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You're in the middle of a construction project, and find you must return to the store because they sold you the wrong part. Do you stay gracious and request an exchange? Or do you go storming back into the store, ready to throw a fit?

Or maybe your relatives have been driving you crazy, and you want to do something about it. All of us struggle to some degree with when to make a stink and when to let something go.

If you're ready for a new way to think about the difference, maybe this will help--try distinguishing between frustration and injustice.

Life is full of frustration, and because we're social creatures, many of those frustrations come from co-existing with other people. When you're getting upset, ask yourself whether the source is just a frustration, or a true injustice.

Suppose you gave a large donation to a charity, and then they misspelled your name in the credits. That would be a frustration over human error. You might initially be offended, but you can set that aside when you realize there was no ill intent and no ill effect. If you let this go, and refrain from commenting on it, you won't likely harbor resentment and you won't be participating in enabling bad behavior.

Or, in the same vein, suppose you and your small children just moved to a new neighborhood, and then your next-door-neighbor starts building a pool. Even with the fence, you're a new parent, and you're nervous.

It's very frustrating, but as long as your neighbor is complying with the law, this is not an injustice. It's up to you whether you decide to quietly move away. Or perhaps you can gradually help your neighbor get to know and become attached to your children, in the hopes that this will prompt your neighbor to help look out for your kids.

None of these examples were necessarily injustices, but they sure can be frustrating.

Everyone has frustrations--they're just part of life. When you let them go, you can find some peace in knowing you are already doing all that is appropriate. You laugh at the misspelling, and you make sure your kids are fenced into your own yard, and that you're watching them closely.

But what if you think you have been passed over for a promotion because of your race? Or perhaps a loved one is injured by a drunk driver.

People sure can be frustrating, and we don't always agree with their beliefs or lifestyle, but there's another component here--these events are also injustices.

Sometimes a frustration is tugging at you because it's really an injustice. With some thought-time, if you realize there's a true injustice, then pursue it. But even then, there's more than one way to correct an injustice.

Case in point. My disabled son brings many frustrations to my life, and one of those happened when he got off the bus from his field trip and his glasses were gone. They were nowhere to be found. Apparently, his aide, who is supposed to watch out for him, was not with him for part of the day. The school was all too happy to let it go.

This frustration was bugging me, and I started to realize it's an injustice that the school isn't doing anything about it. So I decided it was worth it to me to contact the Director of Special Education. She pursued it as far as she could--the bus company was contacted and the site of the field trip was searched, but in the end the business office still did not offer to compensate us in any way.

Rather than pursue it further, as I'm rather busy doing better things, I decided a different way to correct the injustice--one that I have control over--one that would allow me to let go of my resentment. I stopped my charitable giving to the school. I ceased all giving until I felt that the expense was made up.

No anger. I felt in control again. Problem easily solved. Yes it's true that I didn't solve the problem for anyone else, but in this case, I'm satisfied with how far I've taken it. And now the special ed office is on the alert that my son did not have his aide with him when he should have been. The department can quietly correct that problem without me.

If you've had difficulty knowing when to pipe up, try testing the issue with this sharp division between frustration and injustice. You might be surprised to find that most of the time, it's just a plain old frustration.

And remember, frustration, and even occasional injustices, are part of life. You can tolerate them. You can even do something about them sometimes. But you don't have to eat in response to the feelings!

In the one case, if you realize it's just a frustration, you can remind yourself that all of life has frustrations and that you can tolerate them. The feelings will thus fade on their own, without your having to do something to chase them away.

On the other hand, if you determine that there was an injustice, instead of eating those feelings, you can decide upon a constructive act that will allow you to feel better. Either way, you won't need to eat in order to numb those ugly feelings.

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A Diet Survivors message board member asks, "Can I suggest a great book to follow up How to Survive Your Diet? Geneen Roth's book When You Eat at The Refrigerator Pull Up a Chair."

I don't know if many of you realize this, but humor is an effective part of learning normal eating, and learning so many other things too. Laughing at yourself will actually take you through the process faster.

Some folks come into adulthood and beyond, never really learning to laugh at themselves or finding humor in things, but I've observed that people seem to be able to learn this at any age.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but sometimes in the name of self-loving, we erroneously refrain from goofing on our own frailties. But the truth is that when we are secure and confident, we are also secure and confident about our foibles and weaknesses. I goof on mine all the time. I have so many!

It's interesting to me that Karen R. Koenig, my favorite normal eating guru, is the same way. We even call ourselves "stupid" from time to time. It's fun.

Has anyone here noticed that when you embrace normal eating, you find out that some things you learned are turned on their heads? Conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong on so many fronts, including humor.
We discover we were misled.

Gwen Shamblin, author of the Christian book The Weigh Down Diet, calls this phenomenon "opposite world."

Think a little bit opposite today. Try and see what it's like to lovingly goof on yourself. Let yourself laugh hard. You'll find your way out of your eating dysfunction faster. No kidding.

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Christina is an emotional eater. She's uncomfortable in social situations, and this upsets her. She's also very hard on herself.

Especially when she feels she has embarrassed herself, or committed some real or imagined social faux pas, she turns to food. Somehow, the food is a friend, and a solution, and a source of numbing her feelings.

Having been raised in an alcoholic home, she believes that she is handling her life much better by turning to food than to alcohol. However, sometimes she wistfully reflects, and wishes she could be like those other people she knows who don't seem to need food for comfort.

Christina has tried stoically avoiding food when upset, but it just calls her name too loudly. When she starts a new diet, everything goes great for a while. She can even avoid eating for comfort, because she's on a high from her new diet and initial weight loss.

But eventually, it all comes crashing in. She turns to her old friend, whom she is increasingly regarding as more of an enemy than a friend. Other times she resigns herself to a life of overeating and overweight. Sometimes when she's upset with herself, she just can't wait to get to the supermarket and stock up.

What is emotional eating?

The DSM-IV, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) published and copyrighted by the American Psychiatric Association, does not define emotional eating specifically. However, it does recognize binge eating as a disorder.

It is generally recognized in the field of psychology that emotions play a part
in the behavior of many overeaters. Put simply, emotional eaters have a relationship with food. As an emotional eater, Christina
might eat in response to any of these emotions and some not on this list:

• anger


• feeling worthless


• resentment


• feeling unappreciated


• embarrassment


• shame


• stress


• boredom


• lack of control


• hopelessness


• depression


• loneliness

But your emotions are not to blame!

Everyone has emotions, but not everyone overeats. Therefore, Christina doesn't have to do anything about her emotions. Emotions come and go. What lies behind those emotions, however, is self-talk. Sometimes self-talk causes the emotions. Other times, self-talk aggravates existing emotions. Either way, Christina's problem is the self-talk and faulty beliefs, not the emotions.

So self-talk causes emotional eating?

The answer is yes. What we tell ourselves and what we believe, lead to exaggerated feelings that take over our rational minds.

Here are just a few possible examples of Christina's beliefs and self-talk. Notice the "musts" and beliefs about what is intolerable.

• Feeling embarrassed is intolerable.


• Feeling lonely is intolerable.


• All uncomfortable feelings are intolerable.


• When I'm feeling bad I must get rid of the feeling right away.


• I deserve a little comfort.

Once Christina identifies some of her faulty beliefs, such as those listed above, she can then replace her beliefs with more rational beliefs and self-talk. She will be helped most if she is willing to write them down and spend a few minutes each day reading them. In this way, her new self-talk will eventually become part of her thinking.

Here are a few examples of what she might write:

• I can tolerate making a fool of myself.


• If I'm willing to experience bad feelings, I'll be able to take more emotional risks in life.


• Feeling foolish is part of life, and part of living fully.


• I don't need to numb those feelings in any way. I can let them fade away.


• I can find new ways to stay busy while the feelings fade. That's different from denial or trying to numb them.


• Excessive emotional eating is a form of substance abuse.


• It's not terrible if I find myself eating in response to emotions. As soon as I notice it, I can simply say, "Okay, I've had enough of that."


• In the long run, constantly overeating doesn't comfort me after all because there's nothing comfortable about being overweight!


• Everyone occasionally derives comfort from food. It's a matter of degree.

Journaling your beliefs is the key to freedom. That's because once you're a little aware of what you're believing, you can change it at any time. More rational beliefs lead to more tolerable emotions.

"Concern" usually remains as an emotion, but concern is something we can handle. Now that Christina is journaling her beliefs, she is still concerned about embarrassing herself, but she is no longer "freaking out" when it happens. Now she's free to learn how to even laugh about it.

Journaling for even just a few weeks can be enough to help you be aware of your beliefs and self-talk.

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

Visit the home of the book, The Rules of Normal Eating

Learn more about normal eating at Eat Normal Now

All of us as former dieters have experienced guilt while eating, even guilt while eating when hungry. The Food and Feelings message board exists to help us manage our feelings (see below).

Secondary emotions are often the stickler. That is, our feelings about our feelings are often what gets us hung up in our obsessions, compulsions, and excesses.

So let's talk about it. Now that you're learning normal eating, how do you feel about eating delicious food? Guilty? And do you feel guilty about feeling guilty about that? I'm wondering if for some of you it's too tall an order to simply stop feeling guilt about eating. Perhaps the step before that is to allow ourselves the guilt without judging it.

Do you see where I'm going? Plain old feelings are just feelings. We can watch them come and go, and they have little power over us if we would just let them wash over us. But instead, we fight or judge them.

Notice your food guilt today. Did you overeat? Did you feel guilty about that? Did you eat something high-fat, and then feel guilty about that? Just notice it. Try to hold back from judging it as good or bad.

One step at a time.

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This entry is written by a guest writer. It has an edge to it, but I like it. The writer makes a good point about over-pridefulness in healthy eating. Here it is, reprinted with permission from Joanne Press:

I was just hit with this thought after reading Linda’s September 10th blog entry on validation. Linda mentioned that perhaps people who overeat or binge are looking for validation from others or in general and that food gives it to them.

Well, I think there is another kind of validation that food brings about.

Some people get a lot of validation out of the fact that they eat healthy. So much so that they look in other shoppers’ grocery carts and sneer. Then they feel “sanctified” because non of “that garbage” is in their carts.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What’s wrong with eating healthfully? In the age of the obesity epidemic shouldn’t these people be applauded?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with eating healthfully. People SHOULD try to eat healthfully . However, I don’t think they should be applauded, either.

Really, is it THAT important? I mean, the same people may make remarks about how people shouldn’t need food for comfort, etc. etc. or even that food addiction is a pile of BS. Isn’t what they’re doing kind of the same? Are you really better than someone because you have more produce in your cart? What if the “slob with the poor diet” just came off a 2 day shift in the emergency room?

What if the biogeneticist likes to have a cookie from time to time?

What are these people really looking for? Some wee bit of satisfaction or attention that they’re not getting from somewhere else? The need to feel important? Validation, perhaps?

What would these people do in times of disaster? What if the only food at the Red Cross was, gasp! Ramen noodles! What? No organic produce?

Seems kind of similar to what someone who is overweight is accused of using food for?

Now, you might be thinking to yourself reading this. Well. You’re just a jealous fatty who can’t put the Ding Dongs down.

I’m not. As a matter of fact, I’m a recovering from food issues of my own, anorexia, exercise bulimia and the subsequent binge eating from it.

Not that my size should matter. I’m a fit, healthy lady who likes to workout.

I guess I just don’t understand the preoccupation with what others do…

Does the above resonate with you? If so, feel free to discuss it on the Diet Survivors message board. I think this was my favorite line, "What if the biogeneticist likes to have a cookie from time to time? "

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Do you seek validation on an ongoing basis?Too sensitive and shaky to be self-accepting? You're not alone.

Diet Survivors members report seeking validation as a reason for their overeating. They're in an endless state of seeking validation, which they get little of, and in the meantime, they eat.

Overeating serves to keep us from facing ourselves, from living with our errors and failures.

This kind of overeating is a distraction, and may not include stuffing to the point of numbness. Rather, it's just something to do.

Does your validation-seeking keep you from doing other productive things? The problem is not that you're not good enough or that you make too many mistakes.

The problem is that you're awfully hard on yourself. If you're a go-getter like me, that means you take social risks. But if you're then seeking affirmation, you might find yourself frustrated much of the time, and want to overeat to district yourself while waiting for the ever-elusive validation.

Validation is fine, and it's good for us to select friends carefully so we get some of that, but is it tolerable not to be affirmed and validated every time you make a move? Have you been believing you can't tolerate lack of validation? It's time to rethink.

Consider this today--decide whether you would like to learn to live with yourself, in the moment, right in the middle of realizing you've possibly made yet another mistake. The fiftieth one this week.

Can living with yourself and without validation become your norm? We all make those fifty mistakes, by the way, but in a day, not a week.

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Recently I used the term "nuancing" on one of my message boards, and was asked to define this. Here is my reply:

Nuancing is about avoiding new rules, avoiding MUSTS, avoiding about-faces, and embracing "shades of gray" thinking.

An example is that some intuitive eating gurus say you MUST legalize all food first.

Well, okay, that works for some. But maybe you have one food you're really afraid of. Can you nuance this? Can you legalize SOME foods right now, and consciously choose to put off the one that frightens you for now? It's messier.

But one reason we got into this predicament in the first place is messiness-avoidance.

Life is messy, hunger and fullness are messy, feelings are messy, and we sometimes try too hard to get on some kind of "plan" or way of understanding things so as to neaten it all up.

A little of that is okay, but if your eating is dysfunctional, chances are you're trying too hard to keep things simple and neat.

It takes more brain-power to think through things in a granular way, but ALL OF US have that brain power. For one reason or another, somewhere along the way, we got hooked on avoiding using our brains
when it comes to certain areas of our lives.

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to Survive Your Diet.

Are you in therapeutic mode too much? Listening to everyone's comments as though all of life were milieu therapy?

If you listen to criticism about your weight, your food, your clothing, or anything else, why are you doing it?

All of life is not, after all, group therapy.

People with good self-esteem turn a deaf ear. Politicians, when criticized, turn a deaf ear. Great world leaders who improve things for us all often have to turn a deaf ear.

Normal living involves turning a deaf ear.

Let's look at our problems in a new way--perhaps our problem isn't so much our weight, or our lack of willpower, or some character flaw. Instead, perhaps our problems are really mostly an unwillingness to turn a deaf ear.

Learn to discern what to shut out. If someone you don't much care about criticizes you, or you see some skinny model you don't even know, or even if voices in your own head point out all your flaws, those are the times to turn a deaf ear.

Be discriminating. Pick a few people in your life whose wisdom and judgement you actually trust. Listen carefully to them. But even with those few select, filter what they say through your own best judgment.

That's how confident people live.

Are you entitled to be happy as you are? Have you been unhappy because you figure you're supposed to be?

If so, what law says you must be unhappy? Will the fat police come to your house and arrest you for happiness while under the influence of overweight?

Will someone accuse you of being cluelessly happy when you're clearly not entitled to be? Obviously you must not know you're overweight, or you wouldn't have that smile on your face.

But wait one darned minute. Whose decision is it, anyway, whether you find happiness today? Have you been putting off contentment for too long, waiting for something that may or may not come?

The heck with everyone. If you're fed up enough with waiting for happiness, you'll realize that it makes no sense for other people to give you the green light. And is it possible you might be in such a sadness habit that if you ever did lose the weight, you still wouldn't be happy?

Choose happiness now. It won't stop you from losing the weight. They have little to do with each other. But I'll tell you this--finding ways to finally please yourself and no one else will help pave the way, eventually, to permanent weight loss, or at the very least, to great joy.

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"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."

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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.