Acknowledging and Working Out an Emotion: Loneliness

In last week's post, I wrote about long-term strategies to stop my emotional eating. A key paragraph from that post was:

I try to force these emotions to the forefront so I can figure out what they are, what is causing them, how and why they are affecting me, and how can I work them out. Basically, I have learned that unacknowledged emotions, particularly when they are negative, often drive me to overeat or binge. They’ll hurt me more long term if I ignore them than if I make myself go through the sometimes painful or uncomfortable process of acknowledging them, figuring them out and working them out. It is helpful to not judge myself through this process.

How do I do this? How do I acknowledge an emotion and work it out? It varies. Self-awareness is very important to this process, but serendipity can be as well. It can often start with reading, writing, attending Weight Watcher and even RWA meetings or talking with friends or family. I try to pay attention to what resonates, and often, the greater my reaction the greater the emotion is tripping me up.

I have subscribed to Oprah's O Magazine for years. Reading it gives me a boost of positivity or optimism and plenty of ideas on how to improve my life. Each issue has a theme. Several years ago, I picked up my mail and saw that the theme for that month's issue was loneliness. I thought that was such a strange topic for a magazine. What could anybody write about that? Curiosity more than anything else convinced me to pick that magazine up later that week and start reading it.

A couple of hours later, I closed the covers of that magazine having read it word-for-word, and I was shocked. Every article on loneliness had resonated - even the one about a single guy and his cat. I just sat on my futon for a couple of minutes feeling lost and tried to process it all. This was not good. I had a new filter through which to view the past several years of my life, and I did not like what I could see. Some of the stuff I had even been proud of, such as my ability to go out to a restaurant and eat alone, did not look so healthy when I acknowledged how much I would overeat at those meals because I was probably feeling lonely. What should I do?

Luckily, the Martha Beck article in that issue was all about what one should do when she felt lonely, so the first thing I did was reread that article. She talked about levels of loneliness and what one should do at each level. I pretty much felt like I was at the rock bottom level and used her advice in that section as a starting point as to how to evaluate my current social life and make some positive changes. It was typical stuff - join groups centered on what you are interested in, do volunteer work, start reaching out socially, etc.

Figuring out what to do and implementing these changes did not happen overnight, and it was often uncomfortable. But, as Beck had said in her article, one can reach a point that maintaining the status quo is worse than making the necessary changes. So, I forced myself to think about what was wrong and right with my current social life, what had worked well with my social life in the past, and what I could do to recreate that.

The biggest problem with my DC social life at that point was all my friends were married, and some were even starting to procreate. Our lives were diverging, and these married friends were going to become less and less a part of my life and less like me. I had an active, online social life, but it was nowhere near meeting my social needs. (An interesting editorial on that topic can be found in Saturday's New York Times.) It became obvious that I needed to make some single friends in DC. How could I do this?

The easiest places I'd ever made friends in my adult life were at school or at RWA meetings. Work, my closest equivalent to school, and RWA were full of married people, so I couldn't rely on those two groups to meet my social needs. I did reach out to single people at work and in RWA, but I needed to do more. I had to do what had been almost unthinkable. I needed to go to singles events.

I did research online, again thought about what I had done in the past and remembered that I had gone to alumni groups in the past. I looked up the alumni groups for my undergrad school, my grad school and even my sorority, and started attending some of their events. It turned out there is an organization called Ivy Singles in DC and other major cities. To quote from the DC Web site, it is: "a coalition of Ivy League, Seven Sister and other prestigious schools' regional alumni associations that sponsors social activities. Our events are open to all single alumni of member schools and their guests. Most of our attendees are in their 30's, 40's or 50's, but all ages are welcome." This Web site also had links to other single groups in the DC area, and Single Volunteers looked really interesting.

So, I signed up for my first Ivy Singles event. I'm as much an introvert as the next writer. I hate walking into a room of strangers and having to socialize, but I have to do it for work, and I needed to do it for myself. I dressed up in a suit that I thought was the most flattering one I owned. It was a plus size suit, I weighed more than 200 pounds, I didn't expect to get a date, but I had to do something to improve my social life.

The first few minutes were tough, but it got better. One of the first people I spoke to was a 22-year-old recent graduate of Stanford. He had just talked to another woman whom he thought I should meet, and he introduced me to my new friend May. This reception just got ten times easier and gave me forward momentum to continue these efforts. I did some single volunteer projects and went to the next Ivy Single event and met even more new friends. The majority of the participants at these events did feel like they were in their 40's and 50's, so the late 20 and 30-somethings at this one started a list of "younger" Ivy Singles and started to plan alternative, free events. Eventually, I helped organize some of them. A few of my new "Ivy Single" friends introduced me to some of their other single friends. Slowly, I built a circle of single friends whom I greatly value.

With that base set, I felt comfortable reaching out socially in other places and started to do a high level of volunteer work in my local RWA chapter and built more ties there. Most of my closest adult friends have come from RWA because we seem to get each other. I've even heard an author call her RWA friends her soul sisters or soul mates. I needed more soul sisters in DC.

Through this process of acknowledging and addressing my loneliness, I learned how important my social life is to my happiness and well being. I need to be social. I'm willing to organize social events, and that helps so much. The photos in this blog are from my birthday last week. I organized a dinner with my single friends the night of my birthday (Friday, June 4) and an afternoon tea with my local female friends, married and single, over the weekend. I've done many things for my birthday. I celebrated my 30th by going to Italy with my sister, and I've done nothing but make up stories of how I celebrated with friends to tell my parents and sister so they wouldn't give me a hard time or feel bad for me. I'm much happier if I do something social to acknowledge the occasion.

Acknowledging and working out an emotion does not seem to mean that it will never bother you again. I'm sure that I've occasionally overeaten since I made my group of single friends in DC because of loneliness. Loneliness is a very real thing to many of my single friends, and we'll talk about it. I know what I need to do to ward it off. I even set an annual goal of doing at least 4 social things a month and touch base every so often to make sure my inner hermit has not come out and taken over my life temporarily. I'll occasionally ask myself: Are there other things I should do to maintain or improve my social life? I've dabbled with online dating and may try to do more there. Some of my beloved single friends are starting to pair off, and I may need to do some outreach to make more single friends. I'm slowly realizing that I may even have to go to some more Ivy Singles receptions and Single Volunteer events by myself to make sure I meet new people.

Yes, making sure I'm aware of whether or not I'm feeling lonely and whether or not I need to do more social things take work, but my life (and butt) are better for me making this effort. I do this same kind of work for other emotions. I realize that many of the followers of this blog are married and stories about loneliness may not resonate, but the process of acknowledging and working out an emotion that troubles you may be similar to what I just described.

How do you acknowledge and work out an emotion that may be negatively impacting your life? What works best for you?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at: http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Long Term Strategies to Stop My Emotional Eating

In previous posts I’ve discussed how I started to combat my emotional eating and some of the tactics I’ve developed to stop myself from giving into the urge to overeat or even binge. Another step I try to take whenever I feel like emotional eating is ask myself why do I want to do this. What emotions am I feeling that are encouraging me to overeat as a way to suppress them? Can I address these emotions? What is causing these emotions? Why am I upset? Can I figure out ways to address what is making me upset and work out those emotions? Can I change the situation? Can I change my reaction to the situation? Can I change my thoughts about the situation and eventually change my emotions?

I try to force these emotions to the forefront so I can figure out what they are, what is causing them, how and why they are affecting me, and how can I work them out. Basically, I have learned that unacknowledged emotions, particularly when they are negative, often drive me to overeat or binge. They’ll hurt me more long term if I ignore them than if I make myself go through the sometimes painful or uncomfortable process of acknowledging them, figuring them out and working them out. It is helpful to not judge myself through this process.

I do a lot of this working out of emotions by writing in my diary or writing blog posts for Healthy Writer. Examples of blogs where I tried to work out emotions so that I would not overeat include fear of success, the dark side of the holidays, can you take a break, what’s in a number, oh jealousy, is this for real, why can I still get so upset when I gain weight, and I still struggle at times...and that's ok. I also find it helpful to talk some of this stuff out at a Weight Watchers meeting or with friends or family.

In addition to learning how to acknowledge and work out my feelings, other long-term strategies I follow to stop my urges for emotional eating are guidelines 7 - 10 from my ten healthy guidelines for healthy eating and losing weight. Following these guidelines can literally stop my urge to overeat before it develops.

7) Develop Ways to Comfort Yourself Besides Eating

One of the ways I combat my emotional eating is to find other healthier methods to comfort and soothe myself so that I don't turn to food and overeat. Nature can soothe me. Escaping into a great book has always worked for me. Other ideas include knitting, exercise, meditation, listening to music, dancing around your living room to said music, attending church services, calling a friend on the phone, taking a bubble bath, getting a massage, and doing something social with friends or family.

8) Enjoy the Benefits of Exercise

In his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, David Kessler argues that the only feeling of reward close to the one you get from overeating comes from exercise, and you can literally rewire your brain to want the healthy version and not the unhealthy version. I have been trying to do this since May of 2009 and have had a lot of success with it. I've taken the time to figure out what exercise I enjoy and focus on the benefits I get from exercise as opposed to thinking of it as something I have to do to lose weight. I'm learning to really enjoy and appreciate regular exercise. I miss it, and the benefits it gives me, when I've gone too long between gym visits.

9) Determine Why You Started to Overeat and Address that Wound

I learned this guideline by watching The Biggest Loser. A set of questions that the trainers want the contestants to answer before they leave the ranch is: When did you start overeating and gaining weight? What was happening in your life at that time? How did you feel? It all builds to the question why did you start overeating. The trainers firmly believe that this is the most important lesson of all for the contestants. In order to reach their current state of being morbidly obese, these contestants had to have some serious emotional eating issues. They have to figure out why they started overeating so that they stop and finally conquer this issue. They need to face these emotions and work out some kind of resolution, or they'll just gain the weight back.

Realizing how and why the urge to overeat all started was an important step in learning how to stop or moderate this behavior. Once you know this original wound, you can heal it or at least face it and change your reaction to it. Forcing myself to go through this exercise has made a profound impact on my weight loss and my confidence that I'll be able to keep it off.

10) Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food

The key to figuring out what a healthy relationship to food is may be realizing what it is not and what you can't look to food to provide. It won't fix your problems. It won't fill a void in your life. It won't heal an emotional wound you are trying to ignore. Any comfort, soothing or joy is temporary at best. It won't make you happy. Figuring out what will is a much better long-term strategy than overeating.

Do you have any long-term strategies that help keep you from emotional eating or other forms of overeating?

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What I Do to Stop Myself from Emotional Eating

One of the first things I had to learn to do to combat my emotional eating issues was develop the ability to ask myself and answer honestly: Am I experiencing physical hunger or emotional hunger?

To do this successfully, you need to learn to recognize the signs of physical hunger, such as a growling stomach, lack of energy, light-headedness, a headache, or grouchiness, and the signs of emotional hunger. Have you eaten enough that day that you should not be hungry yet? Are you eating for reward or because you think you deserve a treat? Do you have an almost uncontrollable urge to eat, but you have no idea what you want to eat and nothing you do eat satisfies you? Are you feeling an emotion that you don't want to acknowledge? Learning to recognize the difference between physical and emotional hunger is a skill you can develop over time. I'm fairly good at it now if I say so myself.

When I am confronted with an urge to eat for emotional reasons and not for physical reasons, to eat for reward, or even to binge eat, I try to stop and recognize why I want to eat. If I think I want to eat for emotional reasons, I will tell myself that I’m not hungry and don’t need to eat. This is not always enough to stop me.

I’ll try to distract myself. Can I start doing something else that will distract me from the siren’s call of emotional eating? This can work.

I’ll try to find some kind of external motivation or “sign” that will stop me from overeating. This journey can be very challenging, and I’m willing to use any tactic that will help me succeed. One of my colleagues at work shared how she was obese for years and lost a lot of weight and successfully kept it off by going to overeaters anonymous. She’s always been slender since I’ve known her, and you’d never know she used to be fat. Sometimes I’ll think of her or walk by her office if I want to overeat at work. That can help me resist the urge. I’ve walked by her office on my way to the vending machine and the sight of her will make me turn around to return to my office instead of buying junk food.

Sometimes the urges are so strong that you give in, or you are already in the midst of a binge when you realize you are doing some emotional eating. I will try to set a stop point or end point for myself if I can’t find a way to stop myself immediately. I’ll try to keep it limited to one meal and promise myself I’ll get back on the wagon immediately afterwards.

If it is the hour after or the day after a big session of overeating, I’ll try to make myself record all that I ate in a food diary. It may not be as bad as I’m feeling it was. I may not have eaten as much as I thought or lost control as much as it seemed. Even if the amount of food is as bad as I thought or worst than I feared, the mere act of writing it all down helps me to regain control. It helps me put a stop to it and go back to practicing healthy eating.

Like anything, the ability to stop yourself from overeating or talk yourself out of it grows and strengthens over time. Here is how I talked myself down from overeating after a tough day at work last September.

I had a miserable day at work and felt like I deserved a treat. Every part of my being seemed to be urging me to overeat. I briefly considered walking by my colleague’s office, but knocked that thought down. I left work planning to stop at Five Guys to buy a bacon cheeseburger and fries and glory in all that fat for dinner. I’d get back on the wagon the next morning. I started walking to Union Station, where I got the subway home, and I saw a familiar guy walking towards me. He said hi, and I recognized him as someone in my Weight Watchers Group.

It was a sign! What did I want? My leader to walk up to me and tell me I did not want to overeat for dinner. I let that sign convince me to rethink my dinner plans as I sat on the subway for my commute home. I started to think of all the healthier take out options at home. As I got on my second train, I convinced myself to get two tacos at Baja Fresh and stay within my calorie count for the day. By the time I got off at my metro stop, I decided to walk home and just eat one of my healthy turkey burgers. In less than an hour, I’d talked myself out of overeating.

I'm very proud that I've developed the ability to stop myself when I feel the urge to do some emotional eating. I'm not perfect, but I'm much better than I was for years and years. While many of the immediate tactics I described above are very helpful, I've also found ways to stop the urge to binge before it even starts. I'll start exploring some of my long-term strategies to combat my emotional eating issues in upcoming blogs.

Do you have tricks for talking yourself out of giving in to the urge to eat for emotional reasons?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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How I Started to Combat My Emotional Eating

A few years ago, I walked into my condo after a hard day of work and was completely stressed out, frustrated and upset with how the day had gone, and I wanted to stuff my face. Ironically, I can’t remember what happened that day at work, but I can clearly remember how the rest of the night went. I heated up an individual serving of whatever meal I had cooked for supper that week and sat down to eat it in front of the news.

When I finished eating supper, I wasn’t even close to feeling satisfied. I had no idea what I wanted to eat, but I had an overwhelming urge to keep eating. I knew I was not physically hungry and that this was probably a desire for emotional eating. It got to the point that it was too strong to resist, and I ate a bunch more food.

Lying back on my couch staring at the TV after I stopped eating, I knew I shouldn’t have eaten any more food. I wasn’t hungry. Before I let myself get completely disgusted and mad with myself, I noticed this wonderful feeling. My stomach felt comfortably full, and I could feel this comforting warmth spread from my stomach to the rest of my body. It was very peaceful, soothing and relaxing. It seemed to melt away the stress from work.

I knew enough about eating problems and emotional eating to recognize that this feeling was not necessarily a good or healthy thing. I remembered reading a comment a celebrity with eating problems made in an interview about how she overate because it felt like she was hugging herself whenever she did so. I never understood what that meant until I noticed what I was physically feeling after that eating binge. That was the feeling the celebrity wanted when she overate. It made me understand more what I was trying to achieve whenever I overate.

I had known for years at this point that I probably had a problem with emotional eating. I’d been very overweight or obese for more than 10 years, and I had no underlying medical cause for it. There had to be some emotional causes. I could even recognize at times when I was eating for emotional needs and not for physical ones. I just had no idea how to “fix” this problem and stop my emotional eating, and nothing I tried seemed to work.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2009 when I decided to give my all to my latest attempt to lose weight in the upcoming year. I knew that I’d have to try to figure out how to combat emotional eating at some point over the next year if I wanted to succeed, but I also knew it would not be easy. I had no idea how to start. In some ways, that helped. I gave myself permission to start out concentrating on doing what I could do right away – join Weight Watchers, buy healthy food, fix healthy meals, start keeping a food diary – and just let the question of how I could stop my emotional eating rest at the back of my mind for the immediate future.

I did this for months. Once I started to feel a bit more comfortable with my daily efforts to lose weight and had a little success behind me, I started thinking about what to do with my emotional eating. I listened for any of the tips fellow Weight Watchers members had to share at meetings and made note of the ones I thought would work for me. I did some reading. I observed how I behaved and tried to note when I was eating for physical reasons and when I was eating for emotional ones.

I started to develop tactics for myself to employ to stop my emotional eating, and by the end of the year, I felt like I had a real handle on that problem. I’m not perfect, and I do still eat for emotional reasons occasionally, but not nearly as much as I did in the past. All ten of my healthy guidelines are tactics and strategies I’ve developed to combat my emotional eating, but I can break it down into short-term or immediate tactics and long-term strategies. For the next month or two, I'll write more about how I started to combat successfully my urge to succumb to my desire for emotional eating or eating for reasons that have nothing to do with physical hunger.

Do you have any tips for how to combat emotional eating?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Plan and Prepare for Success

When I resolved once again at the beginning of 2009 to try to lose weight, I spent a lot of time thinking about how my past attempts at weight loss had gone, what I had done well, where I had failed, and how I could plan my next attempt in a way that would succeed. It was such a helpful exercise that I try to ask myself these questions on a regular basis: What do I need to do to succeed in my weight loss efforts? What should I do for the short term and for the long term? What challenges can I anticipate? How can I approach these challenges so that they don’t sabotage my efforts? What kind of support systems and habits can I build into my life that will help me lose weight and ultimately maintain a healthy lifestyle?

One of the first steps I took and one that I have to redo regularly is figure out what I will eat in the next week. I like to cook, and I want to do this eating “real” food not frozen diet meals or much processed food. I need to go to the grocery store regularly to ensure that my kitchen is stocked with healthy and appealing foods. I also make sure that my kitchen is not stocked with unhealthy choices and junk food. I never go to the grocery store hungry and make a grocery list before I leave home. I often do a rough meal plan for the week. One of the most helpful tools I’ve developed is my ability to do a mammoth day of cooking every couple months or so and freeze individual meals for later. For more details, see: http://healthywriter.blogspot.com/2009/11/cooking-one-day-for-month.html

If I know of any upcoming larger meals or social/work events with plenty of eating opportunities in the next seven days, I may address how I can balance that with other meals during the week. I may plan to make a vegetarian meal, such as Cuban black beans and rice, or another very low-fat dish for part of that week. I may consider increasing my workouts. If the meal is at a restaurant, I’ll often look at the menu in advance to figure out what I will eat, how many calories the meal will likely have, and how much I’ll have to work to balance it elsewhere. Sometimes, I can order something that will stay in my calorie or point count for the day. Other times, I’ll choose to splurge on a higher calorie meal and balance it in another way. There are lots of strategies you can use to survive eating out.

I know that a potentially challenging time for me can be when I’m coming home from work tired and a little stressed. I often won’t want to cook supper then. If I don’t have something already prepared at home or something I can whip up very easily (cereal, anyone? – or my healthier turkey burgers), I will be very tempted to stop at any of the many fast food and casual dining restaurants at the metro stops near where I work and live. I’ve taken the time to figure out all the lower-calorie yet still appealing options there and will try to turn to those when I must get take out. A real treat for me is two tacos at Baja Fresh. One helpful Web site for finding good restaurant options is: www.dwlz.com.

Working out regularly is a big part of my efforts to become a healthy writer. A lot of thought has gone into how I can make this a habit and how I can work it into my schedule. I already walk a fair amount with my daily commute. I spent time thinking about what other kind of exercise I like enough to do regularly, and I’m a gym class – step aerobics, zumba (Latin dance aerobics), weight lifting, pilates, yoga – kind of person. I joined a gym chain that allows me to go to any of their locations in the D.C. area. There are three locations 5-15 minutes from where I live, and I have the class schedule for each. I have a fairly regular workout pattern now. Getting to the point where you just do it and ask yourself how you can fit it in as opposed to whether you should go is extremely helpful to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

I also use clothing as a tool to help me plan and prepare for success. As you start to lose enough weight that your clothes sizes change, I think it’s very important that you start to wear clothing that fits correctly. It makes you more aware of your body, and it’s a tangible way to show and measure how you are getting smaller. If the clothes are too loose, it gets too easy to cheat. A loose waist has a way to go before it gets tight. Also, looking at yourself in clothing that is too large may make you think you are still fatter than you really are and mess with your body image. I finally got new pajamas after my 30-pound loss because I found myself thinking I was still a whale whenever I saw myself in my old pajamas. I’ve also discovered that getting rid of the clothing that is now too large for me is a great incentive to keep me going with my efforts. If I went back to my old weight, I’d have to buy new clothes, and my frugal self hates that. See: http://healthywriter.blogspot.com/2009/09/vote-of-confidence-in-myself.html

Wearing flattering clothes also makes you feel better about yourself. The reward of buying and wearing smaller sizes is a powerful motivator for me. I use outfits in a smaller size as a goal to work towards and as a way to measure my progress besides the scale. See: http://healthywriter.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-are-you-working-towards.html

As I’ve said before, I struggle with emotional eating. To help me plan and prepare for success, I think about what upcoming challenges may trigger negative thoughts and emotions that will weaken my ability to resist urges to eat too much. I brainstorm ways I can get through these challenges. I understand that managing my thoughts can help me manage my emotions. Changing my negative thoughts to more positive or optimistic ones can help prevent me from emotional eating or eating for reward. One of the ways I do this is to attend weekly WW meetings. To quote a guest blogger, it adjusts your fattitude. For another take on the value of these meetings, read the following two guest blog posts: http://healthywriter.blogspot.com/2009/09/success-with-weight-watchers.html

or http://healthywriter.blogspot.com/2009/10/its-not-diet-its-lifestyle.html.

Weight Watchers does cost money. I like the program. I’ve found a meeting that I can work easily into my schedule, a leader whom I find inspiring, a group of regular attendees who motivate me and whom I can relate to, and a system that can work for me. It may not work for you or may be too expensive. Two other support groups you might want to consider are Overeaters Anonymous, which is free, or TOPS: Taking Off Pounds Sensibly, which has a nominal yearly fee. They tend to meet at churches and may be a great option for you.

This past summer, I was in the midst of a plateau and needed more motivation to keep trying. The main reason I started blogging at Healthy Writer was it would force me to think about and work out some of my negative thoughts and emotions. It also forces me to plan and prepare for success. I need to post weekly, and I often choose to write about whatever I’ve been struggling with the most lately or anticipate will be a challenge for me in the upcoming week. Furthermore, it extended my commitment to this journey to becoming a healthy writer. I'm amazed by what I've accomplished so far and look forward to seeing how far I can go. I'll continue to ask myself on a regular basis how I can plan and prepare for success.

How do you plan and prepare for success?

Photo Caption: My Weight Watchers buddies and I at a "bon voyage" party Saturday night for a friend who is going to England for a five-month temporary assignment for her job

Top Row left to right: Cheryl, me Bottom Row left to right: Helena, Meghan, Ken

Cheryl just lost her first ten pounds. I've lost 33 pounds so far. Helena has lost more than 100 pounds. Meghan has lost nearly 40 pounds and is almost at her goal weight. Ken has lost 83 pounds and is approaching his goal weight as well. I can't overstate how much support and help and opportunities for more fun in my life I've gotten from joining Weight Watchers this past time.

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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I Still Struggle at Times...And That's OK

About a year ago, I noticed how one particular woman only came to the Tuesday night Weight Watchers meetings when she was really struggling. I think she attended another meeting, perhaps at work, regularly, but she found it helpful to attend an additional one on her tough weeks.

She always sat alone in the back row, held herself very stiffly, and generally exuded a sense of despair or even self-hatred. Our group leader would make her talk. What came out was an almost inarticulate stream of how hard it was. Why was food such an issue for her? Why couldn't she just eat whatever she wanted and stay a healthy weight like everyone else could? Why was this still such a struggle? The group leader would ask more questions, and she'd share the stupid food and exercise decisions she was making lately. He'd also ask her to share how much she had lost. She was more than 30 pounds down.

One time, she tried to cut herself off as she didn't think this was helpful to others. The group leader stopped her, said it was very helpful and asked everyone to agree with him. Now, I didn't find it particularly helpful, but I wasn't so self-absorbed that I would say that. I was struggling to begin my weight loss journey. I did not find it comforting to know that a woman could lose 30 pounds and still struggle so much. I also thought she looked fine. What was she so upset about? Perhaps she was a size 12 or 10, but she should just love the way she looked. I considered myself a big girl, and she was not. What did she know about struggle?

Since then, this woman has appeared periodically and done the same thing. About one year after I initially wished she would stop complaining as it wasn't helping my motivation to keep on keeping on, she was more than 50 pounds down and I was more than 30 pounds down. We both looked like different women, but we still could find ourselves struggling on this journey.

You may have noticed that I'm about now where she was a year ago. Since February 23 of this year, I have bounced between 31 and 33 pounds down. This is not a bad place to be, but I have found myself struggling more and more with what I see as a lack of progress. This struggle has included moments of despair that may have bordered on self-hatred and some stupid decisions about food and exercise. At my last meeting, I realized I was becoming like that woman who I thought was a whining drama queen the previous year. Once I got over the shock, I realized how smart the group leader had been to make her talk. I tried to analyze what she had said a year before and what I could learn from it.

I think the biggest lesson I got from thinking about her was that she got through it. She continued working at her journey and managed to pass the fifty pounds down mark. Based on how she acted in the meetings she attended on Tuesday night, it was not always easy. It could be a huge struggle, but it was one she worked through and continued her forward progress to her goal weight.

I've known for a long time that there is not an end to this journey. I also knew that I can't return to my previous eating habits, but I'm not sure I realized how much of a struggle at times this journey would still be emotionally and mentally. I started this year with a goal to be more optimistic about this and was successful at that for awhile. I guess I thought that meant I would struggle less with my thoughts and feelings. It's become very apparent in the last month or so that this is not the case. Yes, the issues may be different, but the struggle is not.

So, one of the lessons I need to accept is that I will continue to struggle at times, and that's ok. What saved me the previous times I really struggled in the past 16 months of this journey was that I promised myself I'd give it my all for a year no matter what. This promise was made in January 2009 and renewed in January 2010, and it's still the best thing I've ever done to help me be successful at this journey.

Now, I still need additional help on some days. I've made some really stupid decisions concerning food and exercise this past week and have been searching for signs that would help me boost my motivation to do what I know I need to do. Forcing myself to think about how much I could learn from the drama queen's struggles and triumphs helped. Friday morning, Sally posted in a comment the suggestion to look at Romans 7:15. I did, and it was such a powerful reminder that this struggle to do the good things I say I want to do is practically a part of the human condition. It was getting easier to think these struggles are ok.

Friday night, I watched Bill Moyers' last episode of his show on PBS as he really is retiring this time. His last guest was some storyteller named Barry Lopez. Bill and Barry had quite the philosophical conversation about the meaning of life. Barry shared a story of how a dying woman gave her daughter a copy of Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning as the mother thought her daughter was finally old enough to know that the best reaction to tragedy is not self-destruction. This took my breath away.

I have reached the point that I look at my past obesity and struggles with food as a kind of self-destruction, and it's one I very much want to stop. I want to be as kind, caring and compassionate towards myself as I can be to others. This reminder was the final piece of motivation I needed to kick myself in the butt, stop making stupid food and exercise decisions and keep on keeping on.

I don't expect my Tuesday night weigh in to go very well, but my emotional and mental journey is ultimately more important than my physical one. I'm back in a good place no matter what the scale says Tuesday night. Yes, I will struggle at various points for the rest of my life, but that is ok. I know I can keep on keeping on. Furthermore, I know how to make sure I incorporate stuff into my life that helps me keep on keeping on. My journey continues, and overall, it'll be triumphant.

What helps you when you are struggling? What can you do to make sure your own journey is triumphant?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Why Can I Still Get So Upset When I Gain Weight?

This past Tuesday night, I had a bad weigh in at Weight Watchers as I gained 2.4 pounds. While I try to approach the scale with zero expectations to prevent some kind of emotional boomerang, I do not always succeed. As I wait in line for my turn to get weighed, I can always come up with arguments as to why I might lose weight that week and why I might gain. I honestly could tell the Weight Watchers group leader that my gaining weight wasn't entirely a surprise, but I could not stop the total funk it sent me into that night.

Sitting through the meeting did not turn around my emotional downward spiral. All the way home, I tried to figure out why I had eaten so much the past week that I gained nearly two and a half pounds. My sister and parents had visited about a week for Easter. Did I just fall back into old, bad habits around them? Did I treat the holiday and visit as an excuse to eat more than I should and a break from my healthy eating lifestyle? I know my portion control was not as good as it could be, and I definitely ate a decent amount of "treat" foods several days in a row. Heck, one day I had the Baskin-Robbins equivalent of a Dairy Queen Heath Bar Blizzard for lunch. That was really going to help me lose weight.

My original plan for the week had been to not keep a food diary on Easter Sunday but to do so all the other days. Ha! I stopped writing down what I was eating the second my parents and sister arrived and did not restart until they left. I was not on my best "healthy writer" behavior.

I asked even tougher questions. Was I stressed out by sharing my one-bedroom apartment with 3 other adults for 6 days and that made me do some stress eating? Was the visit making me feel emotions I was unwilling to face? I know that unacknowledged emotions can make me overeat to try to avoid them. I also know people joke about how they revert back to old roles when they visit their family, and I do sometimes feel like I'm a different person around my parents and sister than I am in other environments. Did I not like the role I played in my family at times? Was I upset by other family dynamics?

Honestly, all of the above questions were possible, and I never really could come up with a definitive answer as to why I overate during their visit. I tried to throw off my gloom enough to enjoy the last night with my parents in town, but I was back in funk mode when I went to bed. Now, I could add feeling bad about not being in the best mood that night. It got to the point that my bad feelings from one area - the weight gain - seemed to bleed into other areas of my life until I was not happy about anything.

Luckily, Wednesday was such a busy day at work I could not waste time nurturing a funk about gaining weight. I made it a priority to go to a Zumba class that night, and it was the best hour of my day. I danced my bad mood away. I also realized that I had not tried to comfort or soothe my funk away with emotional eating and was very proud of that. In previous Weight Watchers attempts, a 2.4 pound gain would have sent me straight to a restaurant to get a burger, fries and soda or some other equally beloved but unhealthy meal and to start thinking about how impossible it was for me to lose weight. Why should I even bother? Soon, I could talk myself into quitting, but that old, bad road to self-sabotage has been pretty much destroyed by the power of promising myself I'd give it my all for a year to lose weight no matter what.

When I returned home from another Zumba class Thursday night, I started to wonder why I could still get so upset when I gain weight. I know better. (Yes, I have been accused of thinking too much several times, and I think analysis paralysis is a brilliant description of a state I know well.) In fact if I eliminated the weigh-in results, I could construct a triumphant narrative of the past week. My original intention for my April 12 blog post was to talk a bit about another bonus of spring - the change over of fall/winter clothes to spring/summer clothes and how that can be another wonderful way to show how much smaller you are getting.

We've had stretches of warm to very warm weather in the DC area in the past month, so I'd already started the clothing changeover. I had a lot of gaps in my wardrobe as most of the new clothes I bought last summer were too big and given away. My sister had informed me in late February when she had to make an unscheduled, last-minute business trip to DC that I had no cute tops. We were going through my clothes trying to find something she could wear to a business appointment the next day. She had not had the time to go back to her apartment to get some clean clothes before she had to hop on the train for DC. I'm finally reaching the size that I can lend her some of my clothes to wear, and that's another tangible sign of progress.

When my sister and I hit the outlet mall the Saturday before Easter, she reminded me I needed cute tops, and I knew I had other clothing items I needed to look for. I spent a couple of hours at the Ann Taylor outlet (yes, I realize I'm almost obsessed with all things Ann Taylor and can even explain why) and was absolutely thrilled to fit into a bunch of very cute medium or size 10 tops, jackets, pants, skirts and dresses. I even got into a couple of size 8 a-line skirts. This was more, very tangible proof that I'm continuing to get smaller, and I happily walked out of that store with several bags. I pretty much have a kick-butt spring/summer wardrobe now.

So, I had a lot of reasons to feel good about myself at Weight Watchers Tuesday night. I always dress up for the meeting, so I know I look good (even if I gain weight), and last week was no exception. I was wearing a wonderful Ann Taylor wrap-around dress that had been too small when I ordered it online last summer but fits beautifully now and a pair of sexy, hot, blue sandals. (I chose "sexy" and "hot" on purpose as those are two words people have started to use in reference to me to my surprise.) I'd gotten several compliments at work that day, and I was feeling darn good about myself until I read in my book how much I had gained. My group leader who had weighed me in had (wisely) not told me exactly how big of a gain it was. I shouldn't have looked to see how much it was until later that week when I was back practicing my healthy eating and exercise habits and more removed from the moment. But, I looked, I knew I had gained 2.4 pounds, and I wallowed.

Now, I have gained 24 times at my 61 Weight Watchers weigh ins since the beginning of 2009. My worst gain on this journey was 3.4 pounds on August 20, 2009, (business trip) followed by a gain of 3.2 pounds on Oct. 15, 2009, (also known as the night all hope was lost) after a visit to my parents. Five times my gain was in the two pound range (2 - 2.6). On six separate occasions, I gained for two weeks in a row. Gaining weight is no stranger to me on my journey to become and stay a healthy writer, and I've worked hard to learn how to take these temporary set backs in stride.

I know that these gains are eventually followed by losses if I just keep at it. The Aug. 20th gain was followed by weekly losses of 1.6, 1.4, 1.4 and 4.6. My Oct. 15th gain of 3.2 pounds was wiped out by a 3.2 pound loss on Oct. 21. I remember staring at the Weight Watchers receptionist as she gushed over the loss and I said that's exactly what I gained last week. The slate was wiped clean, and all that drama and emotional turmoil I went through on the 15th was a tempest in a teapot. It was a waste of energy.

The most important thing is that I've not allowed any of these gains to convince me to quit. Yes, some of them have been very tough to take emotionally (and hormones may have played a role in that at least twice), but I have tried to be patient and persevere. No matter what, I will keep working at it and not give up. I have lost more than 30 pounds that way and know that if I continue to do that, I will eventually reach a healthy weight and stay there.

How do you handle it when you gain weight? Do you have any advice for me for my next (inevitable) weight gain? How do you keep going? What's the secret to being patient and persevering?

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Eat When You're Happy, Eat When You're Sad

The title of today's post isn't a directive; it's what we tend to do from an early age. I was reading an article in one of the daily e-mails I get from Prevention, and it hit on a topic we've covered here several times because it's a constant battle -- emotional eating. It's ironic that this e-mail comes just a few days after I succumbed to a bout of emotional eating. Early last week, I got a call from my agent that my publisher was passing on a trilogy idea I'd submitted. And even though the editors liked the stories and really want to get me on the schedule for next year and let me know that they were just refocusing on their tried-and-true story hooks, I felt bummed out. I got that call while I was out running errands, and on the way home I succumbed to the allure of feeding the emotion with foods I didn't need -- egg rolls and chocolate cake from Jack in the Box. I knew I shouldn't be doing it as I was ordering, as I was sitting in the drive-through line, as I was paying, as I was driving home, as I was stuffing those horrendous calories in my mouth. And yet I did it anyway.

When you think about it, we're conditioned to deal with emotions -- good and bad -- with food from an early age. As this article states, if we feel bad when we're young, someone gives us a cookie. So as we grow older, when we're feeling sad, we reach for the sweets. I'm one of the worst offenders. But on the flip side of the coin, we also celebrate good times with fattening foods -- birthdays, Christmas, celebrations of book sales. Now I'm all for celebrating, but we need to recondition ourselves to eat tasty but healthful foods and keep our calorie-laden sweets and other treats to a minimum. And I need to take my own advice.

The article linked to above also mentions how stress is related to eating. That stress makes you feel hungry and creates body fat. And we writers know stress in the form of deadlines. I've been under two of them for the past month, and that stress combined with lack of exercise and not eating properly have caused a couple of pounds to creep back on. Luckily, I've trimmed them back off now, but I had still hoped to be much further along toward my goal weight by now. But there's nothing good to looking backward and chastising myself. It won't make the pounds magically disappear. I'm going to look ahead, plan my days so that exercise and eating properly/keeping my food diary doesn't get shoved to the side, and do my best to shed pounds by my birthday and by the National RWA Conference, where Michelle, Tawny and I will be doing a program on being a healthy writer. I certainly don't want to get up in front of a room of conference attendees and look like I don't practice what I preach.

Have you battled emotional eating lately? What are the best methods you've found to help you battle that tendency?

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Learning to Face the Scale with Zero Expectations

The scale has the power to break my heart and strip me of any motivation I have to keep going on this journey to become a healthy writer and eater if I let it. I work very hard to make sure I don’t let the numbers on a scale convince me to quit. To do this, I try to walk into my weekly weigh in at Weight Watchers with zero expectations. This will make me ok with a loss or ok with a gain. I try to be “Zen-like” about it so that either way, I’ll keep going and keep trying to lose weight. I don't focus only on the outcome (e.g. the result on the scale) but try to enjoy the practice (e.g. healthy eating/following a healthy lifestyle) as a reward all in itself.

Naturally, I'm happy when I lose a big amount of weight in one week, and I do have to combat very negative feelings when I gain. I can better contain the emotional boomerang if I approach the weigh in with zero expectations. It helps me make sure I don't let the potential negative feelings I’d have with a weight loss or even a smaller or bigger than expected weight loss change my healthy behavior. Sometimes when you lose big, you can start thinking - I've got this - it's easy - and then you're not as vigilant with being aware of what you are eating. A gain or smaller than expected loss can make you start thinking it's hopeless and why even try. It may convince you to turn to food for comfort. The zero expectations/Zen-like approach can prepare you so that you don't have a strong reaction and let that make you do something stupid. You know what works. Just keep working at it and doing it and eventually it pays off. With this philosophy, I just have to be vigilant to ensure that I'm NOT lying to myself about how much I've eaten and exercised. That's where being 100% honest in keeping a food diary helps.

Obviously, the numbers of calories in and calories out are important, but I do sometimes think there is more mystery to weight loss than just 2 + 2 = 4. For example, during a three-week stretch in the fall of 2009, I lost 4.2 pounds. The first week, I neither lost nor gained weight. I stayed the exact same weight as the week before. The following week I lost .2 of a pound. The third week I lost 4 pounds. I cannot say my behavior - my calories in and my calories out - were very different those three weeks. I do think that sometimes the body is "ready" to let go of weight and sometimes it is not. If I had let myself get upset with the little to no weight loss results those first two weeks, I may have done some emotional eating and destroyed my chances at the 4-pound weight loss that last week.

There can be a rhythm to weight loss. No matter how perfect you are in any given week, your body may not let any weight go that week. Conversely, there are weeks you are just lucky and will be surprised by a big loss. Over the long term, you can see patterns to your weight loss. Often a really big loss week is followed by a modest or small loss week and vice versa. Pre-menopausal women can really figure out a certain pattern based on their cycle. Some weeks you get lucky, and some weeks your hard work is not rewarded. It’s just something you have to accept and not allow to discourage you. You just have to keep going and keep trying and believe that in the end it will all even out. I also think emotions and stress can play a big role in losing weight. If you are 100% stressed out about your weight loss efforts or because of other things going on in your life, your body may not want to let go of the weight - even if the numbers say it should.

To me, the key is to be patient and persistent. Keep up the good habits week by week and eventually you'll be rewarded. Take the long view and don’t let any single disappointing weigh in encourage you to overeat to comfort yourself or give up. It's only a few seconds of your week, and keep it in perspective. It shouldn't set the tone for the week, determine how you are doing or feeling in all aspects of your life or how you will evaluate the past week. Having zero expectations any time you approach the scale helps keep your mind and emotions in the right place and continue this journey.

How do you approach the scale? With fear? With big expectations? What works the best for you?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Michelle's Top Ten Guidelines for Healthy Eating and Losing Weight

I've struggled with my weight nearly my whole life. I have been in Weight Watchers (WW) off and on since 1995, and I have attended WW meetings in 4 different states and the District of Columbia. I have tried several other diets and increased exercise as ways to lose weight. I've attempted dieting with group support, on my own and with an online buddy. I have had some minor successes in weight loss in the past, and I have learned many lessons along the way. It all started to come together in 2009.

A WW meeting I attended last spring was one of those negative ones where everyone in the room seemed obsessed with how hard it all was. How could they be expected to eat so little food? How could they cut the amount of food they ate with every ten pounds they lost? This was impossible. It went on and on for more than ten minutes. By the end of it, I was so frustrated and could feel that my motivation to go on had leaked out with each complaint until I was almost empty.

Finally, I wanted to scream, "It's not about the food!" You know you won't starve. It's about the emotions. You are using food to meet your emotional needs or to anesthetize emotions you don't want to confront, and you're rebelling against the thought of your emotional needs not being met.

These thoughts surprised me, but they were extremely helpful and illuminating. For me this effort to become a healthy writer and eater is not about the food. It's much more mental and emotional. My greatest barrier to success is often myself. I've had to come up with ways to combat my mental and emotional barriers. I've developed ten guidelines for healthy eating that helps me combat my urge for emotional eating and lose weight.

Michelle's Top Ten Guidelines for Healthy Eating and Losing Weight

1) Promise Yourself You'll Give It a Year

At the beginning of 2009, I promised myself I'd give it my all to lose weight that whole year and spent time figuring out what "my all" would entail. I reflected on what had worked for me in my past attempts at weight loss, what hadn't and why I always quit trying. I used that information to figure out how I could change my results. I decided that my biggest mistake was that I never gave it enough time. I let my discouragement at how hard or how slow it was convince me to believe it was impossible and quit after a few months. I needed to see if trying for a whole year would make a difference. I even broke this down into smaller goals to make it even harder for me to quit. I would attend 45-50 WW meetings and work out at least 100 times.

Resolving that I would try all year is the best thing I've ever done for my weight loss. Whenever I've gotten frustrated at how slowly the weight comes off, I can't contemplate quitting because I promised myself I would give it a whole year. All that energy that used to go into the discouragement I let myself feel and the angst over whether I should keep trying, should I just quit, could I really do this went instead into my continued efforts to lose weight. This determination carried me through the 18 times I gained weight in 2009. At the end of the year, I was nearly 30 pounds and several clothes sizes smaller. I was so thrilled with the results I promised to give it my all in 2010 and for however long it took me to get to a healthy BMI.


2) Find a Way to Be Aware of What You Are Eating and Make Healthy Choices

In a lot of ways, my journey is not about the food, but I have had to recognize that food is my drug of choice. I've used it for decades as a coping mechanism, as a way to anesthetize emotions, to avoid ugly thoughts or emotions, to reduce stress, and to reward myself. I have to learn how to be aware of what, how much, and why I am eating at all times and must work to ensure I'm eating a healthy amount. I have to fight myself on this because if I'm not mindful of what I'm eating, I will overeat.

I have 4 keys to succeeding at this:

a) Keep a Food Diary
b) Practice Portion Control
c) Make healthy, nutritious and satisfying food choices
d) Occasionally indulge

3) Manage Your Expectations

So much of the successful journey to becoming a healthy eater and losing weight is mental. You need to learn how to manage your thoughts, avoid playing mind games with yourself, and just keep working at it whenever you hit a rough patch. One way I accomplish this is by managing my expectations on a day-to-day or even minute-by-minute basis and over the long term. I need to have healthy expectations about how low my goal weight can be, how long it will take me to reach a goal weight and how much I expect to lose each time I step on the scale. In fact, I try to be "Zen like" and approach the scale with zero expectations of any weight loss at all.

4) Plan and Prepare for Success

I try to ask myself the following questions on a regular basis: What do I need to do to succeed in my weight loss efforts? What should I do for the short term and for the long term? What challenges can I anticipate? How can I approach these challenges so that they won't sabotage my efforts? What kind of support systems and habits can I build into my life that will help me lose weight and ultimately maintain a healthy lifestyle?

One of the most common ways I plan and prepare for success is to meal plan for the upcoming week and go to the grocery store to ensure I have healthy food on hand to eat. Other ways I've done this include: cooking one day for the month, figuring out healthy meal options I can have when eating out, throwing out my fat clothes, developing a game plan for the holidays or food pushers, evaluating my past year and setting goals for the upcoming year, finding goals to work towards that have nothing to do with the scale, and asking tough questions such as can I take a break, what's in a number, and am I backsliding.

5) Find Other Ways to Measure Your Progress Besides the Scale

The scale is not my friend. It's a necessary part of tracking my progress, but I can't let it become the "be all" of my journey to becoming and staying a healthy writer. Sure, there are times when I love the number it shows, but it also breaks my heart on a regular basis. I've got to come up with other ways to acknowledge what I've accomplished and give me motivation to continue. Learning to recognize non-scale victories keeps me going when I'm not losing weight and is an important part of making my journey a success.

6) Learn to Recognize Emotional Eating and Develop Ways to Combat that Urge

The key to this is asking yourself why am I eating. Am I experiencing physical hunger or emotional hunger? You need to learn to recognize the signs of physical hunger, such as a growling stomach, lack of energy, light-headedness, a headache, and the signs of emotional hunger. Have you eaten enough that day that you should not be hungry yet? Are you eating for reward or because you think you deserve a treat? Do you have an almost uncontrollable urge to eat, but you have no idea what you want to eat and nothing you eat satisfies you? Are you feeling an emotion that you don't want to acknowledge? Learning to recognize the difference between physical and emotional hunger is a skill you can develop over time.

Since January 2009, I've developed short-term and long-term tactics to help me combat my urge for emotional eating. When I am confronted with an urge to eat for emotional reasons and not for physical reasons, to eat for reward or even to binge eat, I try to stop and recognize why I want to eat. I tell myself that I'm not hungry and don't need to eat. I try to distract myself. I'll try to find some kind of external motivation or "sign" that will stop me from overeating. If I can't resist the urge, I'll try to contain it to just one meal and get back on the healthy eating wagon at the next meal.

Another step I try to take whenever I feel like overeating or binging is ask myself why do I want to do this. What emotions am I feeling that are encouraging me to overeat as a way to suppress them? Can I address these emotions? What is causing these emotions? Why am I upset? Can I figure out ways to address what is making me upset and work out these emotions? Can I change the situation? Can I change my reaction to the situation? Can I change my thoughts about the situation and eventually change my emotions? I sometimes do this emotional searching in a blog post, such as the one on jealousy, fear of success or the dark side of the holidays.

Healthy guidelines 7-10 are also long-term tactics of mine to combat emotional eating.

7) Develop Ways to Comfort Yourself Besides Eating

One of the ways I combat my emotional eating is to find other healthier methods to comfort and soothe myself so that I don't turn to food and overeat. Nature can soothe me. Escaping into a great book has always worked for me. Other ideas include knitting, exercise, meditation, listening to music, dancing around your living room to said music, attending church services, calling a friend on the phone, taking a bubble bath, getting a massage, and doing something social with friends or family.

8) Enjoy the Benefits of Exercise

In his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, David Kessler argues that the only feeling of reward close to the one you get from overeating comes from exercise, and you can literally rewire your brain to want the healthy version and not the unhealthy version. I have been trying to do this since May of 2009 and have had a lot of success with it. I've taken the time to figure out what exercise I enjoy and focus on the benefits I get from exercise as opposed to thinking of it as something I have to do to lose weight. I'm learning to really enjoy and appreciate regular exercise. I miss it, and the benefits it gives me, when I've gone too long between gym visits.


9) Determine Why You Started to Overeat and Address that Wound

I learned this guideline by watching The Biggest Loser. A set of questions that the trainers want the contestants to answer before they leave the ranch is: When did you start overeating and gaining weight? What was happening in your life at that time? How did you feel? It all builds to the question why did you start overeating. The trainers firmly believe that this is the most important lesson of all for the contestants. In order to reach their current state of being morbidly obese, these contestants had to have some serious emotional eating issues. They have to figure out why they started overeating so that they stop and finally conquer this issue. They need to face these emotions and work out some kind of resolution, or they'll just gain the weight back.

Realizing how and why the urge to overeat all started was an important step in learning how to stop or moderate this behavior. Once you know this original wound, you can heal it or at least face it and change your reaction to it. Forcing myself to go through this exercise has made a profound impact on my weight loss and my confidence that I'll be able to keep it off.


10) Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food

The key to figuring out what a healthy relationship to food is may be realizing what it is not and what you can't look to food to provide. It won't fix your problems. It won't fill a void in your life. It won't heal an emotional wound you are trying to ignore. Any comfort, soothing or joy is temporary at best. It won't make you happy. Figuring out what will is a much better long-term tactic than overeating.

These ten guidelines are still a work in progress. I plan to write more about them throughout 2010 as I continue losing weight. While I'm not a fast loser, these practices are helping me with my most successful attempt to lose weight. I'm nearly 35 pounds lighter than I was in the beginning of January 2009 and several sizes smaller. I am fully committed to making it to a healthy BMI. What I've learned along the way will help me get to that goal weight and stay there.

What do you think? Do you find these guidelines helpful? What am I missing? What do you think I should add?

Michelle Butler has made becoming a healthy writer a priority. She lives, works and writes in the Washington, DC, area. You can follow her on twitter at http://twitter.com/healthywrtr

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Oh, Jealousy!

My first Weight Watchers meeting of 2010 surprised me with how upbeat and positive it was. The long-timers were all vowing to have as positive a year in 2010 as 2009 – or even better! – and the fresh crop of new people were full of hope from their latest New Year’s resolutions. Our brilliant leader stressed how it was a new year full of new opportunities and asked us to leave on the carpet what was holding us back. I decided to leave my impatience and jealousy behind me in 2010. That didn’t last long.

At the end of each meeting, people are invited to share their successes such as their first 5, 10, or 50 pounds lost on up to losses in the hundreds. In this early January meeting, one woman had lost her first 5 pounds and danced her way to the front of the room to receive her sticker and bookmark. It was so cute. A few people received a charm for attending Weight Watchers for 16 weeks. As he gave one woman who looked to be close to me in age and weight her charm, he asked her how much she had lost. She replied 25 pounds. I joined everyone else in smiling and clapping, but inside all I could think was, “I hate you.”

At 16 weeks, I had lost 15.4 pounds. Heck, at 32 weeks, I had lost only 20 pounds. To further share how ugly my thoughts can be, it sometimes kills me how much faster our guest bloggers have lost weight than me. Sometimes it feels like everyone in the whole world, even my mother, loses weight faster than me. I hate it. What’s wrong with me? I’m working as hard as I can. Why can’t I lose weight faster? Why can’t I be naturally skinny? Why is this so challenging for me? It’s not fair. Wah, Wah, Wah!

The feelings of jealousy I struggle with in terms of my weight loss are very similar to the ones many writers can feel when they compare their career to others. Everyone who joined RWA at the same time I did is now published. My fellow ’06, ’98, insert your own year here GH finalists have all sold, and I haven’t. The women who were nominated for the best first book Rita the same year I was have published many more books than I have. My fellow category writer who started at the same time I did has now just signed a big, multi-book, single-title contract, and I can’t get my category editor to sign off on my latest revisions much less sell a single-title book. This sub-genre author who was published by the same house as me in the same year is now on the NYT list, and I’m clinging to my mid-list status. Does any of this sound familiar? Are these feelings helping you?

I know my jealousy does not help me one bit. Sometimes, it can even make me want to overeat or do other acts of self-sabotage. It certainly makes it harder for me to keep going and figure out ways I can plan and prepare for success. Furthermore, I can’t control what others do or what they achieve. I can control what I do and how I react to the feelings I have about it and others along the way. This takes discipline to acknowledge regularly what I am feeling and how this can affect my forward progress and to ensure I don’t let my reactions turn into ways I self-sabotage myself. I’ve gotten much better at this over the past year and plan to keep working at it this year.

I still want to leave my impatience and jealousy behind me in 2010. I now know that it’s going to be harder than I originally thought, but I’m up for the challenge.

Do you ever struggle with jealousy? Have you figured out ways to control your reactions to those feelings? Do you have any advice for me?

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The Dark Side of the Holidays

By now, you have probably heard more times than you care to how much weight the average person gains over the holidays. The usual assumption is that people gain weight because they can’t resist the temptation of all the yummy foods that are everywhere this time of the year. I think some of that weight gain may be caused by the darker side of the holidays – the negative thoughts and emotions this time of year can engender. If you are an emotional eater, you may want to dive into that plate of Christmas cookies to push down those unsettling feelings. Many people turn to food for comfort, and I can be at the front of that line.

I honestly believe that one of the best ways to combat emotional eating is to try to work out the negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions that you’d rather suppress by eating. Furthermore, working out these feelings can help you control other, more negative reactions than stuffing your face. This is hard stuff, but awareness is the first step of that battle. Are you feeling any negative thoughts or emotions because of the holidays? Does any of the following sound familiar?

Stress: The holidays are supposedly a time of joy and happiness and all you feel is stressed out. There is so much to do this time of the year, and a lot of it is left to the wife or mother to accomplish. You may be struggling to get it all done and feel resentful that you aren’t enjoying all the work you are putting into the holidays or the fact that nobody seems to appreciate your efforts. You are starting to skip doing the stuff that you do just for yourself and sliding back into bad health habits. You may resent that this seems so much easier for everyone else. You may even be looking forward to January when things return to normal. You deserve a pick-me-up in the form of a cookie or two or three. Eating for reward is so tempting.

Financial Concerns: The holidays are so expensive. I’ve often thought that I just can’t save during the holidays and have, at times, worried about acquiring debt from the presents I feel I have to purchase or the travel plans I make to spend time with family. This is an even tougher year financially for most. Are you worried about money and feel like the holidays are making you lose control? How many presents do you need to give your children so that they aren’t deprived? How much do you splurge on your plans for the festive meals? How do you pay for it all – especially if you are worried about being laid off or you have recently lost your job?

Loneliness: The holidays are supposedly about family. If you don’t have one, you’re estranged from your own, or you live far away from them, you may feel lonely now. You may not feel like you should fuss over the holidays or decorating if it’s all just for you. All the commercials, holiday specials and holiday movies show perfect looking people bonding over their family ties – or at least that’s how it looks to you. Single people may feel their lack of a life partner most keenly right now. Many profiles on EHarmony or Match.com have been completely rewritten in the past few weeks. The latest version of those darn match and eHarmony commercials are showing up on TV during your favorite shows. You feel like everyone in the whole world has someone to share this special time with but you, so why shouldn’t you bake dozens of your favorite cookies and eat them this weekend.

Who’s Missing at the Celebration?: Is someone you love currently deployed? The year my father was in Panama for Operation Just Cause instead of in Connecticut for Christmas Eve is not my favorite holiday ever. Has someone you loved passed away in the past year? You’re going to miss them keenly at the holidays and relieve part of the grieving process. You may miss someone who passed away 10, 20 or 30 years ago. The loved one may be at the celebration but seems so changed that you still miss him or her. You may be with your in-laws or friends and wish you were with your own family or vice versa.

Merry Christmas from the Family: Have you ever heard this Robert Earl Keen song? It’s about a dysfunctional family celebrating Christmas, and it’s not Currier & Ives type stuff, but it may be much more realistic than your favorite holiday movie. Are there suppressed emotions, disagreements, or other unpleasantness that always seem to erupt at dinner – or are you so sick of seeing others ignore it?

Time Flies: How can it be the holidays again already? Where did the time go? It’s another year gone and you’re getting older. You had so many things you wanted to accomplish this year with nothing to show for it.

Spiritual Emptiness: Christmas is a major religious holiday for some, and Hanukkah has become more important than it was for centuries. Are you feeling it? Do you want to? Do you believe? Did you before but not anymore? Are you a Christmas/Easter Christian and feeling guilty? Do you resent the questions?

I’m not Christian and I wish everyone would stop talking about Christmas: You cannot escape from all the Carols. You are so sick of secular and religious celebrants of Christmas shoving the holiday in your face and making it more difficult for you and your family to stay true to your beliefs.

Does any of the above sound familiar? Are there other issues that you are struggling with right now? Are they making you overeat? Figuring out what’s bothering you may help you start working out the issues and help prevent the average weight gain of the holidays. More importantly, it’ll help you feel better and help you enjoy the festive aspects of this time of the year.

Photo: Elise Hayes and I enjoyed the festive aspects of the holidays at yesterday's WRW Holiday Party.

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