After reviewing her website I learned that Roth is no newcomer to best sellers. All of the products and books on her website reflect her well-honed expertise in helping people overcome emotional and compulsive eating. I knew instinctively that she has a keen understanding of these issues and I anxiously awaited the arrival of my ordered items. I bought her CD “Breaking Free from Emotional Eating” and was enthralled by it! The fact that this CD was made in 1986 clearly demonstrates that Roth’s ideas and approach are spot on and, to a certain extent, timeless.

Geneen Roth’s newest book Women, Food and God reflects the evolution of her thinking and work with eating and weight. I’ve discovered in talking to others about this book that having “God” in the title turns some folks off. But I encourage anyone who feels that way to look beyond this fact. “God” was a great keyword to include in the title for Search Engine Optimization. By using the word “God”, Roth implies that by courageously facing and entering the eye of the storm of one’s emotional eating, women can overcome the REAL issues that are numbing their lives and undermining their own SELF-REALIZATION AND FULFILLMENT. She refers to this process as an “opening” instead of a “closing.” Roth gracefully leaves whether this is a spiritual or personal process up to the reader.

Roth has real credibility, having gained and lost over 1000 pounds herself and having stumbled upon a life changing and lasting solution: Stop dieting and start listening to and trusting your own body.

She acknowledges how frightening a proposition this is for women who struggle with their weight. But in telling her own story and the stories of others, Roth makes a compelling case that women can end the war with their weight and bodies by examining what is underneath emotional eating. By constantly scrutinizing what we put into our mouths through dieting, Roth eloquently explains how we disconnect ourselves from our bodies and its needs. Ironically, being on a diet eventually causes us to eat more and gain weight.

I blogged about this very problem in October 2008 (Why Demonizing Food Defeats Us, http://www.essentialsteps.net/blog/page/2/ but from a different perspective. I explained, using Reactance Theory as a framework, that research suggests when humans feel their freedom is being threatened they ARE MOTIVATED TO RECLAIM THEIR FREEDOM. (This is what “reactance” implies. We are motivated to react and rebel against whatever is robbing us of our freedom.) In plain language, this means that when you diet and feel that you don’t have the freedom to eat what you want, you are actually MOTIVATED TO REBEL against the diet. This leads women to binge, thus leading to feelings of failure and self-loathing until the next cycle of dieting begins. It is Important to note that DIETING IS THE PREDOMINANT SOLUTION WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN FOR ADDRESSING EATING AND WEIGHT ISSUES IN OUR CULTURE. The irony is that, for many women, living in the dieting paradigm is what has caused them to binge and gain weight. (Clearly, dieting works for some women as a long-term solution. But I don’t think it works well for most.)

As someone who has lived in Europe, I can see a distinction between American and European women’s relationship with food. While women in Europe certainly care about their body size, they place extreme value on eating and living well and enjoying life to the fullest. While living in Spain, I heard Spanish women in midlife lament their changing bodies just like an American would. But, it was at a lower level of intensity and shame. In addition, Europeans, in general, have not been socialized to consider dieting and self-deprivation as a main lifestyle option as we have. Eating well is a valued priority and life experience in Europe. Some think that is precisely the reason that “French Women Don’t Get Fat” (a book by Mireille Guilliano.) While research in fact does show that waist lines are expanding around the globe, the heighted focus on weight and eating the “right foods” in the United States seems unique. It will be interesting to see if other countries also adopt the diet mentality if the “obesity epidemic” continues to worsen internationally as it appears to be doing.

Clotaire Rapaille in the Culture Code says his research has shown that becoming overweight in America represents people “checking out” and disconnecting from their lives. He and Roth agree on this key point. He suggests that diet marketers have effectively tapped into this unconscious issue and offer new dieting approaches as a way for overweight folks to “re-connect”. While these new dieting solutions hook people and get them to re-focus on the next new diet, clearly they do not offer a lasting solution. Rapaille says that the opposite tension from “checking out” is “connection”, something else that Roth would agree with. Roth unapologetically suggests that the only way for women to stop emotional eating and the cycle of weight gain is by no longer dieting so that they can CONNECT WITH and heal their core issues.

While dieting and weight gain is, to some extent, also clearly related to our current society and culture (e.g., huge portion sizes at restaurants, expensive or no fresh fruits and vegetables in inner cities), I have come to a conclusion similar to that of Roth about individual level change: Most women will not be able to escape the eating/diet/exercise/weight gain cycling unless they LEAVE the diet mindset and paradigm. Roth’s approach and programs are among the very best options that I’ve seen to accomplish this.

I’ve had my own experience leaving this mindset. While I have never been a large person, I used to be 15-20 pounds heavier than I am now. Despite not being in the state of extreme pain and desperation that Roth talks about when she initiated her eating experiment, twenty years ago I got tired of thinking SO MUCH about food, weight and my body. This was probably just normal body vigilance for a 20-something woman but it was still exhausting. At that time, I created a mindset-change experiment. I told myself: “Michelle, you can eat ANYTHING you want as long as you are really hungry for it and you have to stop eating when you feel satiated.” To play this game, I had to TUNE INTO MY BODY in a way that I hadn’t before. It was a strange new experience to connect to my body and self before putting something in my mouth. One day, a couple of weeks into this experiment, someone offered me a delicious looking chocolate truffle from a box of elegant chocolates. So, as per my experiment rules, I paused to check in with my body to see whether it felt like eating chocolate. (I have always loved chocolate!) You can imagine my shock when I realized that eating chocolate didn’t appeal to me then, and I politely declined.

In that moment, I discovered something very powerful, and it is what Roth is a true master at helping people achieve: When you tune into your body and its messages you FREE YOURSELF. You are no longer enslaved by food rules. Once you realize this and start listening to your body, food loses its tyrannical power over you and your energy is freed up to realize your full potential. Roth notes that in the beginning of this new path of eating, people can “go to town” on the forbidden foods. But after that psychological reactance energy has been released, food goes from being “bad” and “good” to just being FOOD. Without psychological resistance at work on your mind and body, YOUR needs and YOUR hunger and satiation signals are what become center stage. You stop gorging on foods like cookies out of psychological reactance and rebellion, and instead eat them when FEEL like it. You also start to notice how you feel after you eat certain foods. You’ll start wanting to eat foods that you didn’t used to want to eat because they felt like “should” foods. These foods now become desirable because your new body awareness teaches you that these foods make you feel better and have more energy.

It’s interesting to note that what happens with women and exercise reflects the same phenomenon but with a polar opposite reaction. Instead of compulsively doing a behavior, it leads to NOT doing a behavior. From my research, I have shown that when women exercise within a diet/weight loss mindset, they feel that they “should” exercise and thus rebel against doing it. In the case of exercising, women feel constrained by the idea that they HAVE TO exercise, and their psychological reactance says “you can’t tell me to exercise!” This causes women to desire to NOT exercise. It creates a cyclical approach from extreme exercise to no exercise just as dieting creates a cyclical approach to restraint and binging. Jane Brody interviewed me in the New York Times about these ideas a couple of months ago, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/health/09brod.html. My work with women and exercise shows the same thing as Roth’s discovered with women and eating: By breaking from the diet mentality and disconnecting the behavior with trying to lose weight women re-connect to their body and its unique desires and needs. This results in self-affirmation and a deep sense of freedom. It also results in long-term behavioral sustainability.

Roth contends that we can’t ever come to peace with our bodies and stop emotional eating and the diet roller coaster until we become willing to face “our demons”, the true source of emotional eating. This is definitely a frightening thing to do. But according to Roth (and many other wise authors, such as Elizabeth Lesser (Broken Open) and Pema Chodron (When Things Fall Apart ), lovingly witnessing our true pain instead of running away, disconnecting or numbing ourselves to it is “an unexpected path to almost anything” (Cover: Women, Food, and God) and is truly transformational.

I HIGHLY encourage you to watch Roth on Oprah this week, May 12th at 4:00 EST and to check out Roth’s website, http://geneenroth.com. Geneen Roth has discovered an authentic solution to the diet and weight cycling and she is also an INCREDIBLE teacher. She is a true master from whom we can all learn.

Physical activity has the potential to be an incredible life-enhancing partner and ally IF WE LET IT. That means following other people’s prescriptions or recommendations about how we SHOULD exercise isn’t the ideal way to be physically active. Would you choose to marry someone because others told you this was the type of person you SHOULD spend your life with? I didn’t think so.

The way you make physical activity your ally is to:
• Determine how physical movement can enhance your day. Do you want to feel more energy, be more relaxed, multitask moving with being social?

• Identify types of physical movement is most appealing FOR YOU to do. Is walking outside in nice weather relaxing? Do you like to listen to funk or salsa music when you move?

• Select an ideal time to try this movement with this “ally” mindset. Is it first thing in the morning, a break during the workday or on the weekend?

• Throw out rules duration of your movement! Imposing a rule related to how long you need to exercise to make it worth it just doesn’t work for most in today’s very busy world. Instead of imposing some time structure, ask yourself “How long do I want to move for TODAY or TOMORROW?” In fact, when initially forming this new ally relationship with movement, it’s better to start small, and try only 5-15 minutes.

• Evaluate how it went. Did this feel good to do? Did you feel nurtured and positive moving in the ways you created? Don’t feel discouraged if your first attempt didn’t feel amazing. Sometimes, it takes trying different things, tweaking amount of time, etc. before we click with it.
You’ll discover when YOU mold physical activity to fit your needs and wants, instead of the other way around, it will become your ally for life.

The expression “for better or for worse” reflects the tremendous commitment people make when they enter into a marriage. They forecast the years we aim to spend with the partner we select for the rest of our lives. Most of us decide  to form life partnerships because we believe they will nurture and enhance our quality of life in some or many ways.

Despite the fact that many marriages don’t last through all of the ups and downs, the intention to keep this life-long commitment is meaningful and puts life partnerships in a special and unique category. I’d like to suggest that making a life-long commitment is also something we might think about applying to the realm of physical activity.  (In fact, regardless of how great your actual life partnership is, if you are or were in one, the reality is that we can’t count on others to enhance our lives for a variety of reasons. That leaves us with ourselves and the choices we make regarding how we are going to care for our bodies and the quality of our daily lives.)

Over the years, I’ve learned that the core element of whether a woman stays active throughout her adult life is her RELATIONSHIP with physical activity.

If pressure or stress undergirds this relationship there will be anxiety and/or DREAD associated with the very idea of exercising. If being physically active makes her feel incompetent or like she is failing, she’ll develop a disdain for doing it. In contrast, if moving her body gives a woman an opportunity to nurture herself in some meaningful way, she will feel connected both to being physically active and to her body. In this  scenario, physical activity feels like and actually becomes a key life partner; one that cultivates a sense of well-being as well as helps us to fulfill our dreams and life ambitions.

Person  A. Sharon’s relationship with physical activity is based on self-respect and comes out of a commitment to cultivate a life that is joyful, energetic, healthy and fulfilling. She experiences a desire to move her body.

Person B. Nancy’s relationship with physical activity is based on trying to conform to a “gold standard” for body size, weight, and/or type of exercise. Sarah dreads the very idea of moving her body.

Unfortunately, most women in midlife have formed a relationship with being physically active that reflects Nancy’s experience. As you can imagine, Nancy is much LESS likely than Sharon  to stay physically active throughout her lifetime.

Many women have LEARNED to have a negative and unproductive relationship with a behavior that should be as natural and desirable as wanting to sleep. But the key word is learned.

Our relationship with physical activity reflects our socialization and past experiences. We have learned to perceive and approach physical activity mainly as a tool to repair our bodies instead of an ally for enhancing our quality of life.

In the next post, I’ll get into more detail about transforming physical activity into your life-enhancing partner and ally.  Contact me if you have questions about how you can transform physical activity.

Enjoy the Spring! It’s a great time to create positive change in our lives.

Your EssentialSteps Coach,
Michelle

Some women have been lucky to have escaped the quagmire caused by our obsession  with what food we want to eat compared to what we think we “should” eat. They either never felt pressure to diet or lose weight or just decided they were not going to let someone else’s rules dictate their eating.

But most women are not so lucky. Most have succumbed to cultural pressures and yearn to fit the one-size-fits-all mold. This yearning has led women to spend 20 to 30 years of their lives cycling through diet and exercise programs, eventually giving up when results don’t match expectations. The most unfortunate part of the diet/exercise cycle is that it  causes too many women to loathe their bodies and feel that they have failed INSTEAD OF recognizing that they were set up to fail. The aim of this cyclical paradigm has been to produce consumer behavior, not sustainable lifestyles. Once this fact is recognized, women can start forging their own unique paths to healthy and satisfying lifestyle behaviors instead of buying another “magic bullet” that will set them up to fail.

A great way to start this new mindset and approach is to recognize with gratitude what our bodies actually do for us. Instead of focusing on the most superficial aspects of our bodies (literally and figuratively), such as subcutaneous fat, let’s focus on its core abilities and functions; the things that make our bodies incredible.

- The ability to move our bodies by our sheer will.

- The energy to work on projects that are meaningful and exciting.

- Well functioning digestive and elimination processes. We don’t appreciate these until we learn that when they don’t work well our daily quality of life is drastically reduced.

- The ability to see the exquisite colors fushcia, orange, and violet.

- The ability to wrap our arms around our loved ones and express to them our appreciation.

- Resilience to break through tough times and come out on the other side.

Aren’t these things worth SO much more than any excess pounds we might be caring around? Do you treat your body with sufficient respect and appreciation for what it does for you?

I hope you might reflect on that question. And if your answer is no, than I offer you this: Now is a great time to start thinking about ONE single thing that you may want to try doing differently as a way to show increased appreciation for your body, a central part of yourself.

Appreciating what you have instead of resenting it, is a much better place to be if you want to make changes that will help you feel and live better.

Consider this choice as we enter Spring this year. How do you want to feel? What goals have you tried to achieve in the past to improve your quality of life that haven’t been sustainable? Are you going to continue striving for what others tell you that you should achieve, or would you like to start following your own intuition and voice?

Do you agree with this stance?

Your EssentialSteps Coach
Michelle Segar, PhD, MPH
Founder, www.essentialsteps.net, michelle [at] essentialsteps.net

She was frustrated that, with all of the incredible benefits, people still didn’t exercise. I suggested to her that these are the same benefits that we’ve been marketing to Americans for over 25 years, and while true, they have MIS-BRANDED exercise (for creating sustainable behavior, anyway.) We’ve been promoting exercise to Americans out of a medical model instead of a consumer model. Apple doesn’t say: “Hey Americans buy our ipod and you will hear music you like,” even though purchasing is the behavior that they want people to sustain. They create cool branding that hooks into people’s emotions and makes people WANT TO Keep buying their products!

The result of promoting exercise for these medically-based and practical reasons is that we’ve turned it into one more thing to check off our daily To Do List (a “should” or “chore”), instead of something we DESIRE TO DO. This is one of the reasons we haven’t been more successful in helping Americans adopt physically active lives that they want to sustain. (See also: Make It Stick and Switch, great books by Heath and Heath.)

Think about how this translates into actual behavior. Consider someone who thinks of exercise as a “chore” but has made plans to exercise. When some type of barrier arises to prevent them from doing their planned exercise, how motivated do you think this person is to overcome this barrier? Not very! In contrast, imagine someone who considers exercise “a gift they give themselves” confronting the same barrier. This individual will feel much more motivated to overcome this barrier. Why? Because that barrier is getting in the way of giving themselves their gift of physical movement!! People who exercise with a gift-based meaning of exercise are much more motivated and capable of identifying creative solutions to overcoming their barriers. Who is inspired to use creativity to overcome barriers to EXERCISE THAT FEELS LIKE A CHORE?! Some are, but not most of us.

A great deal of this is a branding problem, so we need to incorporate research on marketing to solve this public health issue. Research by Bagozzi et al., shows that having desire toward the actual behavior AND having desire for one’s behavioral GOAL are key for that behavior to occur over time. There has been an under emphasis on the role people’s exercise goals play in motivating or undermining sustainable participation in physical activity. There is a personal goal hierarchy that is also relevant to this conversation, but I’ll save that for another post.

We can easily see how women who exercise with goals to lose weight may feel toward their exercise goal. Women have been socialized to initiate exercise with this goal. But an implicit driver underneath is the idea that her body isn’t good enough or valuable as is, and she needs to fix it partly through exercising. Thus, exercise becomes a weapon of war AGAINST her body instead of a gift we give our self. Can you see how this easily turns exercise into one big psychological YUK!? It turns exercise into one big self-objectifying experience (Barbara Fredrickson et al.,) It also focuses women on selecting physical activities that will burn calories instead of that feel like gifts. Who’s likely to keep that type of yuk up for long? How draining and not fun! But even making the analogy that ‘exercise as medicine’ isn’t giving exercise an emotionally-compelling meaning. The data on medication adherence shows that it is a HUGE problem too. So, why are we asking folks to start considering exercise as a medication to take daily? These are logical but not compelling reasons to exercise. These reasons WILL get many people to start exercising but not to maintain it for the rest of their lives. By now, we know that logic does NOT work to produce sustainable behavior. It’s time for us to start getting more creative with marketing exercise to Americans.

There are many other reasons/goals that women and men can claim for pursuing physically active lives. They just need to be educated about them through better marketing of physical activity. HEY BUSINESS, HEALTH CARE AND GOVERNMENT: You can get Americans to move more by creating a more emotionally compelling BRAND OF exercise!

BOTTOM LINE: Our goals brand exercise. Let me say this in a different way. The goals we have for exercising guide how we approach it, what physical activities we choose to do, what attributes we expect from it, and how we FEEL about it. The reasons we initiate exercise may be as important as the type of physical activity we decide to do if we are to create life-long sustainability. Only through sustained behavior can people reap the numerous mind/body/spirit benefits from physical movement - so we need to transform it into something that feels COMPELLING to do on a DAILY basis. See Jane Brody’s discussion of this issue.

We get into trouble, though, when our orientation to living becomes focused on accomplishing things and checking items off of our ever growing “To Do” lists.

Having this type of external focus too easily leads us to spend our daily lives doing things based on what we think we “should” do rather than what we “want”, “need” or mindfully decide to do. Do you resonate with this?

“Should-based” living often translates into living on autopilot as we rush to get one more thing done. When we do things we think we “should” do, we believe we are being our best selves, fulfilling our responsibilities well and serving others. However, living this way can be extremely stressful, unhealthy and often undermines living purposefully.  I’ve also come to believe that daily decision making and behavior based on “shoulds” can let us off the hook of taking personal responsibility.

When we say “I really should do this”, what we often mean is “I’m doing this because it’s something that I think I’m supposed to do”. It doesn’t matter if we are doing this because culture tells us to, our doctor tells us to, or we are striving to be “good” daughters, friends, wives, parents, or professionals. Making decisions primarily to fulfill shoulds prevents us from mindfully evaluating the task at hand based on its merits and whether or not it helps us achieve the things that we most value.

In essence, should-based living neglects and starves our unique sense of self.  Maybe this is why so many of us feel hungry all of the time.  Maybe we are craving our own essence, our sense of WHO WE ARE.

“Should-based living” breeds imbalance.  Living on autopilot, living as “human doings” instead of human beings is, ironically, often the path of least resistance. It is often easier to do what we feel is expected of us than it is to do the hard work of figuring out what it is we want to get out of life.

Every one of us is unique.  But if our daily behavior only fulfills what we think we’re supposed to do, we miss the opportunity to fully express our uniqueness. Should-based living comes easily to most women.  We have been socialized to be good mothers, wives, and friends.  To be conscientious employees.  To volunteer in our communities. And much more.  As we contemplate the decisions that fill up our days, it is important for us to understand why we might be inclined to live a should-based life. But, the most important thing, is to evaluate if the manner in which we live and make those decisions is taking responsibility FOR our life or abdicating it?

Taking responsibility for living life on our own terms can be scary stuff. But, from my perspective, the alternative is scarier. Feeling detached, drained, and unmotivated on a daily basis. Of course we want balance in our lives and we get balance, in part, through serving others and fulfilling our responsibilities.  But if most of your energy is consumed by the “shoulds” you might be missing out on inner peace and a sense of balance.  You may be endangering your well-being and health.

We all deserve to become our best selves and to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives. It’s our right as human beings.

Your EssentialSteps Coach,

The first reason women conclude they are lazy is because they are simply tired from successfully juggling and achieving A LOT. Being tired and needing to relax is very different than laziness. The challenge for women who feel too tired to exercise is to learn how to determine when resting and relaxing their bodies is what they most need (something that is really important to do at times) and when they’d be better off doing some form of physical activity to increase their energy and improve their mood.

The second reason that women erroneously conclude they are lazy is because they compare themselves against too high of a standard.  We were told for most of our adult lives that exercise had to be hard and vigorous to be of benefit. On top of that, when we see some of our friends training for marathons or spinning every day, something that confirms our suspicion that we are lazy!

Contrary to what fitness companies want us to believe, newer research shows us that exercise doesn’t have to be vigorous to be of benefit and that all types and durations of movement “count”.  But regardless of science, if intense exercise is unappealing (which it is for most women in midlife, including myself much of the time) we won’t do it anyway.

Bottom line: There is no need to compare ourselves to anyone else when it comes to being physically active or feeling like we need to do it their way.  (That would be like comparing what you like in bed with what others enjoy and then condemning yourself for not being like them!)

The fix? Just change the definition of exercise from what you think exercise SHOULD be (because that’s what others are doing) to one that incorporates the types of physical activities and movement that feels good TO YOU. By the way, what feels good to do will and should change based on how you feel on any given day and time. You will discover that the idea of being laziness becomes much less relevant. Not only will you not feel lazy but you’ll wind up doing more physical activity.

So far, this is what we know: As you might be aware, estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, significantly decreases as women approach and then go through menopause.

Dr. Heidi IglayReger told me about the following new research documenting that the presence of estrogen in female rodents increases spontaneous activity. Though humans and rodents are clearly quite different, estrogen may also influence spontaneous activity in women. While this has not been proven in humans, if it were to be the case, postmenopausal women might be less active than they were pre-menopause because of decreased estrogen. What may be the key is what is meant by “spontaneous activity”.

Naturally, it includes planned activity, such as attending a group fitness class or going for a walk or run. But more likely it has to do with unplanned, and often unnoticed daily activity, such as standing up longer before sitting down, picking up around the house more frequently, or even fidgeting more - things that women (and men) do without realizing that they are moving”. Individually, these small changes in physical activity may not make a significant difference, but overtime, decreased physical activity without a matching decrease in food intake will cause weight gain.

This research suggests that by mindfully adding more brief periods of spontaneous physical movement to your day you might be able to prevent the weight gain that is associated with menopause. The simple solution to move more may appear to be easy. But while coaching women in midlife I have found that many, if not most, women have difficulty believing that these small amounts of lower intensity movement actually “count”. Intellectually, it makes sense, but when it comes to purposefully doing it and fitting it into your life it’s a different story. I advocate to clients that they LET THEMSELVES override the old outdated notion that only vigorous and lengthy exercise sessions are valid, and accept that fact that intentionally taking a parking space father away from the entrance or and taking the stairs instead of the elevator several times a day, among many other types of spontaneous movement, not only count but are extremely valuable.

In the EssentialSteps program I do with clients, I refer to spontaneous movement as “Opportunities to Move” because embedded in that concept is the value of creating time and space to move. When we move more, we feel better. Moving more accumulates throughout our day. Research suggests that moving more can improve our health.

But I’m more interested in promoting more physical movement as a way to enhance women’s daily sense of well-being. Why? Because my research shows that improving “health” isn’t a very compelling motivator for women in midlife who are, in general healthy. What we mid-life women want is to feel good - about ourselves and about our bodies.

Dr. IglayReger’s bottom line: Even though scientists are still searching for answers, post-menopausal weight gain may not be inevitable and may in fact be preventable through more brief physical movement throughout the day.

My bottom line: Moving more throughout the day will give you more energy, get blood flowing, decrease stiffness, help clear your mind, and will just help you enjoy every day more.

So what’s getting in YOUR way of moving more during your day?

As you know, I’m now blogging for More Magazine. If you want to hear my ideas more frequently than you do through the blog, you can sign up to be alerted when I post weekly on More at my profile:
http://www.more.com/user/profile/1204 . Under my photo just click on “Be notified when member publishes”. (You’ll be prompted to sign up for more.com, and then redirected to click on this option.)

I always welcome your comments, whether you want to share your own experiences or disagree with my perspective. Please tell anyone you think would be interested to check out my blog.

Dr. IglayReger summarized the research above about rodents under the direction of Dr. Peter Bodary when she was a post-doc in the Vascular Biology Laboratory in the School and Kinesiology. She continues research in the area of physical activity and body weight as the the laboratory manager for the Laboratory for Physical Activity and Exercise Intervention Research at the University of Michigan.

1) Go to my first post about how we should exercise more like we eat at More

2) Click on “view profile” (above my photo, on the right)

3) In the area where my photo is, go to and select the 4th option  “Be notified when member publishes”.

4) You’ll get a prompt to join.

5) If you don’t want to join, you can read my *though-provoking* post on the front of More’s Fitness page every Friday.

Maryann is experienced as a registered dietitian, and her eating philosophy is very much in line with my approach to exercise. Below she sheds light on her experiences helping women stop demonizing food.

5 Steps to Developing a Healthy Relationship with Food
By Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD

Most of my nutrition counseling sessions begin with confessions. One client says she was doing great until she started eating bread while another admits to sweets being her downfall.

Like many women, I engaged in the good food/bad food cycle for years. My twenties were all about restricting my naughty favorites followed by overeating them. But I eventually learned a lesson that changed me forever: allowing myself to eat any food I wanted made maintaining a healthy weight feel effortless! So I took my experiences, researched the topic and developed helpful strategies.

The 5 steps below will help you develop a healthy relationship with food, eat better and maybe even drop those extra pounds.

1. Think about the why

My clients usually think they overeat simply because they are weak human beings. Yet eating habits are not determined by character — instead, they are a learned behavior that starts very early in life. When you understand what’s really behind your eating habits you can stop beating yourself up and take real action.

While parents are well-intentioned, the feeding strategies they employ often encourage the good food/bad food cycle. For example, pressuring kids to eat their vegetables makes plant foods seem like a punishment. Using sweets as a reward makes sweets even more appealing. (Or they combine these two by forcing kids to finish their veggies in order to get dessert!). And encouraging kids to “clean their plates” or cut back on eating robs little ones of their natural ability to self regulate food.

Every person also has personal experiences and is inundated with popular diets, media stories and magazines telling them what foods are “good” and “bad.” As Michelle wrote in her piece, no one wants to do what they “should” do. That is why when women try to follow someone else’s rules of eating they become naturally defiant to it.

Think about your experiences with food growing up and how it has influenced your relationship with food.

2. Challenge ingrained food beliefs.

After understanding where your eating habits come from, you can take action by writing down the real triggers to eating: your thoughts about food. Once you capture the thought on paper, take the time to question it. If you find yourself thinking “That cookie is bad I shouldn’t eat it,” for example, write it down and challenge it by writing “Why are cookies bad? They taste good and eating one or two won’t cause weight gain.” You’ll also want to question the assumptions you make about foods you perceive as healthy or “good”. For example, if you find yourself thinking “this lunch is healthy so I’m going to eat more” come right back with “don’t all foods contain calories? Isn’t it a better strategy to eat when I’m hungry and stop when I start to feel full?”

Research shows that people overestimate the calories in foods they perceive as “bad” and underestimate the calories in foods they perceive as “good.” For example, a 2006 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed that individuals ate 28% more M&Ms when they were labeled as “low fat” than when they were labeled as “regular.”

In a 2005 study published in Food Quality and Preference, subjects chose 3 slices of bacon (109 calories) as more weight-promoting than a large raisin bran muffin (460 calories). Even when calorie content was printed out for the subjects to see, people still judged the perceived “bad” food, like bacon, as more likely to cause them to gain weight than the higher calorie “good” food.

“Good” and “bad” food thinking gives too much power to individual foods and spurs the likelihood of overeating.

3. Make your favorite foods a priority

Now that you are changing your thinking, you’ll want to go against popular diet advice and make your favorite foods a priority. This can be a very hard thing to do, especially if you’ve learned not to trust yourself with eating. Write down your top 5 favorite foods (previously labeled “bad” foods) and make sure to eat at least one of those foods every day. At first you might eat quite a bit but after a while you’ll notice that a little goes a long way.

Still not convinced it’s acceptable to eat empty-calorie foods? For the first time ever the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2005) introduced the idea of “discretionary calories.” These are the extra calories one can use on whatever food they want as long as basic nutrition needs are met first – check it out (http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/discretionary_calories_amount_print.html )

Bottom line: When you know you can eat any food you want, anytime you want, your desire to overeat dissipates.

4. Combine the good-and-bad worlds

Now you’ll want to integrate your favorite foods with all the other foods out there. Instead of categorizing foods as “good” or “bad,” try focusing on the role each item plays. For example, some foods are great at nourishing your body (fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean meats) while others are simply for enjoyment (cookies, cake, ice cream, fried foods) and others are somewhere in between (pizza, hamburgers, mac-n-cheese, juice). The goal is to balance your intake of all these foods in a sensible way.

According to dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch authors of Intuitive Eating, http://www.intuitiveeating.com/ when their clients finally allow themselves to eat any food they want they eventually consume a diet that is 90% nutritious and 10% non-nutritious foods. I witness this type of behavior all the time with my 2-year old. She catches on quickly the food she thinks she can’t have. Once I give her the novel item, she eats a lot of it for a day or two until the excitement fades and then she’s back to eating a variety of foods.

5. Focus on the “how much” of eating.

According to the International Food Information Council, 6 out of 10 of Americans believe “what” they eat is more important for managing weight than “how much.” One area in which health professionals agree is too many calories result in weight gain – any type of calories. Yet a culture obsessed with “good” and “bad” foods encourages people to choose sides.

For example, I’ve worked with the elderly for years, many who are losing weight unintentionally. If we bought into culture’s idea of weight control, you’d think these people were eating only salads and fruit all day. Instead, they are given high calorie shakes, meat with gravy and rich desserts and they still lose weight – simply because they eat less food.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t pay attention to what you eat (that’s another topic entirely). But this idea that people have to eat only healthy food in order to lose/maintain weight creates a vicious cycle of getting on the wagon and falling off. But if women can learn to eat just the right amount that their bodies need, all the time, then they’ll be getting somewhere.

You can accomplish this feat by tuning into the amazing hunger signals you were born with but got lost along the way to adulthood. Eat according to your appetite, take time to enjoy each bite, eat satisfying food and stop when you start to feel full. After all, the best diet is the one created by you — always honoring your personal preferences. Yes, it’s really that easy.

Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD is the creator of RaiseHealthyEaters.com, a website/blog aimed at helping moms raise healthy and happy eaters while conquering their own food issues.