Why Diets Don't Work

Anyone who battles with periodic bingeing, emotional eating or overeating knows how difficult it is to lose weight and keep it off.

Diets often work well in the short-term, but the majority of people regain their lost weight within the next five years, and some end up weighing more than they did before they started. But why does this happen?

I think there are several reasons why people diets don’t work long-term including:

• underlying thinking errors
• unhelpful beliefs
• feelings of deprivation and restriction
• poor body esteem
• expecting instant results
• lack of motivation
• not finding new coping mechanisms to deal with stressful situations

If you want to hear the full list of issues that could be sabotaging your goals and get tips on creating a healthy relationship with food you can call in to my free teleseminar to find out Why Diets Don’t Work.

I’ll also be discussing the different types of overeating and I’ll be taking questions at the end of the call.

There’s no charge for the tele-training seminar, except for your usual long distance calling charges.

Updated: I'm running another seminar in February, so if you missed out on the last one you can sign up now.

Strategies for Surviving the Holidays - H.A.L.T.

As we head into the holiday season, I'm going to post a series of "survival" tips. You are probably very familiar with the stress-reduction suggestions that usually appear everywhere this time of year. But hopefully, these will serve as a reminder.

So what is H.A.L.T.?

HALT is an acronym that serves as a relapse-prevention tool people in early recovery from alcohol and drug addiction have in their repertoire. It's a handy reminder of behaviors/states of minds/situations that are triggers to relapse. But it doesn't just apply to addiction, it can work for all of us.

H - Don't Get Too Hungry

Hunger can be a trigger to drink or use. But how many of us starve ourselves in anticipation of a holiday event and then binge when we get there?

A - Don't Get Angry

When we aren't in control of our emotions, it can lead to unhealthy and/or nonproductive behaviors.

L - Be Careful of Being Lonely

Isolation and social withdrawal is often a precursor to relapse. It is also a symptom of depression and some types of anxiety. Spend time with people who support you.

T - Don't Be Too Tired

Be careful of wearing yourself out. Most of us can make bad decisions when we are overly tired.

HALT is a simple tool, but an easy way to remember some very effective means of self-care during the holidays.

Emotional Eating Carnival October 2007

In this month's Emotional Eating Carnival we have some great submissions on the links between food and mood and how our beliefs can sabotage our eating habits!

Curtis Penner presents How I Used Food To Beat Depression saying, "Sitting in the waiting room of my family doctor - waiting for a routine check-up, a poster on the wall scared me half to death." Curtis found out he had depression and didn't want to take antidepressants so he decided to eat more healthily and exercise.

FitBuff presents What Do Chocolate Cravings Say About You? saying, "Do you find yourself craving certain foods during times of anger or depression, particularly chocolate? Scientists in
this study think they know why..." Of course everyone has their theories on chocolate craving - the most obvious being that it tastes good! Yesterday we posted a different theory on chocolate cravings. The bottom line is that at this stage we have some good leads but not the full story on chocolate cravings.

Isabella Mori presents addiction, shame and secrets which includes a therapists thoughts on the shame that often accompanies emotional eating.

Becky Gillaspy presents Common Thought Traps which explains typical thinking errors or cognitive distortions that can interfere with weight loss. Becky also asks Do Weekends Mean Overeating? and suggests you explore your thinking patterns and beliefs around weekend eating. Finally she addresses the age-old question Is Food Addictive? One theory suggests that dopamine may play a role in food craving and possibly lead to addiction.

Marie Drennan presents Bad Buddhist vs. The Sixth Precept posted at Diary of a Bad Buddhist, where she discusses her efforts to eat better using Buddhist concepts and mindfulness.

Sara Grace presents Wellness Tip #191: Recognize Patterns. This is a quick list of tips for recognising emotional eating - possibly a little too brief!

S Palmer presents Overweight? Go on a mental diet

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of emotional eating using our carnival submission form.

Can you be addicted to food or eating?

Today's Washington Post raises some interesting questions on the issue of eating. There has long been argument over the question of compulsive eating. Is the compulsion to overeat a bad habit, an addiction, emotional or comfort eating, or a response to biological factors such as hormones?

At Brookhaven National Laboratory, psychiatrist Nora D. Volkow and her colleagues map receptors on brain cells for dopamine. This powerful neurotransmitter plays a key role in addiction. Dopamine systems in the brain are disrupted by addictive drugs, from alcohol to methamphetamine, which hijack the control of volition and the brain's quest for rewards.

It turns out that food also affects the brain's dopamine systems. When Volkow, who is also director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and her colleagues compared brain images of methamphetamine users with obese people, they found both groups had significantly fewer dopamine receptors than healthy people. Even more interesting: The higher the body mass index, the fewer the dopamine receptors -- a finding that may open the door to a better understanding of why it is so difficult for some people to lose weight and keep it off.

What role dopamine may play in obesity -- and how eating affects it -- is still to be determined. No one knows when the obese people in the study lost their dopamine receptors in the brain or if that loss could be reversed with weight loss. Are some people more susceptible to the effects of eating sugary, high-fat fare because they start out with lower levels of dopamine receptors in the brain? Or could eating those foods decrease dopamine receptors?

The article also refers to the challenges that individuals who feel "addicted" to food face compared with other addictions, such as smoking, drugs and alcohol, which can be eliminated from the diet. Abstinence from addictive substances is a philosophy espoused by Overeaters' Anonymous, which recommends eliminating all sugar and white flour from the diet, to reduce food cravings. In my discussions with people who have been abstinent from sugar and white flour, most have found that this successfully curbs their food cravings, with the proviso, that a life without sugar and flour isn't always practical or desirable.

Emotional Eating Carnival September 2007

Welcome to this edition of the Emotional Eating Carnival.

JoLynn Braley presents Overeating - Is It Emotional or Physical? posted at The Fit Shack, saying, "I've experienced a great reduction in the desire to eat over emotions when I've eliminated processed, sugared, foods from my diet. This leads to the question of whether emotional eating is purely emotional, or fueled by physical cravings (food addiction)."

The Career Counselor presents A Weighty Question posted at ask the CareerCounselor, which discusses how people perceive overweight job applicants.

Karen Halls presents Weight Loss Without Cravings And No Diet posted at Addiction Recovery Blog, saying, "This article discusses something most people never heard of - Emotional Freedom Techniques."

The post doesn't tell you how to use EFT for weight loss or emotional eating. If you're looking for information on EFT for comfort or stress eating, I recommend Paul McKenna's book I Can Make You Thin. McKenna uses EFT together with self-hypnosis, visualisation and neurolinguistic programming (NLP). The book comes with a CD and instructions to practise the EFT technique at home.

Chad Sutton presents How to keep a food diary posted at TalkPsych. Sadly the article doesn't provide detailed information on keeping a food diary but it does give you some helpful ideas about keeping a note of your mood at the time of eating.

What's the difference between overeating and bingeing?

Most of us have experienced that feeling of uncomfortable fullness that comes after overindulging. For many of us it is an annual ritual at Christmas, Thanksgiving or other special occasions, but some people overeat on a daily or weekly basis, and for a small number of people this behaviour is such a frequent occurrence that it can become an eating disorder. Occasional overeating does no harm, but frequent overeating and bingeing can be a physical and emotional health risk. So, where do you draw the line?

While some people know that they are bingers, others aren’t sure whether they are simply overeating or stepping across the line into bingeing. I’m often asked to define a binge in terms of the quantity or calories consumed, but it isn’t that simple. Bingeing is a subjective experience, and relies on the individual’s own descriptions of their experiences and feelings.

According to the DSM-IV, a diagnostic manual for assessing mental health disorders, the criteria for bingeing is eating a large amount of food in a short period of time (about two hours), and feeling unable to control your eating or feeling that once you start eating, you are unable to stop.

Simply overeating is not enough to qualify for a binge. I’ve talked to dieting teens on very strict diets who are worried that a muesli bar and an apple constitute a binge, because they’ve broken their diet. However, eating more than you plan isn’t necessarily a binge. The exact amount will depend from person to person. This means that for one person a binge may be eating an entire packet of chocolate macaroons, but for another it could be a jumbo pizza, and a tub of ice cream with a beer chaser.

Other indications of bingeing are three or more of the following:

1. Eating faster than normal
2. Eating until feeling uncomfortably full
3. Eating large amounts of food when you are not physically hungry
4. Eating alone or hiding eating to avoid embarrassment
5. Feeling ashamed, disgusted, depressed, distressed or guilty about overeating.

You may have a binge eating disorder if you binge frequently – an average of two or more days per week for a period of six months. According to Carolyn Costin in The Eating Disorder Sourcebook binges which form part of an eating disorder can last not just for a few hours but for several days.

Although the research is scarce, it suggests that approximately 20-33% of people who present for treatment of obesity meet the criteria for binge eating disorder.

The key to assessing whether your eating is a binge, is to notice whether you ate past the point of fullness, and felt powerless to stop yourself from eating. The out of control feeling, or compulsion to eat, followed by feelings of shame or distress, is what separates a special occasion overindulgence from a serious problem that requires attention.

Additional resources:
The Eating Disorder Sourcebook by Carolyn Costin
100 Q&A about Eating Disorders by Carolyn Costin
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth
Something Fishy Eating Disorders Website

Comfort eating really does make people happier

As anyone who has dived into a chocolate cake or pizza in moments of stress will tell you, emotional eating is comforting and can cheer people up. Now researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia have confirmed that comfort eating:

• makes rats happier (Yeah, I know, you'd think they'd have had plenty of human volunteers for an experiment of this sort. There surely can't be any shortage of people who are prepared to munch on high fat chippies and pies in the name of science!)
• affects brain chemicals in rats and other animals, and is therefore a biologically driven process not a psychological one
  

The scientists believe these findings also apply to humans. According to the researchers ‘comfort eating’ is not a socially contrived phenomenon – but rather one based in biology.

This must be a relief for people who find themselves feeling out of control when faced with temptation at times of stress. Unfortunately, it can also be a good excuse to indulge! Evidence to date is that comfort or emotional eating is a combination of biology, learned behaviour, cognitions (what you tell yourself about the situation) and coping skills.

Professor of Pharmacology, Margaret Morris, says she was surprised by findings linking a high-fat diet and pleasure in animals that had experienced stress early in life.

“What this might be telling us is that there is something going on in the brain circuits that regulate feeding if you are stressed while very young - but if you are given nice things to eat, you are more able to experience pleasure,” said Professor Morris, from the School of Medical Sciences.

“You choose that behaviour because it makes you feel good,” she said.

Professor Morris’s other findings are that:

• Brain chemicals that regulate feeding can be changed early on in life
• Animals over-fed while young are usually heavier as adults, with poorer cardiovascular outcomes

“While we know there are strong genetic and environmental components in obesity, there is also a strong nexus between hormones produced in your fat and what happens to your brain appetite circuits, your hunger and your drive for food,” she said.

Through the eyes of an emotional eater

Today, I thought I would do something a little bit different. I'm working with a client at the moment who has life-long problems with eating disorders including binge eating, emotional or comfort eating and compulsive eating. With her permission, I'm going to be sharing some of Jennifer's story and the process we're going through to help her gain some control over her eating.

Jennifer has tried just about everything. She's been to Overeaters' Anonymous, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and counsellors to try and help her beat her food cravings. She has even tried fasting for long periods to attempt to break the hold food has over her.

While she has experienced periods of control, she is dissatisfied at the feelings of deprivation that she experiences when she goes to Overeaters' Anonymous, which encourages abstinence from trigger foods. For Jennifer this would mean a life without the whites - white sugar, white flour and salt. For her, this is a life without pleasure.

In our first session we talked about her perceptions about herself. My goal in this first session was to help Jennifer understand what she tells herself about her role in life. For most of us our identity is wrapped up in the 'labels' we give ourselves. These labels can be anything from the job we do, to our relationships with others, our goals, our passions, our strengths or our weaknesses.

Dr Phil in his book Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out, which is a pretty good book if you can get past his corny way of talking, describes labels as:

Labels are incredibly powerful influences in your life. You may not be consciously aware of even a fraction of your labels, whether they come from the outside world or from within yourself. Either way, you must acknowledge the existence of labels, challenge the "fit," and confront the impact these labels have on your concept of self.

Are you a career woman, a mom, an accountant, a politician? Are you a failure or a winner? Are you a "fat girl" or a "pretty girl?" Write down all the labels you attach to yourself, going back as far as you can remember.

With Jennifer, it soon became clear that her identity is wrapped up in her opinion of herself as a wife and mother. Any time that she perceives problems in this area, she reaches for food. For Jennifer the state of her house is a barometer of her internal health. She judges herself by the cleanliness, order and tidiness of her home. When her house is spic and span she feels confident and in control of her life. When dirty dishes accumulate on the bench and washing piles up in the bath she feels like a failure as a wife, a mother and a person.

The result? She eats. She decides that she is a bad mother and a bad wife and wallows in chippies, chocolate, pasta, pizza and greasy foods.

If my house is a mess and I can’t keep up with the housework or I can’t get motivated to get it done I feel like I’m not coping in life.

If my house is tidy I feel like I’m coping.

For me cleaning my bench is a big deal. Some days I look at it and I have no idea where to start. Yet my daughter can come along and in less than five minutes she sorts everything out, wipes down the bench and it’s done.

I don’t know why I can’t be like that. So then I start telling myself that I’m lazy, or that I just didn’t get taught right by my mother. She did everything for me as a kid, and I find it hard to do all this stuff. I don’t enjoy it so I put it off.

I start feeling dumb and inadequate and then I need food to make me feel better.

Even when I do clean the bench I feel like I should treat myself because it’s such an effort. I feel exhausted, so I sit down with a big plate of unhealthy food or a packet of biscuits and scoff the lot.

That’s only part of the story. Jennifer has very distorted ideas about her role as a perfect parent. Logically she knows that cleaning the kitchen can be done in a few minutes, but it is such a big psychological mountain for her to climb, that she feels as if it is taking away hours that should be spent with her children. And once again she feels the need to reward herself with food.

By the time I’ve forced myself to do the cleaning, and got my head around working out what needs to be done the whole job seems to take an eternity. And then I might put off doing things with the kids. I have plans to teach them things or do crafts with them or take them for a walk and instead I eat. Then I call myself a bad parent again.

Jennifer's homework is to examine her distorted perceptions.

We started at the beginning, by challenging her assumption that an overindulgent parent who did everything for her has created a lazy monster who is incapable of doing housework. Jennifer is still having trouble convincing herself that her upbringing is irrelevant. She is very attached to her family and is having trouble separating today's Jennifer from the Jennifer of her childhood. She accepts logically that she's not the same woman, and that the way she is now is a combination of nature and nurture and that she can change her habits, but emotionally she's still letting go.

She's also promised as part of her homework to not immediately dismiss positive feedback. When her husband and friends tell her she is a good wife, a good parent and a good person, she's too quick to find fault with herself. She admits that she tests people and keeps rejecting their encouragement because she doesn't believe it herself.

Finally, she's working on understanding that the state of her house is not a reflection on her as a person. We know this is going to take some time but Jennifer feels that knowing that people "get" her and understand where she is coming from will help.

Can limiting flavours stop overeating?

The premise of The Flavour Point Diet: Use Great Flavours to Control Your Appetite and Reduce your Weight – Permanently is that you can tame your appetite and quell cravings by selecting foods according to their taste or flavour.

The authors, husband and wife team, David and Catherine Katz describe the six taste categories as sweet, sour, savoury (umami), salty, bitter and astringent and devise their diets around these. In particular, they note that sweet and salty foods are most likely to stimulate the appetite. Also, according to the authors, calorie for calorie, protein is the most filling, and is therefore the best source of food.

Their formula? A balanced diet comprising:

• 55% complex carbohydrates
• 20% lean protein
• 25% healthy fats

With each day devoted to a particular flavour.

By using these flavours, you will feel satisfied sooner, and eat less. The authors speculate that fast food manufacturers add hidden flavours into their foods to stimulate overeating. Instead, they believe you need to minimise the flavours each day to reduce your appetite.

The book includes a six week eating plan and recipes, with each day focused around a flavour, such as tomato, capsicum, dill, orange and onion days. Naturally, I jumped ahead to the chocolate day, which is described as a ‘special indulgence day’. Any time after week two of the plan you are permitted one indulgence day each week. The chocolate day comprises:

• Breakfast: 1 banana chocolate chip soft wheat muffin, 1 hot cocoa drink
• Snack: 1 tbsp raisins, 1 tsp good quality chocolate chips (are there any other type?), 3 whole almonds
• Lunch: chocolate and banana grilled panini, skim milk
• Snack: strawberries dipped in dark chocolate (now we’re talking)
• Dinner: chicken with chocolate port wine sauce
• Dessert: 1 chocolate brownie

This diet takes a lot of planning. In theory it addresses emotional eating and cravings by ensuring that your appetite centres aren’t overstimulated by being bombarded with too many flavours. However, to implement it you need to stick precisely to this diet, which is why I wasn’t keen on it. If you want a prescriptive diet that tells you exactly what to eat and you’re not too fussy it could work well for you. But I suspect some days will be tossed out the window. For me spinach day would be the first to be ditched, followed rapidly by raisin/cranberry day.

I’m not fond of diets at the best of times, but if you’re going to make lifestyle changes, they should be changes you can live with for the rest of your life. I don’t see this as a diet that would be easy to stick with, but I noticed that the diet was reviewed very favourably at Amazon so clearly I am in the minority!

Emotional Eating Carnival July 2007

Welcome to the July, 2007 edition of Carnival of Emotional Eating

S. Palmer presents Overweight? Go on a mental diet. posted at Mystic Eye.

Julie Levin presents Anxiety: The Heart of Addictions and Compulsions posted at Freedom from Emotional Eating

TherapyDoc presents Obesity Wars posted at Everyone needs therapy? Lessons from a family therapist, saying, "Bah, humbug on federal policies and schools that interpret them to humiliate children. This therapydoc offers advice to policy makers and parents in fighting the obesity wars."

JoLynn Braley presents Is it Trivial to Focus on Weight Loss? posted at The Fit Shack, saying, "Emotional eating can be brought on during times of stress caused by the recent tragic news events. It is helpful to be aware that you may be susceptible to turning to food during these times so that you may focus on remaining conscious of your eating habits, and avoid emotional eating."

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of emotional eating using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Emotional Eating Carnival April 2007

Welcome to the April 2007 edition of carnival of emotional eating.

JoLynn Braley presents Emotions Will Be Heard, They Will Not Go Away, saying, "The only way out is through. We must first begin to allow ourselves to feel those (often old) emotions, in order for them to be released and healed. Here is a technique that can assist you in beginning the process of feeling those stuffed emotions once again."

Deb presents a personal account of emotional eating Ten Minutes of Desperation

An interesting program on the BBC The Truth About Food investigates food myths including an experiment on sugar and hyperactivity in kids.

You can submit to a future edition of the Emotional Eating carnival here

Emotional Eating Tips

I was asked to provide some emotional eating strategies and tips for a recent magazine interview so I decided to share these tips with you:

• Identify the need being filled by food and find other ways to meet that need
• Identify your triggers: the situations, moods and foods that are most likely to trigger overeating
• Have a coping strategy prepared in advance for dealing with the trigger situations you identified above
• Consider keeping a food and mood journal: if you bite it, sip it or slurp it, write it down together with a record of your mood before and after eating
• Make a list of reasons for quitting emotional eating. Focus on the benefits of better eating rather than on missing out on foods you like.
• A lot of people don’t enjoy working out but exercise does help. It improves energy and mood reducing reliance on food to boost mood and energy
• If you can’t be trusted with food buy small portions and never keep binge foods in the house, your desk or car. Remove food from visible surfaces and place it in cupboards or drawers so it is less tempting
• Identify gaps in your life or emotional issues that trigger emotional eating and make a plan to deal with them
• Chew each mouthful 20 times
• E.A.T. – when at home always Eat At the Table
• Buy or serve small portions when you are eating at the movies, in front of the television, computer or other places where you are likely to subconsciously overeat.
• Rest your knife and fork/fingers between mouthfuls; reassess your hunger every few minutes.
• Distract yourself from food. When you feel a craving do something else for five minutes and your craving may disappear.
• Eat consciously and mindfully
• Consider taking a stress management course or learn meditation, yoga or tai chi to improve your coping skills and inner calm
• Consider visiting your doctor to identify physiological issues that may be impacting on your eating, such as, depression, anxiety, Syndrome X, diabetes, hypothyroidism, vitamin B12 or iron deficiencies

I have also written some emotional eating tips here

Heart rate indicates when we lack will power

According to researchers our heart rate alters when we're resisting temptation. This could help warn people when they are at risk of emotional eating or addictive behaviour.

We’ve all had our moments of weakness when trying to control ourselves; eating that donut on your diet, losing your temper with your kids, becoming upset when you’re doing your best not to. It isn’t like we plan on these lapses in judgment. It’s more like they just sort of happen.

There is scientific evidence that explains this phenomenon of everyday life. Self regulation, our strength to inhibit impulses, make decisions, persist at difficult tasks, and control emotions can be spent just like a muscle that has been lifting heavy weights. When we spend our strength on one task (trying to control your emotion around a petulant boss), there is less to spend on others (avoiding the Ben & Jerry’s when we get home).

The funny thing about being vulnerable to saying, eating, or doing the wrong thing is that humans are typically unaware that they are in a moment of weakness, unlike the strain and fatigue we feel in our muscles after a workout. Fortunately, new research conducted by University of Kentucky psychologists Suzanne Segerstrom and Lise Solberg Nes suggest that there may be a biological indicator to tell us when we are working hard at resisting temptation and consequently when we are vulnerable to doing things contrary to our intentions.

A measure of cardiac regulation called “heart rate variability” (HRV) appears to be linked to self regulation according to the article published in the March issue of Psychological Science.

The authors conducted a two-part study in order to test their hypothesis. In the first, participants were instructed to fast for three hours in order to take part in what they believed was a “physiology of food preference” experiment. Participants’ HRV was monitored while they were presented with a tray of cookies, candy and….carrots. Temptation, in this case, was indicated by giving into the tastier but decidedly less healthy snack of cookies and candy.

HRV as it turns out was considerably higher when people were working to resist temptation (eating carrots rather than cookies and chocolate) than when they were not, suggesting that HRV was mirroring the self regulation taking place.

In part two of the experiment, after resisting or giving into temptation, the authors had the participants attempt to complete difficult anagrams, some of which were impossible to solve. The authors measured how long participants persevered at the anagrams and as predicted, those who had exerted high self regulation by resisting sweets were more likely to give up earlier on the task.

Moreover, the people who had higher levels of HRV by nature, regardless of giving into temptation, were likely to endure longer at the anagram task.

HRV was not singled out as an indicator on a lark. Segerstrom and Solberg Nes noted that the brain structures involved in self regulation overlap considerably with the structures that control HRV which suggested that HRV would accurately reflect self regulation.

So, will we be wearing a cardiac monitor in the near future to gauge whether we are vulnerable in our self regulating abilities? It’s doubtful, say the authors. However, when considering special populations with more serious consequences of self regulatory failure (say, alcoholics) HRV feedback could be helpful to determine when those critical relapses in regulation will happen.

The monkey on your back

What excuses or justifications do you use for overeating?

Visit Mark Joyner for more of his

personal development brain puzzle cartoons.

Emotional Eating Carnival March 2007

Welcome to our latest carnival. Check out these posts for tips and techniques for dealing with stress eating or emotional eating.

Cris suggests you can beat your cravings if you calculate your net worth and use financial management tools in Shift your paradigm - “my body is a bank”

Hal Sommerschield say weight gain is a reflection of attitude in Why Did I Gain Weight?

Lorraine Roach describes how changing her attitude and reducing anxiety helped her lose 66 pounds (30 kg) over two years.

Graham Foster gives his perspective on the rise in anorexia saying dieting has gone too far.

Alvaro Fernandez presents exercises and tips for better stress management to help curb emotional eating.

JoLynn Braley presents If You’re Not Hungry, Why Are You Eating? saying, "This is a technique that I am currently using daily to avoid emotional eating."