March 2007 Archives

Which comes first, discovery of the source of the problem, or change? The answer may not be as obvious as you think.

Case in point. Years ago, I applied myself to melting and taming my perfectionist tendencies. I knew I had them because so many people told me so, and I'd gotten the message from experience that they weren't working for me. So often, friends would say, "Have you always been this hard on yourself?"

So after much practice and finding out the sun still comes up in the morning if I'm not perfect, I realized one day that I'm just not the perfectionist gal I used to be.

That was twenty years ago. But only this morning did I discovered the origin of my long-ago forgotten perfectionist tendencies. It happened in one moment's thought, just last week.

My third grader had bounced out of school, declaring he was the fourth to last person to lose the spelling bee. I praised him to the hilt for making it that long. Then I thought "Hmmm...I'm praising him for doing his personal best. That comes naturally to me. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Then I was struck by the connection. As a child, I had never been praised for doing my personal best. Only for being the best in the class, best in the family, best in my grade, best in my school. Being the best was never personal. It was never my choice.

Now I see the origin of my bad habit, the one I changed years ago.

Which comes first--discovery or change? Sometimes discovery. But not always.

What a relief to know we don't have to uproot every last blessed origin of our destructive behavior before we can move on.

Likewise, you can learn intuitive eating without examining every last blessed fault in yourself and without delving into your childhood. Those things are nice goals too, but not necessary to be a normal eater.

Afraid to try something new? Cognitive therapists tell us that as humans, who by nature think irrationally, we find ways to disturb ourselves.

On the Diet Survivors message board we talk a lot about black and white thinking. But black and white thinking is only one way in which we disturb ourselves.

Another common way in which we disturb ourselves is by catastrophizing. This means assuming the worst about a situation. We think the most awful outcome will occur. This serves a few purposes:

1. Helps brace us for disappointment
2. Prepares us for the jolt
3. Leads us to predict possible bad outcomes, which can assist in setting ourselves up for success

On the flip side, unfortunately, catastophizing, also does this:

1. Allows us to completely avoid disappointment and other human feelings
2. Leaves us drained
3. Leads us to aim too low
4. Alienates more positive people from us
5. Prevents us from achieving our dreams

What to do? If you have a tendency to catastophize, it may be time to reign it in a bit. List ways in which it serves you, but also ways in which it hinders you. Uncover you beliefs about predicting the worst, and replace them with more positive beliefs which will still give you needed tools.

Is it really true, for example, that we must avoid disappointment? Will it kill us? Will avoiding disappointment and setting our sights low help us achieve our dreams? How far will we go to avoid uncomfortable feelings? Risk-taking means being more fully alive--exposing us to higher highs and lower lows.

A little journaling can be a big eye-opener. Use your writing as a tool to find out which catastrophes you really do want to avoid, such as accidents and sickness. But the possibility of rejection? A project not working out? Finding out you had a bad idea? Start to experiment with feeling feelings. You'll find out life is fuller when you take risks.

Catastrophizing does serve a positive purpose but take charge of it, rather than letting it take charge of you. Use it to assess risk, but remember--you can handle rejection, disappointment and other negative emotions. What's more, if you reign in your catastrophizing, you'll allow for the highs.

A dull existence? Or high highs and low lows? Each of us has a choice. Do you really want to disturb yourself with so much catastrophizing? The next time you become aware you're starting to do this, say "Oh there I go disturbing myself again. I don't want to disturb myself. I'll reign it in."

Click on the book cover for more information

This blog is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free Diet Survivors newsletter.


Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.

In my book How to Survive Your Diet, I talk about greed. Greed for food, greed for the perfect body, greed for certain numbers on the scale, greed for all our problems to be fixed right now.

Clearly this is not the religious kind of moralistic greed. After all, what's wrong with wanting to be thin? Is that immoral? Of course not.

The greed that Diet Survivors are helped in understanding is the obsessive need to have everything they want right now, and to an extreme.

Folks learning to ditch the diet need to learn some other principles along the way, in addition to intuitive eating. They need to recognize that greed is a normal trait of human beings that is best resisted.

Why must we have the whole cake? Ask yourself that question today. Is one thin slice enough? Greed is a habit that is fueled by fear (the cake may never be here again) and extreme thinking (I must get underweight so I don't get overweight.)

Normal eaters need to simply recognize that greed is probably not doing them much good. They can learn to resist greed, not because it's the moral thing to do, but because it helps us place reasonable, livable constraints on ourselves.

And what do we replace greed with? Temperance. Temperance in all things. It's a good word to commit to memory, and perhaps meditate on a bit. Here's a definition from Answers.com: Moderation and self-restraint, as in behavior or expression.

Temperance will help you ditch the diet for good.

Click on the book cover for more information

This blog is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free Diet Survivors newsletter.


Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.

You have all these habits to change, yet in your support groups you're told "Don't be so hard on yourself!"

How can you have both? Can you go easy on yourself, yet change such a basic, entrenched part of yourself? And the answer is...

It's a balancing act. If you're a black and white thinker, you might not like hearing that.

But I have a secret for you that will make it easier. There is one single most powerful and critical habit which, if you are willing to work out, will make all the other changes easier. You really can be easy on yourself while making this change, and forever afterward.

Ready? Here is the work:

Your habit of saying "I must." Yes that's it. Think about "I must."

I must lose weight now
I must learn Intuitive Eating
I must stop weighing in three times a day
I must learn to love myself
I must learn portion control
I must legalize all foods
I must learn to listen to my hunger signals
I must learn to stop when I'm slightly full
I must learn to stop saying I must

Consider its replacement. "I'd strongly prefer."

Now let's return to the starting gate of this essay. We said you have all these habits to change, yet at the same time you're told not to be so hard on yourself.

Doesn't "I strongly prefer" resolve this dichotomy?

You have all these habits that you'd strongly prefer to change. That's not being hard on yourself. It's identifying what you'd really like to do. Doing what we really like to do is manageable. It's not being hard on ourselves. It's being very easy on ourselves.

Click on the book cover for more information

This blog is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free Diet Survivors newsletter.


Find out more about Linda Moran's book, How to Survive Your Diet.

Instead of anger, why not: Feel the frustration that led to it? Feel that hurt that led to it? Feel the disappointment underlying it?

Frustration, hurt and disappointment are three feelings in their own right, and are not always a good reason to become angry. They can simply be felt until they fade.

You see, anger is a secondary emotion, except when it's directly related to a strong injustice. But for most of us, most of the time, anger is a mask for some other primary emotion that we're in the habit of skipping over.

Speaking for myself, when I feel the most hurt, it's when someone hurts my child. That gets complicated when it's another of my children who inflicted the hurt. Recently, I dropped the anger and decided to feel the hurt instead, as much as I hate it. The result? Suddenly I have more wisdom to offer each of my children in the moment of crisis. Go figure.

So we've talked about feeling hurt. Now what about frustration? Living on this earth, with other people, means frustration. Why get mad just because we're frustrated? Nobody ever promised a frustration-free life, and if that's not enough argument for avoiding anger, then consider how often you frustrate others.

Next we have disappointment. If we have unreasonable expectations of others or of ourselves, disappointment can feel intolerable. But if we accept that humans disappoint, we can take it more in stride.

Let's leave anger for true injustice, and even then, stay sober-minded enough to come up with creative solutions. Think Martin Luther King Jr.

As for the primary emotions of disappointment, hurt, and frustration, resolve to walk through them, and make them your friends. They're part of life, you can tolerate them, and the sun will still come up in the morning.

Not only that, but you'll find wisdom you never knew you had, and you'll have no regrets.

This blog is a companion to the free Yahoo! Diet Survivors message board and the free
Diet Survivors newsletter.

Find out more about Linda Moran's book How to Survive Your Diet.