Negative emotions, feelings and subconscious voices to binge, purge or starve yourself can become so strong
that the person can succumb to them again and again.
It often seems like there is nowhere to turn for help; but there is and that is where the use of motivational triggers come in handy.

Motivational triggers inspire mentally and spiritually. They also push away the past and help you focus on the present.

There are many motivational triggers that can be used every day.

You may already use your own personal motivational triggers but here is a list of the most common ones that work on most of us.

1. Listening to particular songs or music.
This is a really strong trigger to lift up your spirit and keep your desire to stop your bulimia or binge eating alive.
Although you have to be careful in choosing the right songs though, because some songs may bring on feelings that make
you perform your eating disorder behaviour.

Some song can be associated with something negative in your life or just switch on negative senses.
But with the variety of music that is around I am sure you will find music that motivates you to act your best.

Please refrain from music that has negative language, or bad language, or that is demeaning to others, this kind of music will
only make you worse.

2. Looking at art (pictures, sculptures etc.) that inspires you t is a great motivational trigger for art lovers.
When you look at art and get inspirational feelings from it you actually divert your attention away from food,
weight and body image worries towards the divine.

It can be very powerful for many people and can even make them create a piece of art. When you free your attention and focus from the eating disorder influence you will start to create things easier and faster.

3. Going to a special room (or place) in your house to think, meditate or connect with inner self.
Connection with your internal self is a powerful tool to motivate yourself to becoming free from your eating disorder.
Knowing your internal self can be difficult for eating disorder sufferers because their internal self is affected by the eating disorder.

The ability to separate yourself from your eating disorder and the ability to separate thoughts (those that come from you and those which come from your eating disorder) is important for your full recovery. Until sufferers learn to do this properly they can’t recover because the subconscious eating disorder voices will always overpower your logical reasoning.

Specialised eating disorder meditation can be an incredible tool to help you to control the voices and overpower them.

4. Going to a scenic area in your city or town to get away from the eating disorder distractions. This trigger can also be related to meditation and relaxation but using nature to help. A connection to nature can be one of the ways of connecting to the divine.
 Meditating on your health and freedom from your disorder can be helpful while out in a natural setting.

5. Going for a walk/ jog outside. This can be just a quick fixer when you need urgently to change your mental state and stop
those overwhelming subconscious voices that tell you to binge. Don’t keep yourself hungry though because hunger will definitely make you binge sooner or later. Eat often (6-7 times a day) but small amounts. This way of eating stimulates your metabolism and stops the feelings of hunger.

But do not use exercise as a way to feed your obsession, do not use it as a substitute for controlling your weight or body image problem.
Going for a walk or jog is only to break the moment and stop the feelings that make you binge.

6. Do any other activity that helps you clear your mind from negativity and to remain motivated.
Doing an activity which is pleasurable is important for breaking bulimia/binge eating cycle. Finding this kind of activity can be difficult for people with eating disorders because their negative food thoughts over-ride all the positivity in them.

To stop it you need to clear your mind first with meditation. Than in a meditative state ask your inner self what you really love to do.
The answer will follow if your mind is clear from eating disorder thoughts.

7. Write a diary. Writing a diary helps thousands of people to feel better. Initially you should just record your thoughts; any thoughts that come into your mind. Then when you get a hang of it, try to direct your thoughts in the direction you need.

That means diverting your attention away from food and weight, towards other activities which are positive and constructive.
Who knows – some people have become writers that way. Just keep trying!

If you use these triggers to stay motivated there is no way that you can continue with the bad behaviours that you want to eliminate from your life. If you learn to change focus you will be definitely on the way to a full recovery.

Dr Irina Webster MD is an expert in eating disorders, author and public speaker.

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

Passive meditation is very helpful for stopping your obsessive thoughts, eliminate worry, guilt and anger. But once you have reached a meditative level to just wait for constant improvement is not enough because you are likely to relapse in the mean time.

What I suggest you should do is to go beyond passive meditation and train your mind for organized dynamic activities.

By dynamic activities I mean to add on to your meditative practice a healing visualisation technique. This technique requires you to visualize yourself as a healthy, happy and vibrant person while you are on a meditative level in your mind.

There are four steps involved in this:

1step. Go into a meditative level, the alpha state like you do in normal passive meditation. You can do counting or just sit quietly and focus on your breath or other parts of your body. Do this for at least 5-6 minutes or as long as it takes for you know that you achieve a passive meditation level.

2 step. Imagine there is a screen in front of you like when you’re at the movies. Imagine on the screen yourself in your current condition – whatever you are like now: stressed from an eating disorder, binging and purging, starving yourself, overexercising or taking laxatives. See what you really look like now. Relive these feelings for the moment.

3 step. Stop thinking of this scene and imagine gently pushing it off the screen to the right hand side. Now, on the empty screen imagine another scene where you are healthy, vibrant, radiant, confident and happy. No signs of illnesses or any conditions should be on the scene. Visualize every detail of your ideal “you”. Visualize it vividly and feel the feelings of what your ideal “you” should feel like happiness, joy, pride, confidence etc.

Now play with this image, put colour into it, action and pictures. What do the clothes you are wearing look like, they should invoke good feelings, imagine yourself doing something useful and positive, visualize people around you, see yourself sharing a meal with these people chatting happily, enjoying yourself. Do this for at least 10-15 minutes.

4 step. Finish visualization by counting from 1 to 10 and open your eyes.
Now you can be confident that you have just put forces in motion through visualisation that will make you healthy, free and happy. As you gradually increase your skills doing this, you will notice that you will be able to believe in your progress towards curing your eating disorder more and more. In time and with practice the results you achieve doing this kind of dynamic meditation will astound you more and more.

I recommend you repeat these dynamic meditation techniques at least twice a day: in the morning after getting up from your bed, and at night just before going to bed. If follow these techniques and do it regularly and correctly for at least one month, you will be surprised at how good you will feel.

You will become more confident, your belief system will change for the better and you will see yourself as a much more powerful person than you use to be before beginning to do these dynamic meditation techniques.

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

Amazing things happen while doing meditation and the peace you find in calming and freeing your body and mind is awesome. The more you meditate, the deeper you go within yourself and the easier it will be for you to separate the eating disorder from your own self.

One of the major problems with eating disorder sufferers are that people can’t separate themselves from their ED and believe that the thoughts the eating disorder is sending them are their own thoughts: which they are not.

By realizing “your own self” you will know which thoughts come from you and which come from the eating disorder. Your body and mind will benefit also. At first, you will find that worries, anger and the feelings of guilt are absent while you are meditating. As time goes on, they stay away for longer, until one day they are gone for good.

Feelings of being obsessed with food and body weight will gradually fade too. If your food obsession returns in a few weeks after starting your meditation, then by increasing the time and deepening the regular meditation will neutralize the feelings that make your body sick. Here is all you have to do to begin to meditate.

When you awaken in the morning sit on the edge of the bed and set the alarm clock for fifteen minutes in advance in case you drift off to sleep during the exercise. Close your eyes and look upward at a 20-degree angle. This position of the eyes alone is a proven trigger to produce a meditative state in the brain.

Then, slowly, start counting backwards from one hundred to one. You should focus just on counting and not on anything else. If you keep your mind totally on counting only you will soon be in meditation state.

Do this counting technique at least twice a day in the morning after waking up and at night just before go to bed.

If you stick with this technique and do it for at least 10 days without break you will notice that your obsessive thoughts that make you binge-purge, starve yourself or over-exercise will not bother you as much. You will soon realize that a meditation state is incompatible with your obsession, anger, worries and guilt.

For some of you who find this technique too difficult to do, there are other methods to meditate available that may suit you better, so don’t dismiss it. Guided meditation methods for eating disorders are readily available and you can certainly try them out and get great results and success with your health and happiness.

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

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

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

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

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

“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

Tips to Increase Neurogenesis (Growing New Neurons) in Adult Brain in order to stop your Eating Disorder.This is what neuroplasticity is all about.  Now, let’s look at 11 major principles of how we can facilitate the processes of neurogenesis (growing new brain cells) in order to stop your eating disorder.

Neurogenesis  is  growing new brain cells (neurons).

By now you probably know that eating disorders are problems related to emotions, perception and specific neuronal pathways in your brain which related to eating disorder behaviour. And that in order to stop your eating disorder  you need  to create new neuronal pathways responsible for  good constructive behaviour to replace  the faulty neuronal pathways.

1. Learn everything you can about how the brain works. Even some basic understanding will help you to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing structure with billions of neurons and its connections. When you understand what happens in your brain while you binge-purge or starve yourself – you will have an idea of how to reverse it.  Until you understand this process you are like a blind person who is trying to find his way home walking through the debris in the wilderness.

2. Take care of your nutrition. Your brain consumes 20% of all the oxygen, nutrients and energy you consume. If you are an anorexic and don’t eat (or eat little) your brain starves. It can not function properly and that’s why people with anorexia stop seeing a clear picture of reality that other people see. They see themselves fatter than they are, they judge others by the way they look and how skinny they are. And their starving brain is a big contributor to it.  The Brain can only function at its best when it has enough energy and nutrition to process the information.

3.  Moderate physical exercise enhances neurogenesis (production of brain cells). But eating disorder sufferers have to be careful not to over exercise because many of them already do overexercise. Always remember that when you exercise the spending of energy increases rapidly and body needs energy to burn. Energy comes from the food we eat but when there is not enough energy from food, the body starts consuming its own tissue as an energy source. Fat burns first. But if a person does not have fat (or has very little) like an eating disorder sufferer, the body start burning muscles and other body tissues.  And that is a dangerous process. It can lead to dystrophy and caxechia – the syndrome is what a person looks like who has just come from a concentration camp we have all seen the pictures. Please Remember: moderate exercise is great; I don’t mean running 10 miles a day. But you need to make sure that you have something to burn – not just burn your muscles and brain tissue as an energy source.

4.  Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts, until they become your mindset. Look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Find and follow your main purpose in life.
Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevents the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.

5. Get excited and thrive on learning and mental challenges. You have probably heard the expression “Use it or lose it.” And – yes it does apply to the brain also. What relation this principle has on eating disorders, you may ask. The answer is – everything.  You see, the brain of an anorexic – bulimic person is full of faulty neuronal pathways which are responsible for their anorexic-bulimic behaviours. There are pathways for binging-purging, for starving, for taking laxatives and diuretics, over exercising etc. When you start learning new constructive thing – like for example, how your brain works, its anatomy and physiology etc. – you actually will produce new neuronal pathways in your brain which will take the place of your old pathways and replace them.
Learning can be about anything you want to learn but it has to be good, positive and constructive. Something you can share with others and teach them to do the same. The more you learn this new thing the more it becomes your new mindset and the closer you became to eating disorder recovery.

6. Find a purpose. Aim high. As far as we know humans are the only self-directed organisms on this planet. This means we are the only ones who can make decision and exercise our own will.
If you don’t know what your purpose in life is – don’t worry. It will come if you keep focusing on finding it. And don’t forget to learn about how your brain works – it also will give understanding on how life has a purpose which is already created and imbedded in your mind.

7. Explore and travel. It has been proved that travelling to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment.  This will pull your attention away from your eating disorder and help you to develop new neuronal pathways in the brain – different from what the eating disorder has created.  It can also help to produce more good chemicals in the brain (neurotransmitters) which are responsible for your attention span. More attention will make your learning of new things easier.

8. Don’t succumb to the opinions of others. Don’t think that what is in the media, something said by your neighbour or what politicians say are true. Have your own opinion. Remember that media makes billion of dollars every week to program people’s mind by displaying woman’s body images that are impossible to achieve by any normal person. Most diets and other health care products which claim to improve your health don’t work or work on a placebo effect only.
9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendship. This is very important for eating disorder sufferers because generally eating disorder sufferers are withdrawn from others and prefer to spend time alone with their eating disorders. By
spending your time with good friends you take yourself away from the eating disorder. You will also develop different neuronal pathways which if exercised regularly can replace the eating disorder pathways.

10. Remember: Laughter is the best medicine. Spend more time laughing – it is healing and puts you in a different state of mind. I recommend you even to find jokes about weight and food , laugh at it and look at the funny side of it.  For example, when you see the funny side of being anorexic or bulimic you will change your attitude to your abnormal behaviour. Laughter also improves hormonal status in the body – which normally suffers in anorexic-bulimic people. Laughter also helps to release good chemicals in the brain which can change your brain for the better.

11. Love. Love more, learn about what love is and how you can feel love and be loved. Learn how to give your love to people and receive the love back. I am not talking here just about romantic love (although this is the love too). I am talking about love as a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment.

Eating disorder sufferers don’t know exactly what these feelings are – and it is one of the reasons they have their eating disorders.  So start educating yourself about this topic and you will discover miracles.

For more information on neuroplasticity and EDs go to

eating disorder help go to http://www.eatingdisorder-institute.com ]]> http://bulimia-cure.com/blog/2009/06/12/tips-to-increase-neurogenesis-growing-new-neurons-in-adult-brain-in-order-to-stop-your-eating-disorder/feed/ 1 http://bulimia-cure.com/blog/2009/01/19/eating-disorders-are-the-reverse-side-of-the-child-obesity-campaign/ http://bulimia-cure.com/blog/2009/01/19/eating-disorders-are-the-reverse-side-of-the-child-obesity-campaign/#comments Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:06:13 +0000 admin http://bulimia-cure.com/blog/?p=34 In 2006 the Australian Government launched a $6 million campaign to reduce Child obesity and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) welcomed the focus on kids’ health.

The idea was to focus on junk food and get parents to stop the child from eating fast foods, sweets and other unhealthy foods.  TV, radio and newspapers were running government sponsored ads to point out the dangers of these kinds of foods, with the idea to get kids eating more healthy foods.

This at the time seemed a very noble cause as overweight kids are a big problem in all western countries. The government was correct that for these overweight kids there was a great risk to their health from diseases such as diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure etc, in later life.

What they did not factor in was the psychological effects on these overweight kids and may have inadvertently created a whole new generation of eating disorder victims.
Kids were encouraged to start diet clubs at school and there have been stories of kids being weighed at school, at times in front of the whole class. We learn of incidents of bullying and social isolation of larger children which is another anecdotal trigger for eating disorders.
What has now happened is a lot of these overweight kids are starting to be ostracized by their peers and so much pressure being placed on them that they are starting to suffer from stress and other psychological ailments, like anorexia and bulimia.

What the so call experts in the government ranks forgot was that the child brain is like a giant sponge and very plastic. It absorbs huge amounts of information forming neuronal pathways with the information that is deemed to be important.

So constant teasing and emotional abuse from other kids for being a bit overweight can have a devastating effect on the child and the way they see themselves, or to put it simply their body image.

This added to the fact that the so called perfect body type is the emancipated Hollywood stars and the super thin catwalk models they see in the media: it is easy for the plastic brain of the child to form a distorted view of reality.

Even shows like Australian Idol and American Idol favor the slimmer better looking contestant, with the bigger contestant voted out of the show even if they are fantastic singers. They just don’t fit that TV mode or what a modern singing idol should look like. This is an extremely bad role model for the slightly overweight child or teenager who watches these shows; it sends a lot of false messages to their brain.

The major problem that arises from all this negative bombardment on the child about weight is the fact that it will be formed in a child brain and formed by child logic, e.g. eating food equals becoming fat, equals being teased, equals bad emotions. So the remedy is to stop eating, loose lots of weight and you will be accepted.

When these kids become adults this faulty distorted thinking will be a full blown case of an eating disorder and extremely difficult to treat because it was formed in the plastic brain of a child with child logic and emotions.
But luckily there have been major breakthroughs in the treatment of eating disorders using the fact that our brains remain plastic even into adulthood, it is call neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is a method where we are able to form new neuronal pathways by using a set of mental exercises built on new positive emotional input. Once these new pathways have been built and are used instead of the old destructive ones, the old pathways will loose their power: hence the eating disorder will disappear.

Will this be easy for this new generation of eating disorder sufferers to do:  no absolutely not.  The problem as stated is the fact that these faulty neuronal pathways have been build in the child brain and will be extremely hard to shift.

Unfortunately a lot of children will fail and suffer lifelong eating disorders, but luckily a lot of people will succeed using the neuroplasticity approach. Many more than will succeed with this new approach than the conventional treatment used today to treat eating disorders.

William Webster BA.

To read more about bulimia help go to http://www.mom-please-help.com