Food is meant to be enjoyed. It’s meant to nourish us, to bring us together with family and to give us some joy. But yet so often we beat ourselves up for the food we eat and then live in shame for the weight we gain. It’s a cycle that never stops unless we put our foot down and do something about it.  If you have followed my work you might have heard me say, "Emotional eating is not really about food, but it's also not not about the food." So what do I mean by this? Well, when we focus on the food we really are missing out on what is really going on in our lives. Food is about seeking c ..read more

I’ve spent years hating my body. This is a fact. I could pick out a million things wrong with it, and that left me miserable most of the time. I was either starting yet another crash diet or breaking that diet by bingeing or falling back on emotional eating. The real problem though, was that I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Can you relate? If you’re not comfortable in the skin you’re in, changing it probably isn’t the answer. Losing weight, and working on your body’s shape - the truth is - these changes are only external. They won’t automatically make you love and accept your body. I ..read more

It’s funny the things we accept as “good” versus “bad.” Particularly when it comes to what we allow ourselves to feel. It seems acceptable for us to feel happy and show it, but we can’t show anger. If we do, we might get labeled and feel judged. Anger is so often considered a “bad” emotion – one to be quashed. When it comes down to it, these are all just emotions. All of them. We all have feelings and these feelings want to be seen, felt, and heard so they can move past us. Have you ever seen a child work through their emotions? You hear a cry. Jonathan hit Ben. Ben comes running up to you, c ..read more

Every month I run a membership group. Last month’s theme was body image. I knew this was an important topic, but did not realize how many deep emotions it would bring up for all of us. The sadness, pain and frustration so many of us feel when we think about our physical appearance came to the surface. As I ran the group I could feel the feelings in my body as well. I took a step back after the class and realized how deep-rooted these feelings are. They are bound up with our sense of self-worth. How do we get to a place of loving our bodies, even when we think they don’t look the way we want ..read more

I was speaking with a client the other day and she bravely confided one of her deepest fears with me. As a child, my client became an expert at hiding her eating habits from her family and friends. She ate tiny portions when people were around and then a pint of Haagen Dazs in private. She lived with constant feelings of shame and self hate. After having kids, she became terrified that she’d pass on her food issues to her children. She knew it started for her as a child, and she was so scared that they’d go down the same path as her. Her fear became paralyzing at times. As her babies morphed i ..read more

One thing I notice all emotional eaters have in common is that when we turn to food, we then get mad at ourselves for to turning to food. We shame, guilt and attack ourselves for eating. The truth is that food is not the problem. When we look deeper, we see that food is just the tool we are using to try and cope with whatever is going on in our lives or in that moment. Imagine a tool box. Now imagine it filled only with hammers. If you kept reaching for a hammer whenever you needed to fix something, you wouldn’t get very far. You would obviously need a screwdrivers, wrenches, a drill, and any ..read more

Here is my truth... I still grieve that I lost over 25 years of enjoying my life. I lost dinners, going out with friends, parties, dating, and just living life without obsessing about my body.  All my energy went to making my body smaller, exercise and ensuring I looked a certain way. It was the only thing that I focused on. Everything else was secondary. Every conversation revolved about being too fat, how much I ate, my latest diet, how other people gained or lost weight.  I would love showing myself off when I lost weight and spent months hiding from everyone when I gain ..read more

I never realized it until I started my healing journey, but eating was the only tool I had to cope with intense feelings and emotions. I would eat when I was sad, angry, scared, bored, and even happy. Going to restaurants with friends, I would also wonder if they could tell that I just had a big bag of chips before coming to dinner. I didn’t want them to know how much I ate and could eat. So when I was with them, I barely ate.  On the way home, I would stop at a convenient store and grab some chocolate bars. I would then go to another store and grab some ice-cream. I was too embarrassed ..read more

I remember when I had the nightly ritual of sitting on my couch and turning on the tv with my tv toolkit: a diet coke, a bag of chips and my phone. I’d snuggle in and get ready to watch one of my favorites - Survivor. This was my reward after a long day. what is mindful eating? What is Mindful Eating? Before the first Survivor Challenge, the chips were gone. I’d poke around in the bottom of the bag, looking for a few more crumbs. Blaming my dog or husband would have been the easier choice, but I knew the truth. I’d eaten the whole bag.  I ate it so quickly, I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t ev ..read more

Did you have big plans to lose weight during those first few months of quarantine? When all the personal trainers and yoga instructors were flooding our feeds with free workouts and quarantine smoothies. This one’s for you. There was the spirit of the January diet in the air. The energy and optimism of new beginnings was infectious. We were all going to leave our homes with rock hard abs, wearing our favourite jeans from high school, but then after a few weeks you start to feel like you’re walking on a tightrope. Eventually, this inevitably led to binging in front of Netflix. Looking back at ..read more