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7 Key Steps to Kick Binge Eating Addiction out of Your Head.

Written on March 9, 2010 – 3:45 pm by admin

Binge eating / overeating is mainly emotional problem. The good news is that you will be able to stop binge eating if you start to feel more confident, more powerful, more energised and more loved and loving. I guarantee that if you start feeling more positive about yourself it will be easier for you to stop this addiction.

To make things easier and more practical here are 7 Important Steps to kick binge eating out of your head.

Step 1. Make your S.M.A.R.T. goals that is Specific, Meaningful, Attainable, Realistic and Timed.  For example, goals like “lose weight”, “eat healthy”, or ‘have less stress’ are far too vague and unspecific to help to create a positive change.  On the other hand, goals like ”eat only 5 small meals a day and only water in between” , “ exercise 30 minutes a day every day”  or “meditate 15 min a day every day” sound like much more specific, meaningful and realistic.  

Step 2. Decide your final moment of success.

How would you know when you finally achieved your goal? For this reason you should create a picture in your head of “ideal you”. For instance, you may see a picture of yourself as a slim, happy and radiant lady who eats 5 small meals a day, exercises 30 min a day and mediate at least 15 minutes a day.  She does it all with ease and enthusiasm.

Keeping this picture in your head will always remain you of you are going to be. When you achieve what you imagined – that will be your final moment of success.

Step 3.  Identify your friends and enemies. Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line on the middle of page from the top to the bottom of the page. On the very top of the page on the left half write FRIENDS  and ENEMIES on the other half. Then think creatively what are they. For example, your friends could be exercise, meditation, eating fruits and vegetables, drinking water, feelings of excitement etc. Your enemies could be deep fried food, rich cakes, loneliness, boredom, sitting on the sofa, laying in bed too long, watching TV too much, negative attitude and stress.

Constantly remain yourself of who they are (friends and enemies) and decide who you are going to be with: with your friends or with your enemies.

Step 4.  Chew your food longer and start the meal with a mouthful of protein. When you start every meal with a mouthful of protein this reduces the cravings. This also reduces the amount of insulin released by your pancreas.

Make affirmation for yourself like: “The more I chew my food the healthier I become”. Repeat it as often as possible.

Step 5. Drink more water while you eat. Before you start eating – have a glass of water. Water fills the stomach and can reduce the cravings.

Step 6. Meditate every day to get in tune with your body. Binge eating means that you are not in tune with your body and eat emotionally instead of eating when you are hungry. Binge eating means you use food as a tranquiliser and pain reliever.   To stop doing that you must know when your body is hungry and when you just have cravings and urges.  Meditation is the best tool to focus your attention on your body’s vibrations and be able to identify your body’s needs.

Step 7. Exercise at least   30 minutes a day. Regular exercises will speed up  your metabolism and correct the damage binge eating may have done to your body. Regular exercises will also make your body to produce special chemicals – endorphins which make you happier, beautiful, radiant and confident.  When you become happy, beautiful, confident and healthy – binge eating will stop. Guarantee!!!

Can you put yourself in this picture?

Now, to make things even easier you can re-program your subconscious mind with specially design for binge eating meditation. Specially designed meditation will put you in tune with your body much faster and with less effort. Meditation is  a great tool to change your mind to the best.

To read more about mindfulness training for eating disorders go to http://www.meditation-sensation.com

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How to Turn Binge Eating into Healthy Eating?

Written on March 6, 2010 – 3:42 pm by admin

If you want to turn your binge eating habit into healthy eating habit, first of all you must BELIEVE that you can do it.  This is the first and most important step in the road to recovery from binge eating.

Put it this way: if you believe you can eat healthy without overeating – that means you will be able to eat healthy sooner or later. If you don’t believe it – you will not be able to eat healthy does not matter what kind of therapy you undergo, unless you start believing.

“But how can I believe in my ability to eat healthy if I always get overwhelmed with these unbearable urges to binge?” – you may ask.

Yes, urges to binge are strong but nevertheless it is possible to overcome them. Many people did and you can too.

You see, urges are just thoughts and feelings you get before starting to binge. Fortunately, these binging thoughts normally get weaker  if you do some changes in your daily routine.  

Here’re the important points:

  1. Start imagining yourself  slim (or have a slim picture of yourself  in your mind)
  2. Draw a schematic picture of yourself on a piece of paper where you are slim and happy.
  3. Set 30 min a day to sit quietly, close your eyes and visualise a slim, healthy you. Attach happy feelings to this picture of yourself.
  4. If you have a special time when you binge (for instance, some people binge eat after  work, or after school) – meditate every time after work, school or any time close to your binge eating time.
  5. Never eat alone. Get a friend or relative to share dinner with you.
  6. When you eat look at yourself from the distance – that mean observe yourself from the 3 d person perspective.  Mentally comment what’s happening while you  eat,  for example “ She is now eating her Caesar salad delicately and calmly because she is a lady. She is chewing slowly because she is enjoying the taste of it. She is talking to her friend about what happened during the day.” 
  7. Learn to observe your own behaviour and make regular mental comment of your own behaviour during the day. From the time you wake up – do mental commenting on your behaviour as if you observe yourself from the distance.
  8. Don’t keep too much food you can binge on in fridge. Put more fruits and vegetables in the fridge to in case you get hungry.
  9. Regular exercise changes the feelings from negative to more positive because of endorphins release. So, start regular physical activity – this will reduce your urges to binge (gradually).
  10. Always remain yourself that you don’t need so much food to keep you healthy. Only moderation in food consumption will make you happy and healthy.

Now, I’ve saved the best for last.

 If it looks to you like too much to do , than – wouldn’t it be easier for you if all the information will be installed into your subconscious mind by someone else – just by listening a hypnotic voice and putting you in a meditational state?  You can do that by using special Mindfulness Training for binge eating / overeating. It is easy and very effective.

To read more about mindfulness training for eating disorders go to http://www.meditation-sensation.com

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How to Resolve Self – Conflicts in Eating Disorder Sufferers.

Written on January 12, 2010 – 2:55 pm by admin

Eating disorders are rooted in emotional struggles. These struggles are deep emotional conflicts within the sufferer, these are called self-conflicts.

How the conflicts started in the first place?

This process begins by fantasizing at a very early age. People fantasize a script, for example like a Hollywood production focusing on TV stars or other celebrities. Then they start rehearsing their part. As they go, they either give up on their initial part and take up a new one, or they practice the first part and role -play that script out until it becomes who they think they are. Practising the script automates their behaviour and it becomes fixed.

For example, a young girl perceived that she is overweight. By looking through magazines, watching TV and movies she finds herself a role- model that is slim, polished and glamorous and play out this picture in her mind. From the same source she gets a script to follow to achieve this kind of unattainable look. She rehearses it until it becomes automatic and turns into an eating disorder, anorexia or bulimia.

Her imprinting environment plays a significant role in the alternative scripts available to her. If her parents happen to be too strict or uncaring, she would be unable to develop a positive coping strategy to counteract her developing problems. In some problematic families being warm and friendly is seen as an embarrassment, so the child becomes cold and aloof to compensate.

Self-conflict is a conflict between different “selfs” inside one person. There are 4 different “selfs”:

1. The actual self.
It is the private self. This self consist of thoughts we wish we didn’t have and actions we wish we haven’t done. It also contains our self-esteem, our attractiveness, and our secret ambitions. Eating disorders sufferers may dream of looking like a slim movie star, or a sport champion etc. Her/his self-esteem is really proportional to a degree of how alike she/he looks compared to their famous role-model they are trying to emulate.

2. The ideal self.
This self is built by culture and society. Ideal self is about living a perfect life, without any mistakes and therefore without room for growth.

3. The ought-to-be self.
This self is about our “should” and “oughts” which have been learned from our culture and our society but they are not ours. For example, when a swimming coach tells a young girl: ” You should lose weight immediately in order to fit the criteria for the swimming completion.” Initially the girl was probably OK with the way she was and didn’t think she needs to lose weight immediately. Her swimming coach installs the “ought-to-be self” in her. Her “ought-to-be self” may go into conflict with her “actual self” after the coach’s comments and if she is vulnerable she will develop an eating disorder in order to comply with the losing weight rules that have been set in her mind.

4. The desired self.
This is a self we believe we could be and desire to be. This self is especially obvious in young people when they plan for the future. Later in life this self can be a source of discontent if the desires have not been fulfilled. For example, a woman after 30 suddenly develops an eating disorder. This eating disorder is very likely to be a consequence of discontentment due to her unfulfilled desires of an earlier time (or the “desired self”).

What is a solution for solving this self-conflicts? Emotional healing would be the answer and you can put it into 5 steps:

1. Realize that one has emotional conflicts and they are probably the cause of the eating disorder.
2. Believe that one should and can solve these self- conflicts.
3. Accept that emotional healing is the only way to solve these internal conflicts.
4. Go through the emotional healing process.
5. Follow the emotional healing strategies as a way of living your life.

Emotional healing is the only answer to resolve self-conflicts in eating disorder sufferers. If emotional healing does not occur during a particular treatment – there is little hope for this kind of treatment being helpful.

Maybe in this case the person ought to look for different alternatives. Mindfulness training seems to prove itself as a great emotional healer for these kinds of ED sufferers. It has been proven that if one is mindful and aware, one can experience true freedom and liberation from all their self conflicts.

Dr Irina Webster MD is a Director of Women Health Issues Program. She is an author and a public speaker. To read more about mindfulness for eating disorders go to http://www.meditation-sensation.com

Categories: Anorexia, Bulimia, eating disorder | Tags: , , | No Responses

Bulimia effects on the brain: The simple steps to reverse it.

Written on November 27, 2009 – 3:07 pm by admin

Bulimia can affect the brain in several ways. First, it enslaves the attention system. The longer one has bulimia the more his/her attention system suffers. In some cases people even drop out of school, universities, give up on good jobs – all due to their inability to maintain attention and concentrate on their work.

In bulimics, food over-stimulates the attention centers represented through the central nervous system. The abnormal activation creates a state of emergency which brings forth the manifestation of the sympathetic nervous system (fight and flight response) when people think about binging food. 

As a result, the nervous system has to liberate more energy. The additional flow of energy into the human nervous system gives a feeling of relaxation or a floating feeling called a “high” during the binge.

 When the binge finishes, the sufferer is soon drained out of energy and this causes a kind of a hangover and total depression of their attention factors this is the state between binges.  The oscillation from over-flow to depression takes their attention fully and registers a shock on the central nervous system. That is why bulimics have difficulty maintaining attention on anything else except of food and binging.

Such repeated experiences create enslavement of their attention and destroys their brain cells at the same time.

Secondly on a physiological level, brain function may be impaired as the sufferer doesn’t have enough glucose, lipids or other molecules that can be broken down for energy. Sometimes, in severe cases the brain even starts to consume its own tissue to get the energy. That’s why in chronic sufferers the brain may shrink as a result of lipids in the brain being broken down for energy. This can result in serious brain damage.

These people feel lethargic, confused, powerless and helpless. They can experience headaches, neck pains, back pains and other uncomfortable sensation in their bodies. Often, their aches and pains are of a psycho-somatic origin and not physical.
 
The brain can also suffer because of the effects caused by electrolyte imbalances. When people purge they lose enormous amount of important chemicals (electrolytes) which makes brain function slow or even impossible depending on the total loss.

Third, on a psychological level the brain is damaged by abnormal thinking patterns as the individual believes that they are overweight when they are clearly severely underweight or normal. Bulimics also have a fear of putting on weight. These abnormal thinking patterns are so strong that they overpower all other thinking processes. That’s why bulimics get so preoccupied with food, weight and body image.

To conclude, bulimia definitely changes the brain structure to an unhealthy level. It makes the brain think, differently, work differently, function and process information differently.
The process of changing the brain is called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity can be bad, but can be good it depends how the sufferer chooses to use it.
 
If bulimics start using neuroplasticity in a positive way they can reverse the damage which has been done by the bulimia and return their brain to a healthy level. And not just that: they can make their brain work like the brain of a genius if they use neuroplasticity correctly.

You can read more about changing your brain patterns for eating disorders at http://www.meditation-sensation.com

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Mindfulness Training for Eating Disorders.

Written on November 3, 2009 – 2:40 pm by admin

Mindfulness Training for Eating Disorders.

Most eating disorders are linked to significant amounts of stress, mood disturbance, anxiety, phobias, substance abuse, and physical complications. All these factors have to be addressed when someone is trying to overcome an eating disorder.

Mindfulness training is a technique which can help a person to cope with all these factors. Mindfulness means a calm awareness of body functions, feelings, emotions, thoughts and sensations. Mindfulness consists of paying attention to an experience of the present moment — without moving into thoughts from the past or concerns about the future. Using mindfulness training people with eating disorders can attain control over their body and mind.

What exactly does mindfulness do for the mind and body?  The main benefits of mindfulness are:

1.       Calm and quiet the mind. This will bring more happiness, joy, positive feelings, appreciation and gratitude into people’s lives.  It will also increase kindness to yourself and others which is necessary for ED sufferers as they often behave badly to themselves and others due to their conditioning.

2.       Diminish the grip of habitual responses that cause suffering. ED sufferers all have certain habitual responses to their feelings, thoughts and emotions. For example, bulimics have habits to binge-purge at a certain time a day; anorexics have strict habits and routines about their diets and exercising.

Mindfulness can diminish these habitual behaviours to the point that the sufferer is able to choose how she/he is going to behave at a particular moment.

 

For example, instead of realizing 10-30 minutes later that you’ve been lost in bad thoughts about your body, weight, food, your bad memories or fantasies from the past, a person can stop themself after only 30-60 seconds from wandering thoughts using mindfulness training. With practise, people can increasingly observe these habitual responses and choose to respond in other more constructive ways.

 

3.       Develop a stronger “observing self”. This means to observe what one does. It is like you having a third person who sits inside your own chest and constantly watches what you do.


Mindfulness makes a person become an observer of what one does, thinks and feels.  This helps to have better control over their eating disorder thoughts and behaviours.

For example, when a person gets stressed, instead of reaching for alcohol or going on a binge –purge cycle, the person could simply sit and observe the negative emotions and sensations which were brought on by the stress until they are gone.

Unlike relaxation techniques mindfulness can be developed to the point where it can be practiced in the middle of stressful situations. So instead of reacting to stress a person starts to respond wisely. While being mindful a person can still remain alert and respond appropriately to the situation at hand, instead of being over powered by it.

 

4.       Slow down the pace of thoughts and become more attune to the present moment.   Eating disorder people often complain that they have too much continual inner “chatter” and images from the past or from the future in their minds.


This chatter and images don’t simply go away, because that’s the nature of the human mind. But they can be settled down with practice. This settling down of the mental processes brings relaxation and freedom.

 

With practice one will have the ability to choose what to think about instead of being dragged along with uncontrolled thoughts and feelings. This effect can be experience after just 8-12 minutes of mindfulness state of mind. So, if one practices mindful awareness at least 10 -15 min a day, it may possible for him/her to choose what to think instead of their thoughts going uncontrolled.

 

Mindfulness will also increase your concentration letting you perform task , study and work with better accuracy. It also improves the immune system and general health. It regulates the autonomic nervous system which control automatic functions of the body organs. Mindfulness is a great anti- aging factor as it improves metabolism of the cells.

 

Most eating disorder sufferers who practice mindfulness training find it an incredible tool to beat their problem right at root of the disorder, in the subconscious mind.

You can read about healing meditation for eating disorders CDs at http://www.meditation-sensation.com

Dr Irina  Webster

Categories: Anorexia, Bulimia, eating disorder | Tags: , , | No Responses

Magical Benefits of Meditation for people with Eating Disorders.

Written on October 12, 2009 – 3:03 am by admin

Many researches have proven now that people with eating disorders get a lot of benefits from doing meditation. Eating disorder sufferers have disturbances in autonomic nervous system, problems with impulse control and many emotional problems. All these can be improved with regular meditation.

You see, human beings are made up of three components—physical, mental and emotional. You can think of it as like a triangle with the same length sides. To correct eating disorders all the sides of triangle have to be balanced.

The Mental side represents the knowledge people learn about their condition and how to cope with it.  The physical side represents the natural strength of a person’s body which we inherit from parents. The Emotional side of the triangle is the one which always becomes unstable in people with eating disorders.

That’s why eating disorders sufferers have very bad mood swings, uncontrollable negative thoughts, long-standing bad feelings and painful sensations in different parts of the body that they try to moderate with food (obsessive eating or abstaining from food).

Emotional strengthening is the key to curing many eating disorder problems. Meditation and relaxation techniques are great strategies to do for emotional strengthening in order to become healthy again.

In order to understand about emotional strengthening, you first need to understand a bit about how the brain works. You’re probably aware that our brains work across a range of different levels or brain-wave frequencies. While the range is actually continuous, it is divided for convenience into 4 categories—beta, alpha, theta and delta.

As adults, we spend most of our waking time in the beta area. Beta is where we do our logical thinking, rationalising and planning.  Stress also occurs in the beta wavelength but on high frequencies beta waves. Eating disorder sufferers spend nearly all their time on high frequencies beta waves where the problem lies.

Alpha, on the other hand, while still an “awake” state, is that relaxed, day-dreamy state that you can go into when you are doing something creative (eg, painting, knitting)  or meditation.  It’s the time when your mind just wanders freely, and when time just seems to fly by.

Alpha-experience represents a relatively stress-free and euphoric state of being. For eating disorder sufferers the alpha state helps to balance their autonomic nervous system and correct impulse control problems.

Now here’s another important piece of the puzzle—besides containing our feelings and emotions, the alpha (sub-conscious) state also contains our “self-beliefs”. Our self-beliefs are the sub-conscious view you have of yourself (the real you), they drive our behaviour at a sub-conscious level. They are similar to the programs you have on your computer that makes it run.

So if, for example you have a self-belief that says “I am bulimic or I am a binge eater or anorexic”, the behaviour that results is that you perform compulsive eating, binge or starve yourself actions. This becomes the real you even if you consciously don’t want to become that person.

Where do self-beliefs come from? Mostly they develop in us at a very young age up to when we are teenagers. These self beliefs go through many developmental stages throughout our lives. It’s interesting to note that, unlike adults, children spend the majority of their waking time in the alpha region and this is why they are so resilient.

Most of our adult behaviours are based on “programming” we picked up before the age of 7. Many eating disorder sufferers picked up their programming when they where youngsters to teenagers.

When it comes to getting results, your self-belief (programming) will always win out over your conscious desire. So it does not matter if you get up every morning swearing that you will eat today, or you will not binge, but by the end of the day you have not done what you said you will do. This is because you are in the beta state and this can not affect the subconscious mind, so you are doomed from the start.

That’s why it seems impossible for many people to stop their eating disorders. But the problem is that they try to fight it with their logical conscious mind, being in a beta state, not an alpha state.

What happens if you target an eating disorder from the alpha state?

Well, you will get a completely different result. Being in alpha state you will target the emotional core of the eating disorders self-beliefs. When sufferers start to change their self-beliefs then the magic occurs:  then they can be cured from their eating problems.

Specific meditation which target people’s self-beliefs can create a real magic in the sufferers life. For eating disorder sufferers who put themselves in an alpha state while meditating regularly, means they can stop their disorder for good.

If the sufferer is only ever in a beta state this probably means they will have their disorder for the rest of their life, with no escape.

It has been proven that meditation brings enormous relieve for the eating disorder sufferer who starts to add meditation into their treatment methods.

But a word of warning, not any old meditation method will do, it has to be a system that is purposely made for anorexia or bulimia and eating disorders. It is totally useless listening to a meditation CD that is just generic, as the subconscious mind will simply dismiss it as irrelevant.

Also lookout for CDs that say they are for Anorexia or Bulimia, but are exactly the same with only the words anorexia replaced with bulimia but everything else does not change. Although anorexia and bulimia are similar they are not exactly alike, so you do need slightly different words to affect the subconscious mind.

Dr Irina Webster.

 You can read about healing meditation CDs for Anorexia-Bulimia at http://www.meditation-sensation.com

Categories: Anorexia, Bulimia, eating disorder | Tags: , , | No Responses

4 Simple Steps on How to Be Happy.

Written on September 28, 2009 – 12:33 pm by admin

How to be happy? The pursuit of happiness has become a global obsession. But do all people achieve this blissful and desirable state like happiness? Well, the statistics show that nearly one in four Australians have some sort of emotional or mental problems. Plus many people who do not have any diagnosis of mental or emotional disorders do not consider themselves happy.

Of course there are many reasons today for people to be unhappy: like economical crisis, job crisis, relationship crisis, health problems and much more. But the main reason for unhappiness today is considered to be the negative thought patterns that people create in their own minds and people stick to these negative thought patterns as they seem to be unable to detach themselves from their negative thoughts.

But it doesn’t have to be that way because everyone can be happy and feel good about themselves regardless of their situation or backgrounds. And now I want to share with you 4 simple steps which can help you to feel happy at least most of the time in your life.
 
1st Step: is to Determine what happiness means to you. Just sit down, take a paper and a pen and write down what happiness means for you. Because if you don’t know what happiness means for you then the chances are that you will never be able to find happiness.

Happiness can mean different things to different people. For example, for one person it may mean being in a relationship, for someone else it may mean feeling you have the ability to handle whatever life throws at you or maybe you need to have a purpose in life to be happy or just simply to have more fun.

Whatever it is that makes you happy – but you have to be careful not to relate it to purely physical pleasure. Physical pleasure lasts for only a fleeting moment and it normally comes from the outside world and not from the internal world where true happiness comes from. Plus if you rely on only external things to make you happy, then you will certainly have problems defining what happiness really is.

2nd Step: Act as if you are already happy. Neuroscience now proves that “acting as if” you have a trait causes both brain changes and chemical changes throughout the body. Therefore “acting as if you are happy now” with attention to what you are doing is a very powerful technique for realising what happiness is.
Just think about this: “How does a happy person talk? How does a happy person walk? How does a happy person smile? “Imagine all these behaviours, fix them in your mind, then do it – act as if you are a happy person now .
Or in other words : “Fake it – until you make it.”

3rd Step: to gaining happiness is to Meditate
Meditation is proven to increase happiness and contentment within yourself and people who meditate regularly are much happier then people who do not.

You must meditate at least 10 min a day in order to clear your mind from the burden of everyday hassles and put your brain into certain brain wave activities that creates happiness. You may already know that our brain works on different brain wave lengths and that brain waves activity change throughout the day: when we are stressed our brains works on one level of brain wave activity, when we are relaxed and happy brain wave activity changes to a different wave type.

Research shows that regular meditation creates certain brain wave activity that is associated with relaxation, happiness and internal satisfaction.

4th Step: Love .
You have to love and be loved in this world in order to be happy. Everyone desires love even those who seem to be cold and detached, they still want to be loved. Love does not mean to only love the opposite sex, or just sexual attraction this is only one kind of love and normally ends up as being superficial anyway.
 
Love is a universal feeling: you can love what you do –your job or your hobby, you can love your family and friends, and you can love your house, your dog or your cat. You can love many things and your LOVE will make you happy. So , if you ever feel unhappy find love and love deeply, unconditionally and you will see that there is no better happiness then to love and be loved.

To sum up I want to say that there is no person in this room who can’t improve their life and can’t learn to be happy. We all can and deserve to be happy. And basically this is what our life is about? What is the deep meaning in our life? It is just to be happy and make others happy as well. Because “The person who is happy will make others happy, too.”

Why happiness is important? – Happier people are generally healthier people – not only mentally, but also physically. So you can see than happiness is actually something that is really important, and is something that you might want to increase if you can. And following the 4 steps will help you to do that. You only need to:

1. Determine what happiness means to you.
2. Acting as if you are happy now.
3. Meditation for at least 10 min a day
4. To Love all things as much as possible and as deeper as you possible can

And I guarantee that these 4 steps to happiness will make you happy forever!
 For eating disorders help go to http://www.womenhealthsite.com/eating_disorders.htm

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Adult Eating Disorders – How to Deal If the Person Doesn’t Admit Having One

Written on September 27, 2009 – 2:08 pm by admin

If you are dealing with an adult who suffers from an eating disorder, then you should adjust your talk to a relevant format. Remember, an adult may use stronger language than a child would use. Do not get angry. It will not do any good, and will probably make things worse. Plus, the sufferer will not want to confide in you.

Remember that your appearance and tone of your voice should make her/him feel that you are coming with an open heart, and you do it only because you love her/him and care very much about the person: that you don’t have any intention of putting them down or embarrassing them in any way.

Be sensitive, diplomatic and intuitive. Regardless of what happens during the conversation, you should finish the exchange letting the person know that you are willing to listen to them anytime they feel more comfortable about talking.

If the person you want to help doesn’t admit they have a problem, then:

1. Understand that you (and the person close to you) are not responsible for their illness BUT you should take responsibility to do what you can to help them to improve and recover. Without this decision to help, it is more difficult for them to improve on their own.

2. Focus on loving and supportive relationships between you and the sufferer. Avoid being on a drama triangle which means avoid being a “Persecutor”, a “Rescuer”, or a “Victim”.

3. Create intimacy between you and the sufferer. When the sufferer feels completely secure with you, she/he will open up and talk about the problem.

The ways to create intimacy between two people are:
• Be Present and Tune In.
• Ask questions in which you can show your caring and lovable attitude toward the person.
• Listen with Empathy and compassion.
• Accept without Judgment.
• Saying softly “Tell me more….” when you are listening it will make her/him feel immensely loved by you and connected to you at a deeper level.
• Reflect Back.
• Respect Soul.
• Be Transparent. Let others see into your heart and inner world.
• Speak Gently.
• Realize that if the person doesn’t want to talk about her/his problems and denies their anorexia-bulimia, it could be the result of her/his emotional state of mind at that time. They could be experiencing emotional cut-off.

4. Emotional cut-off refers to the mechanisms people use to reduce anxiety from any unresolved emotional issues with parents, siblings, and other members from the family. To avoid sensitive issues, some people either move away from their families or rarely go home. Or, if they remain in physical contact with their families, they avoid sensitive issues by diverting the conversation, cutting off the risk of having to face their emotions.

The opposite of an emotional cut-off is an open intimate relationship. It is a very effective way to reduce a family’s over-all anxiety and acts like security priming.

5. Continue on with your education about eating disorders. The more you know about the disease, the easier it becomes to conquer it.

From our personal experience coping with a person suffering from an eating disorder, it is obvious that there isn’t one single definitive guide or course of action for you or the sufferer to follow that will guarantee a solution to their eating problems.

Your attitude and beliefs about how the sufferer should act and your ability to interact as a caregiver can affect the way you respond to your loved one.

Remember, that if one approach for coping with your loved one’s illness does not work, there is always another way. People who develop eating disorders are absolutely normal. However something happens in their lives that make them suffer emotionally and they turn to an eating disorder to compensate for this emotional discomfort.

So you as a caregiver have to be very understanding, caring and most of all none- judgmental if you really want to help.

To read about eating disorders books go to http://www.eating-disorders-books.com

Categories: Anorexia, Bulimia, eating disorder | Tags: , , | No Responses

5 Crucial Steps to Cure Your Eating Disorder with the Power of Neuroplasticity.

Written on September 24, 2009 – 4:12 pm by admin

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the human brain to change itself based on how we live our lives. Our brain consists of cells or neurons that are interconnected. It means that different life experiences and different behaviours are constantly changing the strength of these connections, by adding or removing connections, and by adding new cells.

“Plasticity” relates to learning by adding or removing connections, or adding cells. According to the theory of neuroplasticity, thinking, learning, and acting actually change the brain’s physical structure or anatomy as well as functional organization, known as physiology, from top to bottom.

The brain’s plasticity exists from “cradle to grave” and the adult brain is not “hard-wired” with fixed and immutable neuronal circuits as was previously thought.

So, neuroplasticity is the power to produce a more flexible and beneficial behaviour for the treatment of eating disorders. However, these positive changes will only happen if you target the eating disorder in a certain way. These can be subdivided into 5 steps of actions that you should undertake to stop your eating disorder.

The 1st step: Believe that you can stop your eating disorder.
Do exercises to begin changing the way your mind works.

2nd step: Re- Identify.
Recognize the false nature of your eating disorder thoughts.

3rd step: Re-Symbolize.
Escape from loop thinking that feeds the eating disorder.
Loop thinking is when a thought like binging or starving oneself gets caught in a loop going around it the brain continuously and never being released.

4th step: Re-Direct.
Defeat recurrent thoughts that give power to the disorder.

5th step: Re-Evaluate.
De-value and ignore harmful urges until they start to fade away.

By following these steps you can clearly see that by directing your attention away from food, weight and body image, you could learn to focus on positive eating habits and overcome destructive negative thoughts. Doing this, you as a eating disorder sufferer will be able to make permanent changes to your own neuronal pathways and change your life.

To conclude, I want to say that the power of neuroplasticity can be a real “cure” for eating disorder sufferers. By eating disorder “cure” I mean that you achieve a state of mind where you can control your thoughts and feelings, instead of the thoughts and feelings controlling you. You can do this by influencing your subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is your hidden level of awareness, where your automatism lies. This part of your brain controls all the things you have learned that are now automatic such as riding a bike, tying your shoe laces, and unfortunately for the sufferer the place where the eating disorder lives.

With the help of the 5 steps you will learn that it is possible for you to reach your subconscious mind and make certain positive changes that will turn your life around: at escape from your eating disorder.

Find eating disorders books go to http://www.eating-disorders-books.com

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Pregorexia : Is it a selfish obsession or a cultural problem with modern women?

Written on June 22, 2009 – 3:07 pm by admin

Pregnancy has always been a time when a woman can put on 30 -35 pounds and still feel good and proud of herself, after all she is bringing a new life into the world.  But now it is not like this for every woman.  A new study shows that 20% of all pregnant women in the Western world do not gain enough weight during pregnancy.

These women don’t eat enough during pregnancy or induce vomiting, overexercise, take laxatives and diuretics. They do these dangerous things  for the sake of having a slim figure during and immediately after pregnancy.

Many of these women get inspired by the super-slim celebrities whose pregnant images we often see on TV and magazine covers.  These celebrities manage to go through their whole pregnancy without putting on much weight and continue to look slim. They keep their belly bump small so they become skinny again immediately after their baby is born.  This unnatural “skinny” image becomes a role model of many other “non-celebrity” women to follow.

So, how much weight should a woman gain during a normal pregnancy? The normal range to gain during pregnancy is 25-35 pounds but the amount of weight to gain is different during 1st, 2nd and the 3rd semester.  In the 1st trimester it is normal to put on 5 pounds. During 2nd and 3rd trimester it is normal to put on 1-2 pounds per week.  So all up it should be about 30 pounds by the end of the pregnancy.

When a woman tries to be skinny during pregnancy she is starving the foetus.  Starving the foetus is a high risk action and can result in foetal mortality plus a high risk of getting conditions such as:
-  Spine bifida
- cerebral palsy
- increased incidents of asthma
- increased incidents of allergy
- ear infections
- low birth weight
-  prematurity
-  metabolic abnormalities
- growth retardation
-  birth defects
The  list of serious problems that a baby can get is much longer that this.

Don’t you think that pregorexia is the most selfish thing you can ever do?  Ask yourself what is this for?  – It is all for the sake of attaining this glamorous unnatural look you see on celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Nicole Ritchie who never even had a normal baby bump when they were pregnant, not to even mention their general low body weight.

Also, the big challenge for anorexic women (for those who had anorexia before pregnancy) is that they are expected to gain even more weight during pregnancy then non-anorexic women do – to support the baby.  How much more do you need to gain if you are anorexic?  You should check this with your doctor because weight gain can be an individual thing and depends on your initial body weight and body mass index to start with.

As a general guideline, pregnant women are supposed to put on about 30 pounds during pregnancy.  This means that you should consume an extra 50 calories in the first trimester of pregnancy, an extra 300 calories in the second trimester and extra 400-500 calories in the third trimester.

Now, how do you know if you are getting pregorexia?
If you think too much about being skinny during pregnancy, think about what clothes to wear so you look like you are not pregnant, about how to fool people in to thinking that you are not pregnant.  If you constantly think about food and eating or non-eating – these are all signs that you may have pregorexia.

If this is the case go to your doctor immediately and fix the problem as soon as possible. Otherwise your baby could be in big danger of dying in the womb. You will regret it your whole life, and even if the baby is born do you want it to suffer all its life from birth defects: just because you wanted to be thin to look good for the sake of vanity?

Anorexia and pregnancy are totally incompatible and against nature.

More information on this and other ED news.

eating disorders help go to http://www.womenhealthsite.com/eating_disorders.htm

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