April 2007 Archives
Those of you who used to receive the Diet Survivors newsletter may know about the email disaster of last week. My host server went berserk, shipping dozens of emails, some blank, to a number of my customers. 
I'd been meaning to switch to Feedblitz anyway, and to shift my readers to the meditations format. But it ended up an emergency.
It was a hard week for everyone, and I lost some understandably irate subscribers. And as luck would have it, it happened on April Fool's Day. So while we're on the subject of April Fools, are there any ways in which you've fooled yourself regarding diets?
Fooling oneself is akin to wishful thinking. "Oh I wish I were thin and beautiful. Oh if only I didn't have this eating disorder. And maybe if I try just this one last food plan, it will work for me."
Did you know that this kind of self-talk actually contributes to eating dysfunction? Far from a cure, irrational and distorted self-talk leads us to make foolish and foolhardy decisions.
Whatever made us believe that we mustn't apply our rational, sober, intellectual minds to our eating, I'll never know. But it's what we need to do.
You see--diets, food plans, doctored food, even intuitive eating plans take away our autonomy and compromise our good judgment and sensibilities. For whatever reason, our bodies and minds seem to like it best when we give them plenty of room to make their own decisions.
That's not to say we must give in to binge eating. The insidious part of eating disorders is that it can be difficult to put nature right again.
It just takes time, and a commitment to restore your natural instincts, intuition, autonomy and good judgment. Even if your judgment was taken away when you were a young child, you can find it again. It's time to look within and open your own book of food wisdom. Did you know you have one? Ditch the diets and plans today.
And remember, it's not nice to fool mother nature.
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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.
"I'm stu..." "I mean I put my foot in my mouth a lot."
That's an example of how to interrupt negative self-talk. I was going to berate myself for my stupidity, but I headed myself off at the pass. I replaced "I'm stupid" with "I put my foot in my mouth a lot."
Sometimes when we claim we're stupid, it's all in fun.
But are you the type to put yourself down every time you commit a faux pas? If so, it's hard to replace with nothing, and nearly impossible to replace with something positive.
But you don't have to replace your mistakes with defensiveness, justification, or even "how wonderful am I." After all, you're an intellectual. You know you goofed. Why not fess up (at least to yourself.)
Still, "I'm stupid" isn't the truth either. Why not, instead, replace it with something more objective? Replace a general put-down such as "I'm stupid" with a more specific, objective self-talk such as, "I sure do put my foot in my mouth a lot" or even better "I sure did put my foot in my mouth that time."
Interrupt yourself to get the job done. Over time, it will get easier. Stop at "I'm stu."
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.
