Betterway Press
Home |
Normal Eating |
Disabilities |
Math |
Site Map |
About Us
Betterway Press
Home |
Normal Eating |
Disabilities |
Math |
Site Map |
About Us
What is normal eating?
Visit our Diet Survivors™ group on
Yahoo!
Subscribe to this monthly newsletter
This newsletter is for people who are fed up with their food issues and would like to go back to living (but still become the right weight permanently). A Diet Survivor's wish is to learn how to eat normally.
Diet Survivors™ understand that, while some technical changes can help (and others seem to do more harm than good), the most important changes are adaptive changes. Adaptive change is about internal changes in your beliefs and attitudes. It turns out that dieting often causes distorted beliefs and self-talk, thus making matters worse instead of better.
In place of willpower or food plans, Diet Survivors™ channel all their energy into becoming aware of their harmful self-talk, disputing it, and replacing it with beliefs that are true and that will lead to permanent weight loss. If you are new, welcome! All the newsletters are free and can be easily printed, using your print function.
This month, hear from our readers with their stories and questions.
A reader asks:
"In your newsletters, I most enjoy the
adaptive changes suggestions. Can you give me some suggestions pertaining to
accepting a woman's body and accepting (and embracing) changes that result
from eating WELL as compared to not eating enough?
"I feel in need of this right now. I used to be sixty-three pounds overweight, lost the weight on a low-fat diet, and have struggled ever since with being too thin. My highest weight was 193 and my "usual" weight is 130. But then I went too far in the other direction (down to 111 lbs) at 5 feet 8 inches tall.
"I believed that I had to be ultra-thin in order to avoid becoming overweight again. I am now finally gaining some needed weight but it's scary, and I still haven't adjusted my body image. I still think I'm a more acceptable person if I'm ultra skinny. "
Our answer:
Dear reader,
Take a look at the picture to the right. Body image self-talk dies hard, but it does die. This may be difficult at first for overweight
people to see, but the fact remains
that those who struggle with staying too thin are suffering from the same problem as the overeater—distorted thinking. Those who
succeed in losing the weight, but then struggle with underweight may very well be the envy of
others who can't seem to lose the weight.
But this, too, is distorted thinking. Neither dieter will find peace until they are able to adjust their thinking. With better thinking, the yo-yo dieting and constant weight fluctuations will die peacefully.
Both kinds of irrational thinkers can learn to think more soberly. In this case, the underweight person might be deathly afraid of gaining the weight back and has constructed a set of beliefs which cause her to stay chronically underweight. As you can see, this dieter, although no longer overeating, is not living a normal life and is just as consumed by thoughts of food and diet as the person who hasn't yet lost the weight. They are two sides of the same coin.
Some self-talk that causes the successful dieter to continue struggling:
Here are some new ways to think about weight and body image:
All the information in these newsletters, supporting pages, and the book, How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever (click to read a summary), is based on a branch of psychology called cognitive therapy. Read more about cognitive therapy on this Web site by clicking on the link.
Intrigued? Most books about cognitive therapy address a smattering of life's problems. But there's one book that's all about adjusting your distorted thinking strictly on the subject of food and weight control. It's called, How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever. Find out more about How to Survive Your Diet or order from Amazon.com.
"I liked the [newsletter about glycemic index]. I shall confess that my first impulse was to reject the GI Index stuff because I want to be strictly 'anti-diet rules.' Then I decided I really don't need to be strictly anything; that automatically rejecting an idea before thinking about it isn't any better than automatically embracing an idea without thinking about it. Right? Also, you (bless your heart) don't present it as a "rule". In fact, you advise that people don't turn it into such.
I think what I like most about your newsletter is your continuous, very gentle reminder that small, delicious meals composed of "normal" food is the way to go. This is like a simple, quiet theme, woven in among the other topics.
In my last six months of working to be a normal eater here's what I've found most helpful: to eat the stuff I love and to love what I eat. The closer the match of food to body craving, the higher the rate of satisfaction and the less food I consume overall. This means that a peanut butter sandwich, though yummy, won't truly satisfy if roast beef on rye is what I'm craving when hungry. I've found that it takes very little food to satisfy my hunger if I feed my body exactly what it's hungry for.
The second important thing I've learned is to FINALLY eat for pleasure. This, I think, is why normal eaters eat. Sure, they eat when they're hungry to fuel their bodies but most normal eaters don't think in terms of fueling. Most don't really "think" about the whole process at all. They get hungry and they eat because eating is a pleasure. Eating is something to be enjoyed. Food is to be savored.
It's my theory that people struggling with eating issues don't enjoy eating ENOUGH. (I don't mean enough in terms of quantity here. I mean it in the sense that they don't enjoy the process enough.) Think about it— binge eaters and overeaters barely taste the food they eat and under eaters are usually too afraid to enjoy anything. If your head is filled with nagging voices about what you ate, didn't eat, should or should not have eaten, etc. how can you truly enjoy the simple pleasure of eating?
It's so wonderful to be completely free of the nagging voices. It's like coming out from under a heavy rock. Know what I mean?"
Yes, our dear reader. We most certainly do.
These Web pages provide sensible advice on healthy diets, nutrition, and weight loss. However, no advice given here is intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor when deciding to make significant dietary or lifestyle changes.
Direct all technical questions and comments about this site to webmaster
Last Modified: Wednesday, 06-Feb-2008 07:12:51 PST Betterway Press
All rights reserved.
What is a diet survivor?
|
| To view the current issue of the monthly newsletter for Diet Survivors™, view Diet Survivors™ current issue |
| Learn more about the book, How to Survive Your Diet, available now! Click on the book cover to order. |
|
Click on the book cover for ordering information. |
| Diets often don't work. Find out what is normal eating? |
| What is cognitive therapy? Cognitive therapy is a way to help yourself live a more rational, peaceful life, without having to delve into your past. Find out more about cognitive therapy. |
|
What are technical and adaptive changes? These are two different approaches to bringing about improvement in your life. Many dieters mistakenly make technical changes, when they really need to make adaptive changes. Find out more about technical and adaptive change. |
| View back issues of this newsletter. See a list that links to every issue. Don't forget—these newsletters are printer-friendly! |
|
Talk to us!* Comments and questions are always welcome. Please share
with us your story about how you survived your diet. Tell us what you would like to read about in these newsletters. And don't
hesitate to ask questions about the problems you face. We can't answer every question, but we are here to help.
Send us e-mail. *All correspondence becomes the property of Betterway Press and may appear in future newsletters (with names and e-mail addresses kept confidential). |
| View further studies that support our principles of normal eating. |
| In our upcoming August newsletter, find out another way in which activity and exercise can help you lose weight that has nothing to do with calories burned! |
|
Order How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever by Linda Moran. Find out more about this book for dieters. 5.25" x 8.25" quality paperback 150 pages Index ISBN: 0-9749396-0-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2004092105 $14.95 |