Diet Rehab: 28 Days to Finally Stop Craving the Foods That Make You Fat (22 page)

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Authors: Mike Dow,Antonia Blyth

BOOK: Diet Rehab: 28 Days to Finally Stop Craving the Foods That Make You Fat
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The solution, as we have seen throughout this book, is to feed your brain with the foods and activities it needs to manufacture a nice, steady supply of the serotonin and dopamine on which it relies. Then you’ll always feel “fed” and full, and you won’t need quick fixes. Meanwhile, I can offer you some specific suggestions for rewriting your emotional eating patterns into healthier and more satisfying rhythms.
 
How Do I Start Feeling Full?
Luckily, if you load your life with the serotonin and dopamine booster foods and activities I suggest in Chapters 12 and 13, a lot of your emotional eating will disappear on its own. Your brain chemicals will be replenished in a healthy, stable way, and you simply won’t feel the pull of emotional eating as you did before.
The other way to start feeling full is to focus on specific actions that will make you feel positive and satisfied about your life. Since the most effective way to create change is through changing your experience, anything you do to improve your life will alter the way you feel about food. The more important other experiences become, the less important eating will seem—and that process will happen naturally, and without effort. If you’d like to let go of some of your emotional eating patterns, give one of the following suggestions a try.
 
1. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH
Do one thing that will make you feel “good enough” today. You might push yourself to just smile or say hello to someone in the elevator, make a five-dollar donation to an animal rescue group or pediatric cancer foundation, or call a friend who always seems to “get you.” Now you feel a sense of peace, which you’ll remember was one of the seven booster attributes I listed on page 63. Connecting to your ability to make a difference reminds you how many worthy and lovable qualities you have. There’s also nothing wrong with trying to make yourself feel as good as possible on the outside when you feel lousy on the inside. When I feel down or have been mourning a breakup, those are some of the moments when I decide to put on my favorite shirt, shave, and comb my hair. And there’s a little of that other booster attribute: pride.
 
2. SIGN UP FOR YOUR FUTURE
Take a positive step toward a goal by trying something new. If you’ve always wanted to learn to paint, sign up for classes. If you’ve secretly always yearned to be a dancer but thought you weren’t graceful enough, find a beginner’s class and enroll today. If you have a dream vacation, open a savings account. Notice how you’re filling your life with two more of the seven booster attributes: productivity and purpose. You can find more suggestions for booster activities in Chapters 12 and 13.
 
3. DETACH FROM SITUATIONS THAT DRAIN YOU
In my experience, people who are prone to emotional eating are often the caretakers in a relationship. If that sounds like you, try this: Next time you’re with people who are talking about their problems, see what happens if you don’t do anything. Try to tolerate their unhappiness without trying to fix it. This should also help you build tolerance against your own moods next time you feel unhappy, and so your unhappiness will be less likely to translate into hunger. You don’t have to fix anything. You also have the right to surround yourself with people who nourish you and fill your life with two of the seven booster attributes: power and peace.
 
4. INVITE AND WRITE SOME LOVE LETTERS
Ask the five people closest to you in the world to e-mail you the three things they like best about you. Notice your reactions when you read the e-mails. Do you feel like arguing with them? Pointing out your flaws? Wondering why they picked those good qualities and not others of which you are prouder or that you wish you had? Take some time to notice how many of your thoughts had to do with fears of people mocking you or dismissing you rather than expressing their appreciation. Then write back at least a brief love note to each participant, expressing your gratitude for the joy they bring into your life.
 
5. MEDITATE
Engage in mindful meditation, where you practice simply observing your feelings rather than trying to respond to them. Take five minutes a day to just sit quietly and practice watching your thoughts come and go. You can build up to thirty minutes or longer with practice, but start slowly, as sometimes it can be tough to quiet your thoughts. Some people find it helpful to choose a word or phrase they enjoy and repeat it in time with their deep breathing. You can go to
drmikedow.com
to download a guided meditation. I always tell my patients, “If you don’t take your feelings so personally, your feelings won’t take you so personally!” That extra distance from your feelings might give you a little more space to start making other decisions around food. You’ll let go of the pitfall of paralysis-analysis while increasing peace, one of the booster attributes.
 
6. TAKE A MINDFUL WALK
Grab the dog, call a friend, or simply plug in your iPod and take a brisk walk around the block
before
you give in to your emotional eating urge. As you walk, really feel your body. Feel your legs move and notice the tingle in your feet as they hit the road. Feel your breathing and notice how the air smells. Listen to the sound of the birds or passing cars. Pay attention to the way the light hits the trees. Say hello to anyone you pass, smiling and looking them in the eye. Pick up your feet, don’t shuffle, and, if you can, adjust your posture so you’re standing tall as you walk. Move as though you feel good about yourself, even if you don’t. Studies show that with practice, behaving as though you feel good actually
makes
you feel good. You’ve lifted your mood with the booster attributes of power, pride, and pleasure, which might replenish your brain chemistry instead of the food you would normally choose.
 
7. DISTRACT YOURSELF
Most cravings last about two minutes and are satisfied by about four bites. So if you can just distract yourself for a little while, you might simply forget about being hungry. Try the booster activities on pages 208 and 224, or do one of the items on the following list:
Brush your teeth
Clean your kitchen counters
Chew some sugar-free gum
Floss
Go online and read a blog post
Listen to an uplifting song, and if you can, dance to it
Plan a family day out
Put on a teeth-whitening strip
Take a shower
Unload the dishwasher
Write a quick friendly e-mail to someone you like
8. MAKE A GRATITUDE LIST
Sit down and write a list beginning with the words, “I am grateful because . . .” and then think about everything that is good in your life, no matter how small. It could be anything from “I have nice hair” to “I have a great relationship with my son” to “The weather was good today.” As soon as you start looking for things to feel good about, you’ll be surprised how many there are. Keep the list with you and add to it whenever you feel moved to do so. Read it whenever you feel like emotionally eating and see if you can feel even a little bit of serotonin or dopamine flooding back into your brain.
 
9. GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK
We often think that the best way to move forward is to criticize ourselves for anything we do wrong, hoping to keep ourselves in line and avoid the same mistakes in the future. In fact, the best way to improve is exactly the opposite: to forgive ourselves for our mistakes and let them go as quickly as possible, and to focus on what we’ve done right. Several studies in sports psychology have found that if an athlete makes a mistake, self-talk such as “I’m trying so hard!” and “I don’t give up, good for me!” is far more useful than “I just dropped the ball—what an idiot,” or “I shouldn’t have done that.”
I suggest the same approach to you: Whatever your results with regard to emotional eating, focus on what you’ve done right, even if it seems like merely a tiny piece of the big picture. Self-criticism only lowers your serotonin levels, leaving you feeling low and then making you want to emotionally eat again.
 
10. BE MINDFUL
One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves—in the midst of any grief, fear, anxiety, or depression—is to just be here now. The present moment is the only place where we can really be fully at peace, the place where everything just
is,
and we don’t have to imagine what might be or will be, where we don’t have to fret about what we’ve just done or failed to do. In the present, we just
are.
If you can be mindful and eat mindfully—really tasting and savoring your food—you can indulge in the pleasure of the food so that even if eating if an emotional choice, you can satisfy the craving in a few bites rather than continuing past the point where you don’t feel any pleasure in it.
Here’s an exercise in mindfulness that might give you some practice in mindful eating:
Take a raisin, grape, or similar small food, such as a fruit or nut, and put it on your tongue. Sit quietly with your eyes closed and do not chew. Simply let the food sit in your mouth. Notice any flavors or smells. Really experience the grape’s smooth, elastic skin or the leathery tough surface of the raisin. Feel the food’s texture on your tongue. Roll it around in your mouth and taste the flavors as it warms up. Keeping your eyes closed, really notice the changes in texture and flavor as you slowly start to chew. Chew the food at least fifty times—more, if you can—to notice how it feels to keep food in your mouth rather than swallowing it instantly. When you do swallow, feel the food travel down your throat and enter your stomach. Sit quietly for a moment to absorb the sensations fully. You can also download a guided mindful eating track from
www.drmikedow.com
.
Putting Your Emotions in Perspective
 
As a therapist, I want my patients to get in touch with their feelings—to celebrate and honor their emotions. But I also want them to keep their feelings in perspective, rather than letting them run their lives.
I want the same thing for you. I want you to respect your feelings, but I want you also to listen to your rational side, the one that helps you have a different dialogue within your mind and heart. If you give yourself the booster attributes, foods, and activities that feed your brain chemistry and nourish your life, your feelings will get the support they need, and you’ll be able to let go of emotional eating almost without trying. Both your weight and your emotions will benefit.
9
 
Binge Eating: Regaining Control
 
When I met my patient Jenna at age twenty-eight, she was in tough shape. With circles under her eyes and the habit of constantly picking at her fingernails, she was clearly so anxious and in so much emotional pain she was barely functioning.
“I’ve always taken things very personally,” she admitted. Jenna had a great memory and felt everything deeply. Every experience was almost painfully intense for her.
Jenna had come to me following a bad breakup. Unable to move on from the feelings of rejection, she had slipped back into her teenage habit of binge eating and now, locked in a cycle of strict diets and all-out gorging sessions, she had a hard time keeping self-hatred at bay.
Binge eaters may be either serotonin deficient or dopamine deprived, but most of the time they are both. Most binges are made up of both serotonin-releasing carbs and sugar plus dopamine-releasing fat, as evidenced by Jenna’s binges of pizza, ice cream, candy, crackers, french fries, and soda.
The key to putting an end to compulsive eating is to create a feeling of abundance (no food is forbidden) and a sense of order (eating comes at regularly scheduled times, hungry or not). If you’re a binge eater, you are by definition in the grip of intense spikes and crashes of various brain chemicals, as well as blood sugar, and you’ve long ago lost touch with genuine hunger. You might also feel a great deal of shame about your out-of-control eating. Encouraging you to eat three meals and two to three snacks every day—each and every day—is the first step in helping you regain control.
Jenna began her 28-day Diet Rehab plan with both serotonin and dopamine booster foods and activities, and with my encouragement for her to plan out most of her meals and snacks in advance. That way, she could feel more control over her eating and was less likely to slip into a binge.
But the first time Jenna came to see me after beginning Diet Rehab, she was sobbing.
“I was sure I’d get fat if I ate normally,” she told me. “So I cut out the two snacks and skipped breakfast. Then I just felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, so I ate.”
“And what did you eat?” I asked.
“Bread. A whole loaf,” she cried. “Then I punished myself for the next twelve hours by not eating anything, and that led to an even worse binge! I’ll always be like this. It’s just the way I’m made! I’m weak and oversensitive. Why can’t I just get over things like other people? Why don’t I have any self-control?”
Gently I explained to her that her problem was not her sensitivity. Rather, it was that she hadn’t learned to celebrate and be proud of who she really was. Instead, she constantly berated herself, bringing her mood down lower than ever. What she needed was a steady stream of serotonin and dopamine boosters and some cognitive-behavioral tools to help her make the decisions she truly chose and then to stick to them.

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