This past weekend, we celebrated Mother’s Day here in the U.S. As I spent my holiday relaxing with my family, what arose for me was gratitude for the essence of mothering itself – for the feminine force of love in the world. As I see it, the feminine face of love is a love that… Continue Reading
Emotional healing through unconditional love & acceptance
Category Archives: Overeating
Unhooking from the “craving self”
The key to healing a pattern of overeating, binge eating, or emotional eating is radical: it’s to become intimate with it. Rather than turning from our “bad” behavior in shame, trying to hide it, or indulging the urge to eat, we simply allow the urge to be there. We befriend it in kindness. As a… Continue Reading
Befriending hunger with compassion
When you’re trying to heal painful behaviors with food, your hunger – your ground floor, human need for food – can bring up a lot of mixed feelings. Your hunger may bring up anxiety, fear, apprehension, doubt, hope, joy, desire, longing or confusion (if you read 10 books on what to eat, you can get… Continue Reading
Breaking free from the “broken self” trance
One of the most painful results of struggling with an eating disorder, addiction, depression, or any suffering is how we identify with it. While labels can be helpful, they can also be harmful. And they become harmful when they become the way we define ourselves in the deepest sense. When we think of our eating… Continue Reading
Self love begins with self acceptance
I didn’t think much about my body size or body image until I hit puberty and I started to gain weight. I began seeing images in the media of very thin girls and women and hearing messages from people like my father saying “if you don’t stop eating like that, you’re going to have legs… Continue Reading
How to say “no” to sugar with compassion
It’s lovely to say yes to ourselves. But sometimes, we say no – we choose to honor a deeper “yes,” what we most want – which means saying no to a “surface” yes – what feels good in the moment, but not what’s in our best interest over the long haul. You may be choosing… Continue Reading
The alchemy of self acceptance – how acceptance makes change possible
In The 30 Day Lift, I talk about how you can change painful habits through self kindness, self compassion and self acceptance. Many people email or ask me, “But how? How does being accepting or kind to myself help me change how I eat?” It’s a great question! In this post, I’m going to focus… Continue Reading
Healing the “inside stuff” of sugar addiction and overeating
In last week’s post, I talked about how emotional and physical healing from overeating coincide. In today’s post, I’m going to dive deeper into the how of emotional healing. What does the inner journey of healing from eating disorders and addiction look like? In a nutshell, it’s a journey of unconditional self love, forgiveness, and… Continue Reading
Emotional and physical healing – how do they work together?
I got an email from a reader last week with a question about the emotional vs. physical aspects of healing a sugar addiction. In 2008 she’d read my book, Overcoming Sugar Addiction, and was curious about the updated, 3rd edition, where I added more information on emotional healing from sugar. She felt confused about how… Continue Reading
Softening your need to overeat
It’s my belief that overeating, binge eating, or sugar addiction are not character flaws, but misguided attempts to care for unmet needs: in particular, basic needs for safety, connection/attachment, unconditional love, mirroring, emotional validation and “holding” (what helps us regulate intense emotions.) When these needs aren’t met, it’s like trying to breath underwater: we can… Continue Reading