause fat burning instead of leading to compulsive eating.

Food problems and addictions are  similar only on the surface.

“Overeating and drug addiction may converge on some of the same neurons,” says Endocrinologist Barbara Kahn. “but other pathways are also involved. And from a biochemical point of view, the two are not the same thing. Drug addictions are much stronger.”

Unfortunately for people who have weight and food problems, theories about  food addiction are not only inaccurate, but they do a disservice to people who are struggling to lose weight.  Sure, some people eat compulsively and some even binge.  This type of eating behavior can be chronic.  It can really look like it’s an addiction.  The “food addict” experiences strong cravings and feels out of control when the compulsive eating is taking place.

There are more differences, however, than there are similarities when it comes to compulsive eating and true addiction.  Here are some of those:

• A person can live without addictive drugs but they cannot live without food.
• People can recover completely from compulsive overeating and binging problem without having to deprive themselves of any particular foods.
• Humans have always been drawn to sweet and salty tastes.  It is a universal trait.
• When people are deprived of the foods they like, it creates a state of psychological deprivation that leads to compulsive eating.

It’s not addiction that causes addiction-like behaviors of compulsive eating and binging – it’s psychological deprivation.

By only looking at the surface of a problem, it can mislead.  Thirty years of experience treating the most severe cases of eating problems (eating disorders) and seeing that they can completely recover from losing control of food is evidence that food addiction is a myth.

That should sound like good news.  Who wants to think that they have an addiction to food that in incurable?  Isn’t it better to think that the addictive-like behaviors can be a thing of the past and that a person can once again become a normal-eating individual?