Melissa McCreery

It’s clear that keeping a food journal or food diary—a written record of every bite you put in your mouth—is an effective weight loss tool. Here is a better way!


It’s clear that keeping a food journal or food diary—a written record of every bite you put in your mouth—is an effective weight loss tool. Women who record what they eat eat less and lose more weight. They are also more successful at keeping the weight off. A food diary (done correctly), can also be an effective tool for taking control of emotional eating.
The problem is, just about everyone hates keeping a food log, and setting up an approach that you dread can be an easy path to self-sabotage. Writing down everything you put into your mouth can be inconvenient, tedious, and it requires a lot of discipline. It can also be difficult to record portion sizes accurately, and far too tempting to bend the truth.
Here’s a smart weight loss tip that holds promise. You don’t have to write down everything you eat anymore to get the benefit of keeping a food diary. There’s actually a simple, graphic and accurate way to record what you eat—at the touch of a button. Grab your cell phone and snap a picture. Yep, take a picture of your food—all your food—before you eat it. Pictures don’t lie. They don’t fudge on portion sizes (consider placing something like a fork in the picture so that you can assess for scale), and they show everything on your plate. They even document the times when you skip using the plate (not a good weight loss tactic, by the way).
Research indicates that keeping a photographic food diary may work even better than a written one.
What to do with these photos? A simple, free solution is to set up a free blog at BariatricPal. You decide whether you want to keep it private (for your eyes only) or open it up to friends or to the world (accountability helps). New apps and options are being developed as we speak. For those on Twitter, this app, for tweeting what you’re eating, allows you to add pictures to your tweets and says it will be streamlining the process in the near future.
What do you think? Have you used a food diary (written or photo-based)? How has it worked for you? What has helped you stick with it, or what has gotten in your way? Please share your thoughts by adding a comment.

If taking control of overeating and emotional eating was easy, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. The truth is, once you know a bit about nutrition and the basics of “eat less, move more,” finding success with overeating usually boils down to how you manage choices, thoughts, and feelings in the rest of your life. Emotional eating is a big reason women overeat, but the way we think can also impact our success.
When it comes to breaking free from emotional eating and overeating, the head game is huge. If you feel trapped in vicious cycles with overeating and weight or if you aren’t creating the success you want, it’s probably time to take a look at whether your beliefs are sabotaging your efforts.
Five beliefs that may be sabotaging your success with overeating:
All-or-nothing thinking. All-or-nothing thinking is really perfectionism in disguise. It’s the belief that you’ve either succeeded or you’ve failed. It’s a way of approaching life that may lead to thoughts like, “I’ve blown it, now I might as well finish the leftovers because I’m going to have to start over again in the morning.” All-or-nothing thinking never allows you to feel good about what you are doing, because no one can get it all right all the time. The truth is that your relationship with food unfolds all day long. You’ll have good moments and not-so-good ones, but whatever happened a moment or an hour ago does not erase your ability to do something positive in the present. Instead of focusing on getting it perfect, think about doing your best—one step at a time.
I don’t deserve it. One of the biggest reasons women overeat is because they are using food as a substitute for something else—Overeating becomes a sneaky way to give yourself a treat or a break or to comfort yourself when you don’t feel entitled to let yourself have what you really need. Here’s another hard truth: we tend to attract people who treat us the way we treat ourselves. Treat yourself with pride and respect and indulge in and savor what you crave and you are likely to start commanding more of the same from those who surround you. If you feel like the people in your life don’t treat you very well, take a look at the beliefs you have about what you deserve.
It’s not okay to be selfish. Many of us were raised with the idea that we need to put others first or focus on taking care of the people we care about. There’s nothing wrong with being kind and nurturing—it’s a fantastic strength to have. However, it can lead to self-sabotage if you aren’t also prioritizing your self and shining your nurturing and your compassion on yourself along with everyone else. Putting yourself first isn’t selfish. It’s what helps you to bring your best version of you to your life, your relationships, and your work.
I “should” be able to figure this out. This self-sabotaging mindset is frequently accompanied by self-blame and angry judgments with yourself because you can’t figure it out. This belief tends to lead to feeling alone and isolated and not getting the help and support that you need. Living alone with the feeling that you are failing when you shouldn’t be can also create even more shame and loss of confidence. This is a particularly sticky trap, but it’s also one where you can have an amazing impact if you break free. Many women are astounded by what happens when they reach out for help, share their struggles with another supportive person, or start looking outside themselves for the resources and tools to take control of overeating.
The “should” trap. “I should be able to figure this out” is only one should that sabotages success. Shoulds in general are something to be careful of. Real, lasting success is created when we combine solid information, strategies, and tools with what we know about ourselves and what works for us. Too many shoulds can disconnect you from yourself and your own inner wisdom. They can lead to overwhelm and can incite your inner rebel to throw in the towel. Ask yourself if your should is really an I want to. If it isn’t, do you have a compelling reason for using it? My client could not get enthusiastic about her doctor telling her she “should” lose eighty pounds. She did get motivated when I helped her find her want. Once she got clear that what she really wanted was to be healthy and fit enough to go bike riding with her daughter again, she felt ready to do some hard work. The should dragged her energy down. The compelling reason she found lit her up and got her moving toward a goal.
Are you trying to break free of vicious cycles that you keep getting caught in? Don’t ignore your head game! Check out this follow up article because I’m going to share more beliefs that you might want to challenge.

Peace with food means that food, weight, or your diet is not the first thing you think about when you wake up or before you go to bed. Find out how to make peace with food now!


The yearning to find peace with food is usually a palpable one. When women speak about their motivation to stop struggling with food, find a weight that works for them, stop bingeing, and feel healthy and fit, the energy is usually intense. When you struggle with food, the wish to find peace—permanent peace—usually runs pretty deep.
No more diets. Pants that always fit. Feeling confident that your weight is going to be about the same as it was last week or last month or even last year. Peace with food means that food, weight, or your diet is not the first thing you think about when you wake up or before you go to bed. Peace with food means that sometimes the chips go stale and the leftover candy gets forgotten in the back of the cupboard.
Because the food is no longer that important.
Peace with food  is definitely possible. But in order to get there, you have to go beyond the food. And in order to do that, many women need to come face to face with something much bigger.
In order to make peace with food, you must make peace with your life.
Many women say they want peace with food and an end to yo-yo dieting. They say they’d do just about anything to achieve it. But the truth is, many women are trying to stop overeating without changing anything else.
It doesn’t work.
“I am lonely and I can’t do anything about it—so I eat.”
“I don’t have time to eat lunch and then I come home and binge.”
“I’m dealing with people who are angry and unreasonable. How do I make that okay?”
“I need someone to hold me accountable.”
“I’m busy from the time I wake up until I go to bed. There is no time for me. Food is my comfort. How am I supposed to stop eating?”
Peace with food isn’t really about food. Oh, on one level it is. It’s about feeling in control and effective and able to make choices that are in your best interest. It means (usually) not choosing foods or portions that leave you feeling uncomfortable or sick afterwards. It’s about you (not what’s on the plate) having the power and the control. But I hope you can see that I’m talking about so much more than food here.
Food only loses its power when we own our own power and stop using food as a band aid. Too often, food is the quick fix for things that we are not willing (or are too fearful) to address directly.
No food plan in the world is going to help the women above with their loneliness, their unwillingness to take time for themselves, their struggles with assertiveness, and their ability to ask for help. These are really gnarly difficult parts of life to wrestle with. Honestly, fighting with the chocolate chip Cookies (and even feeling guilty when you lose), can feel a lot less daunting. It’s easier (in the short run) to stay on the diet roller coaster than it is to make peace with food.
Peace with food requires making peace with your life. And sometimes that means creating a life that you can feel peaceful with. Learning to say no. Addressing the difficult relationships. Finding ways to take good care of yourself and sometimes putting yourself first. It means addressing the places that may feel scary: loneliness, fear, worry—even boredom. Taking risks that you might have been putting off taking for years. It’s hard stuff to swallow, but the payoffs can be huge. Creating peace with food really does have the potential to transform your life.
And before you get too overwhelmed, please remember that there are real tools (that work much better than diets) to help you do all these things. All of these challenges get more manageable and less terrifying when you find someone to help you through them—and when you take them on in small, palatable bites.
So imagine again that your pants always fit and your weight stays where you want it to. That you don’t diet and you don’t binge and you generally make good choices. And this time understand that it happens because you’ve looked the loneliness in the eye and gotten the help that you need to change it. You’ve learned to stand tall and speak up on your own behalf. You aren’t ending the day feeling exhausted and used up and like you don’t have the energy to do more than open the ice cream.
You’ve rebalanced your life. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve unleashed your inner champion. That’s what it takes to make peace with food.

Taking control of emotional eating and overeating is usually a process. Figuring out what to do instead of emotional eating can be tricky, in part because food is so darn easy to turn to and it is so widely available.
If you want to make lasting changes with your eating habits or your weight, it’s important to have two sets of strategies—quick, practical strategies that get you through difficult times, and tools and strategies that help you address the root causes of your overeating—so it doesn’t keep coming back and taking control of your life. I shared tips for creating quick, in-the-moment strategies in my last post. In this post I’ll share why it’s crucial to identify and address the root cause.
Stress eating, anxious eating, eating because you are bored or lonely, eating because you are angry or tense or overeating after a hard day are all types of emotional eating. It’s all too easy to turn to food to try to comfort or to distract or to numb. Food is quick, easy to “apply,” and almost always present. Food often makes you feel good—for a few moments.
The problem is, the salve doesn’t last, and, the food doesn’t do anything about really addressing the problem that triggered your eating.
If you are an emotional eater, one of the most empowering things that you can do is stop berating yourself and calling yourself names when you overeat and turn to food. Start by respecting that you do it for a reason. If you can face your desire to eat with respect, you can start to examine what I call the “real cravings” that underlie or trigger your desire for food.
What are you really hungry for? Whether it’s love or respect or stress relief; excitement or comfort,, compassion, or something different, identifying your real craving puts you in the driver’s seat. When you identify and begin to address the root cause of your food attraction, food loses a lot of its power and its hold on you (you might be amazed). Once you are clear that it isn’t really about the chocolate doughnut (or whatever you are craving), your mind won’t be so persistently focused on it. There’s a huge bonus payoff as well. When you identify the root cause of your emotional eating and start feeding that true craving, not only does emotional eating get better—so does your life. Truly taking charge of emotional eating guides you to address important concerns so that your life works better for you. Creating peace with food really does mean creating a better life.
If you would like an accelerated, step-by-step guide for taking control of emotional eating, in a do-able way, you’ll want to take a look at the Emotional Eating Toolbox™ 28 Day Program, my self-guided use-at-home system that walks you through the process of transforming your relationship with food through daily, do-able steps.

Few things can be as frustrating as trying to change overeating habits and a busy lifestyle, multitasking, and being distracted can really get in the way. food is always available and it’s so easy to reach for food or to overeat without even really knowing why. Every dieter knows how easy it is to start the day with good intentions about portion sizes and food choices only to find yourself having eaten more than you wanted, binged on junk food, or picked away at a plate of Cookies that someone brought into the office.
Emotional eating–eating when you are stressed or overtired or even bored can be an automatic response that happens before you are even fully aware that you are doing it. Before you add unhelpful guilt to your list of triggers for overeating or ditching your weight loss plan, know that there is a much more enjoyable alternative. You deserve to know how to stop stressing, stop doing too much, and create some inner peace.
Today’s tip for creating less stress and breaking old patterns with food and overeating: eat a mindful meal.
It amazes me how many people multitask when they eat. When is the last time that you were fully present with the meal that you were eating? Fully present means that the TV wasn’t on and you didn’t have a book or a computer in front of you. You weren’t working or making lists of things to do. You weren’t driving somewhere or talking on your cell phone. When is the last time that you were fully aware—with all your senses—of each bite that you put into your mouth? When you truly savored every last morsel? When you were one hundred percent aware of what you were feeling and what you were experiencing while you ate?
For many reading this, I know it’s been a long time. Guess what? Mindful eating can be the key to breaking old habits with food and creating new ones. And you can get started almost instantly—as soon as you sit down to your next meal.
How to eat a mindful meal
Take a deep breath or two and allow yourself to really be in your body. Notice how your mind and your body are feeling. Really notice. You may have gone hours without paying attention. What’s on your mind? What emotions are you experiencing? How does your body feel? Are you tense or relaxed? How hungry are you? Where do you feel it in your body?
Put your food on a plate and sit down somewhere where you can enjoy your food without being distracted. Take a few more deep breaths before you do anything.
The goal of mindful eating is to fully experience every molecule of this meal. Savor it. Use all your senses. Slow down. Notice your food before you put it into your mouth. Smell it. Think about the experience you anticipate before your taste buds encounter what you are eating. Take a small bite. Feel it in your mouth. Really taste it. Stop and consider what you taste. Move the food around in your mouth.
How does it feel? Appreciate the flavor, the texture, the smell. Chew it well or let it melt in your mouth. Take your time.
Another goal of mindful eating is to fully experience yourself eating this meal. This might be a very new experience.
Be aware of how it feels to slow down and savor. You might be surprised at emotions that come up. Some women learn that they’ve developed a pattern of eating mindlessly so they won’t be aware of their thoughts and feelings or so they can overeat without really thinking about it. Obviously, that’s not helpful. As you eat, after each bite, ask yourself if you’d like another. Notice how your hunger changes. Notice when you stop savoring. Notice if you start to feel impatient with mindful eating.
As you practice mindful eating, you are likely to notice things about your eating and your relationship with food that aren’t really about the food at all. You may also find that you need some new tools or strategies to replace overeating so that you can be successful in the long term. It’s not necessary to practice mindful eating every single time you eat (although it can be helpful), but it can be very worthwhile to practice eating mindfully at least once a day. Some clients find it very helpful to identify the periods of eating that are the least mindful for them and use mindful eating techniques specifically during those times.

No matter how much yoga, meditation, or spa time you put in, life will eventually through you a curve ball. And if your life is anything like mine, life often seems to throw two or three at once. The balance can tip from bliss and balance to stress and overload pretty quickly. And the best new habits, the most well thought out food plans, and the loveliest self-improvement strategies can quickly go to h*ll in a hand basket when stress, exhaustion, or just-plain-misery enter the picture.
When the going gets tough—many women just want a carb-fest.
One of the most frequent questions I am asked is how not to turn to food for stress relief or comfort.
Having a rough day, week, or month? Here are some strategies that can help:
Strategies for Avoiding Stress and Reducing Comfort Eating
Have an Instead Plan
White knuckling it rarely works for very long, and when you eventually have to let go, the reverberations can be huge. In fact, one of the most common triggers for food binges is deprivation and extreme dieting. What this means here is that “not eating,” is not a strategy. If you are going to get through a rotten day without resorting to chocolate, you’re going to need some ideas of what to do instead.
Here’s something else you need to know. When you are in a state of stress or overload, or any other strong emotional state, your brain isn’t firing on all cylinders. Creative problem solving is impaired. It’s best to create your Instead Plan before the crisis hits. You’ve heard this from me before. Start making a list of possible alternatives to overeating now.
Aim for the low hanging fruit
Strategies to avoid comfort eating and stress eating should be easy. If you are having a bad day, don’t expect an awful lot of yourself. When I help my clients craft their instead plans, it’s not uncommon for their first ideas to be out of alignment with their mood and their energy level. “I know that instead of bingeing on leftovers, I should go work out/do the dishes/stop procrastinating on … ” are all common responses. Maybe. I’m a firm believer in the power of exercise to shift mood and energy, and accomplishing something does feel good. But if you feel like collapsing onto your sofa and you give yourself a choice between leftover macaroni and cheese and a half hour on the elliptical or finishing your taxes—do you think your instead plan has an iota of a chance? Really?
Identify strategies that match your energy level and your motivation on a cruddy day. That probably means going for the low hanging, easy-to-grab fruit. Also, make sure your strategies meet the same need that the food would be attempting to fill. If you are seeking indulgence and comfort, than “tough love,” isn’t going to fit the bill. Instead of a hard workout, you might want to consider a movie you can get lost in, a phone call with someone who loves you, a lazy evening on the sofa, or a long hot shower.
Retreat
Sometimes we resort to stress or comfort eating because we simply don’t know what else to do. It’s an attempt to keep going when the going has gotten really tough. It’s hard for high-achievers to comprehend, but sometimes the most effective thing you can do is to do nothing. Stop. Step away from your stress for ten minutes or a day. Change your scenery—leave the room, go outside, or take a short drive. Consider retreating into your senses. Choose a short escape into a sensory experience that is not taste—a warm bath, great smelling tea, a foot massage, or some fragrant flowers. Take a nap. If you are someone who seems to spin out of control with food after a long stressful day, don’t be afraid to throw in your cards for the night and go to bed early. You could probably use the extra sleep anyway and you’ll wake up with more perspective and better focus.
Call in the troops
Stress is often not only a trigger for overeating, but for isolation. It’s not uncommon to feel “too busy” to ask for help or to reach out for support. It’s a big mistake. Tell those who love you that you are having a hard time and you could use some support (even if you aren’t sure what they could do). Give away, delegate, or ask for help with the tasks that you can share or let go of. Ask for company, or ask for the support you need so that you can be left alone. Here’s something important to note. Strategies for avoiding comfort eating and stress eating aren’t usually major life overhauls. They rarely fix the stressful or difficult situation—but then again, neither does eating. What these strategies are designed to do is to help you feed your spirit and your soul during a very tough time.
Isn’t that what comfort really is?

What should you eat to lose weight? How much energy have you devoted to this question? Low carb? Raw food? Jenny Craig? Have you ever considered that it might not be "the diet" that is the solution? Read more to find out!


What should you eat to lose weight?
How much energy have you devoted to this question? Low carb? Raw food? Jenny Craig? Women spend billions of dollars on weight loss, and create a lot of stress making decisions about which diet or weight loss plan to try this time. It’s ironic, because deep down, we know that diets don’t work. And in fact, many of us have lived out the lesson that diets can lead to binge eating and weight gain and bigger problems with food than we started with.
It’s not hopeless. Healthy weight loss and what I call peace with food are possible, but they don’t begin with a diet.
Here’s the important truth:
The battle with overeating isn’t going to be solved by a diet because the root battle with most overeating isn’t about the food.
If you want to break free from overeating cycles and weight loss battles, the critical question you need to be asking is this: What are you using the food for?
What’s triggering you to overeat?
What propels you towards the vending machine or sends you straight for the comfort food?
What role does food play in your life?
How does your current way of eating serve you?

THESE are the million dollar questions. The truth is, you are smart and resourceful and you better believe that you are turning to food for a reason.
The way you are currently eating does something important for you.
Maybe your eating distracts you or comforts you. Food might momentarily boost your mood or your energy. Maybe you use it to procrastinate or hide out or reward yourself. Are you eating to cope with stress or frustration or exhaustion? Be curious about your hunger and the reasons that you eat.
Understanding the meaning of your overeating changes everything. Understanding the purpose of your overeating helps you move beyond unhelpful self-blame and shame and guilt and into a place of compassionate understanding. From this place it’s possible to start addressing the real root causes.
Because it’s probably not about the food.
If you are a stress eater, you’ll want some more effective tools for addressing the stress in your life. Comfort eater? With the right tools, you can definitely find a better way. Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Nervous? Upset? There are better tools and strategies to address these feelings. And the truth is, once you have the tools and strategies to feel effective, food just doesn’t have the same appeal. Really.
Effective weight loss doesn’t start with the food—and—when you address the root cause of your overeating, you don’t just change your weight. You change your life.

It’s clear that keeping a food journal or food diary—a written record of every bite you put in your mouth—is an effective weight loss tool. Here is a better way!


It’s clear that keeping a food journal or food diary—a written record of every bite you put in your mouth—is an effective weight loss tool. Women who record what they eat eat less and lose more weight. They are also more successful at keeping the weight off. A food diary (done correctly), can also be an effective tool for taking control of emotional eating.
The problem is, just about everyone hates keeping a food log, and setting up an approach that you dread can be an easy path to self-sabotage. Writing down everything you put into your mouth can be inconvenient, tedious, and it requires a lot of discipline. It can also be difficult to record portion sizes accurately, and far too tempting to bend the truth.
Here’s a smart weight loss tip that holds promise. You don’t have to write down everything you eat anymore to get the benefit of keeping a food diary. There’s actually a simple, graphic and accurate way to record what you eat—at the touch of a button. Grab your cell phone and snap a picture. Yep, take a picture of your food—all your food—before you eat it. Pictures don’t lie. They don’t fudge on portion sizes (consider placing something like a fork in the picture so that you can assess for scale), and they show everything on your plate. They even document the times when you skip using the plate (not a good weight loss tactic, by the way).
Research indicates that keeping a photographic food diary may work even better than a written one.
What to do with these photos? A simple, free solution is to set up a free blog at BariatricPal. You decide whether you want to keep it private (for your eyes only) or open it up to friends or to the world (accountability helps). New apps and options are being developed as we speak. For those on Twitter, this app, for tweeting what you’re eating, allows you to add pictures to your tweets and says it will be streamlining the process in the near future.
What do you think? Have you used a food diary (written or photo-based)? How has it worked for you? What has helped you stick with it, or what has gotten in your way? Please share your thoughts by adding a comment.

Emotional eating is about using food to deal with a feeling or a situation instead of addressing it directly. Get tips on how to deal directly with these situations.


Here’s a simple truth. If you were more direct, you’d struggle less with emotional eating. Emotional eating is about using food to deal with a feeling or a situation instead of addressing it directly. Really. It’s that simple. When you resort to stress eating you aren’t really addressing the stress. When you comfort yourself with food, you aren’t really responding to yourself with care and compassion (at least it rarely feels that way in the morning). When you binge on ice cream to drown your sorrows, you aren’t actually tackling the sadness or hurt or the situation that is causing you pain.
And emotional eating triggers go beyond feelings. Many people overeat instead of dealing directly with the situations that cause the uncomfortable feelings.
You’re worried someone’s mad at you. So you eat.
You are mad at someone and that doesn’t feel good (and you don’t want to show it). So you eat.
You don’t want to disappoint someone. So you eat.
You have a truth to tell that you know won’t be popular. So you eat.
You are uncomfortable asking for what you want. So you eat.
You need something and it may cause a conflict. So you eat.

Sound familiar? Sometimes emotional eating isn’t only about stuffing your feelings. Sometimes overeating is a way of not taking a stand.
Want to be effective with food? Want to know how to be effective with weight loss? It’s simple. Start working to be more directly effective in your life.
If you want help with emotional eating (or overeating in general), there’s a question that can get to the heart of matters pretty quickly. Next time you find yourself reaching for food you aren’t really hungry for, ask yourself this:
“What am I not facing head on and directly?”
Be honest, be compassionate, but be firm with yourself. What are you avoiding, side-stepping, or soft-selling?
What do you need to help you be more effective and direct? Sometimes you just need to step into your big girl shoes, take a deep breath, and get the job done. Sometimes you’ll find you need some better tools or strategies. Maybe it’s time to get some support or education or a coach so you can stop stuffing your feelings instead of effectively speaking your mind.
What have you faced head-on and how has it helped?

Have you ever said, “I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don’t know where to start.” Check out these easy do-able steps that can make all the difference.


“I'm sick and tired of being overweight and overeating but I don’t know where to start.”
That’s what a new client said. Her head was so full of diet advice, nutrition tips, weight loss ads, and beliefs about what she “should” be doing, that she was overwhelmed and feeling stuck before she even started.
Should she cut back on carbs? Start working out? Keep a food diary? Rejoin Weight Watchers? She knows she’s a stress eater, so maybe she should start meditating and eating mindfully.
She also really needs to catch up on her sleep, but her desk is a mess and she wants to spend more time with her husband….
Overload is like that and so is emotional overeating. Both can feel like tangled messes with no obvious starting point. When you are stuck in a cycle you don’t know how to stop, taking action can start to feel like it’s going to start an avalanche. Add to that the panic many of us feel when we are exhausted and overloaded that paradoxically causes us to bite off too much, and see our options as “all” or “nothing,” and many stressed-out overeaters see themselves facing a challenge that feels insurmountable.
“If I’m going to go to the gym, I really need to go six days a week and stay for an hour,” said a client who hadn’t felt she could fit in a workout for weeks.
“I need to start keeping track of everything I eat, I need to drink more Water, and I need to start eating more vegetables and stop eating after dinner.”
“I’m going to eat healthy, journal, meditate, and work out every day.”
“I’m so stressed. Nothing can change until I get a new job.”
All of these women started to feel overwhelmed before the words were even out of their mouths.
Guess what? The road to lasting change is hardly ever a major life overhaul. Creating peace with food and peace with your life almost always happens in small do-able steps. Contrary to what your stressed-out brain may be telling you, powerful change can be created from simple consistent shifts.
How do you start taking charge of overeating, stress, or that feeling of having too much on your plate?
You start by creating success and effectiveness and allowing that to snowball. The success and feelings of accomplishment are what help you create momentum—and that, in turn, creates more ease and motivation. Pick one small simple step that you can commit to for the next week. If it makes you tired or feels intimidating to say it out loud, cut the size of the step in half.
Now do it. Check it off every day, and Celebrate yourself profusely. After four to seven days, choose another step.
Your goal here is to choose a step that increases your progress and momentum one inch—not a mile. When you are getting started from a place of stress and overwhelm, your goal is to get into action, but NOT to add more stress and overwhelm to your life.
The first step should feel almost (but not quite) effortless.
Eating Breakfast in the morning
Checking in with yourself midafternoon and and asking yourself what you need
Making a list of five things you can do when you feel stressed (that are not food)

Start small. Create effectiveness, and the momentum and your progress will build. Really.

Peace with food means that food, weight, or your diet is not the first thing you think about when you wake up or before you go to bed. Find out how to make peace with food now!


The yearning to find peace with food is usually a palpable one. When women speak about their motivation to stop struggling with food, find a weight that works for them, stop bingeing, and feel healthy and fit, the energy is usually intense. When you struggle with food, the wish to find peace—permanent peace—usually runs pretty deep.
No more diets. Pants that always fit. Feeling confident that your weight is going to be about the same as it was last week or last month or even last year. Peace with food means that food, weight, or your diet is not the first thing you think about when you wake up or before you go to bed. Peace with food means that sometimes the chips go stale and the leftover candy gets forgotten in the back of the cupboard.
Because the food is no longer that important.
Peace with food  is definitely possible. But in order to get there, you have to go beyond the food. And in order to do that, many women need to come face to face with something much bigger.
In order to make peace with food, you must make peace with your life.
Many women say they want peace with food and an end to yo-yo dieting. They say they’d do just about anything to achieve it. But the truth is, many women are trying to stop overeating without changing anything else.
It doesn’t work.
“I am lonely and I can’t do anything about it—so I eat.”
“I don’t have time to eat lunch and then I come home and binge.”
“I’m dealing with people who are angry and unreasonable. How do I make that okay?”
“I need someone to hold me accountable.”
“I’m busy from the time I wake up until I go to bed. There is no time for me. Food is my comfort. How am I supposed to stop eating?”
Peace with food isn’t really about food. Oh, on one level it is. It’s about feeling in control and effective and able to make choices that are in your best interest. It means (usually) not choosing foods or portions that leave you feeling uncomfortable or sick afterwards. It’s about you (not what’s on the plate) having the power and the control. But I hope you can see that I’m talking about so much more than food here.
Food only loses its power when we own our own power and stop using food as a band aid. Too often, food is the quick fix for things that we are not willing (or are too fearful) to address directly.
No food plan in the world is going to help the women above with their loneliness, their unwillingness to take time for themselves, their struggles with assertiveness, and their ability to ask for help. These are really gnarly difficult parts of life to wrestle with. Honestly, fighting with the chocolate chip Cookies (and even feeling guilty when you lose), can feel a lot less daunting. It’s easier (in the short run) to stay on the diet roller coaster than it is to make peace with food.
Peace with food requires making peace with your life. And sometimes that means creating a life that you can feel peaceful with. Learning to say no. Addressing the difficult relationships. Finding ways to take good care of yourself and sometimes putting yourself first. It means addressing the places that may feel scary: loneliness, fear, worry—even boredom. Taking risks that you might have been putting off taking for years. It’s hard stuff to swallow, but the payoffs can be huge. Creating peace with food really does have the potential to transform your life.
And before you get too overwhelmed, please remember that there are real tools (that work much better than diets) to help you do all these things. All of these challenges get more manageable and less terrifying when you find someone to help you through them—and when you take them on in small, palatable bites.
So imagine again that your pants always fit and your weight stays where you want it to. That you don’t diet and you don’t binge and you generally make good choices. And this time understand that it happens because you’ve looked the loneliness in the eye and gotten the help that you need to change it. You’ve learned to stand tall and speak up on your own behalf. You aren’t ending the day feeling exhausted and used up and like you don’t have the energy to do more than open the ice cream.
You’ve rebalanced your life. You’ve done the hard work. You’ve unleashed your inner champion. That’s what it takes to make peace with food.

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Learn about the 5 most common triggers now!


In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point–Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.
Here are five common overeating triggers that you can take control of by taking some smart, proactive action before they sabotage your weight loss efforts.
1. Getting too hungry
Do you stick to your plan through Breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples’ hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it’s not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.
The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don’t arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in Protein can make all the difference.
2. Evening eating
Evening (and late night) is a strong overeating trigger time for many busy women. If you are working hard all day long, it’s easy to come to see the quiet of evening as your reward. And if you are too tired and depleted to really enjoy it, food and emotional eating can become a big part of the evening ritual. “I eat in the evening because I want to treat myself.” “It’s my me-time.” “It’s the only time of the day where no one expects anything of me.” Women also overeat in the evening because they are tired (but don’t want to go to bed because this is the only alone time they have).
Breaking free of the evening overeating triggers can be challenging, but it’s essential. Start by creating a policy for yourself about eating after dinner. Be realistic but be firm. Now, identify the bedtime you need to honor so that you are getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep a night. This alone can make a huge difference in your overeating. Trust me. Create a new wind-down ritual that includes some nice things for you but that doesn’t include food. Finally, start carving out some me-time (even ten minutes) on the front-end of your day. You might need to get up earlier, but you’ll be focusing on you when you have the energy to do it.
3. Snacking on treats at work
Are you overeating or grazing at work on the sugary treats that your coworkers leave all over the office or the break room? Make it easy on yourself by making one decision instead of hundreds. Set a policy with yourself about your eating at work. Make sure it’s a policy you can stick with. Sometimes something as simple as “I’ll only eat homemade food that is truly a treat that I can’t easily have any time” will do the trick. Spend a bit of time strategizing how you will avoid temptation and how you will reward yourself for doing so. And don’t forget to enlist support. If you are putting on pounds at the office, I guarantee that you aren’t the only one being haunted by the food.
4. Stress eating and overeating
Emotional eating—using food to cope with feelings—is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain. Smart women take this one seriously! Take the time to check in with yourself before you eat. Try to identify how you are feeling. Become aware of patterns. Are you a stress eater? Comfort eater? Boredom eater? The key to taking control of emotional eating is to create better strategies—ones that really address the emotions you are having. Start creating ways of addressing your feelings that you can use INSTEAD of turning to food.
5. Too much on your plate
When you are too busy, stressed, and overloaded, overeating can seem like an easy way to sneak in a reward, some comfort, or a much-needed energy boost. The problem is that any benefits tend to be short-lived and the costs and negative consequences aren’t. If you want to take control of your weight, your eating, and your relationship with food, you MUST take control of your life. Learn to say no, cut back your schedule, carve out time that’s just for you and start practicing the art of asking for help.
The best part of addressing overeating triggers is that when you take charge of what drives your overeating and emotional eating, you are almost always fixing a problem that’s bigger than food. When you get to the root cause of your overeating and address it head on, the triggers often lose their power. When you find strategies for dealing with stress, overeating, and overload, you are also creating strategies for living a better life.

Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel and this can many times lead to overeating. Get some tips on how to make peace with food!


Which causes you to consume more calories—physical hunger and physical hunger pangs or stress, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, excitement, a need to Celebrate, a desire for comfort and other emotional triggers?
When WAS the last time you ate because you were physically famished? When was the last time you ate that you weren't?
Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel. Diets mess with our relationship with food and add so many “shoulds” to the equation that many chronic dieters hardly know if they are hungry or not. They are conditioned to judge their “fullness” by calorie counts, the clock, fat grams, carbs, and other external cues that are not hunger.

To make peace with food and break free from emotional eating, it’s essential to identify the root cause of your hunger—the feelings or needs that trigger overeating. Find a program that will show you how to identify what you are really hungry for and how to start using tools and strategies that address your needs and emotions in ways that food never will. That’s critical, but there is also another piece.

Taking control of overeating and making peace with food also means making peace with your physical hunger.

Hunger isn’t a negative thing. It’s not something to deny (like diets may tell you to do). It’s a signal that helps you take care of yourself. Honoring your hungers and cravings with respect is an important aspect of self-care.

That doesn’t mean you always eat everything your impulsive brain tells you that you want. You also don’t impulsively gratify all your emotional hungers or desires. But it’s important to acknowledge them.

That means learning to really listen to yourself.

It means learning how to understand your hunger and what it is telling you about what you need.

It means taking this information and making choices that are in your best interest (and that include compassion and respect).
A woman who is at peace with food feeds herself in high quality ways (and I'm talking about feeding her spirit and her soul as well as her stomach).
She also allows herself to savor the food and the experiences that she takes in. Eating doesn't trigger guilt or self-loathing and responding to her hunger isn't something she does in secret.
Let’s evaluate your relationship with hunger.
How do you decide when you are hungry?
Where do you feel hunger in your body?
On a hunger scale of 1 (ravenous) to 10 (stuffed to the gills), how hungry do you allow yourself to become before you feed yourself? How full do you fill yourself when you do eat?
When you determine that you are hungry, how do you decide what to eat?
How do you tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger?

If your Inner Champion was running the show and helping you live your BEST version of your life, how would you be responding to your physical and emotional cravings? Would it be different?
If you don’t know all the answers to these questions, don't panic. Many emotional eaters don’t. Knowing what you don’t know is an important step to making a change.

Asking questions like I’ve just asked you will help you take control of your relationship with food in new ways and start creating strategies that work for you.

Most women who really need to indulge more will tell you that they believe they ought to be indulging less. What’s this about?


If you are like most busy women with too much on their plates, one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to practice indulging—really indulging. Interestingly, most women who really need to indulge more will tell you that they believe they ought to be indulging less.
What’s this about?
Let’s get really clear about what indulging is.
From my perspective, to indulge means to allow yourself to experience something really wonderful. Indulging comes from a place of compassion and kindness and respect. It’s a gift, freely given.
Indulging means to allow yourself to enjoy fully.
It means to thoroughly experience something and soak up and savor the experience. An indulgence is not a candy bar from the vending machine that you shove into your mouth while driving to your next appointment. It’s your favorite food on a beautiful plate in a setting where you can truly savor it.
Indulging isn’t just about food, but it’s something that feeds our senses in a wonderful way. You might indulge in a bubble bath or a foot massage or a solitary walk in the woods. Your indulgence might be your favorite CD played in your car or fresh flowers on your desk or a glass of red wine enjoyed on your deck.
Indulging is a full-body-use-all-your-senses experience.
It fills you up, brings you joy, refuels you and adds color to your life. Indulging feeds your soul and is a necessary ingredient for thriving. Your inner champion, or what you may think of as your “best self” absolutely purrs when she is indulged.
So why does indulging have such a bad rap? Why do so many women think that indulging is selfish or nonproductive or just plain wrong?
I’d like to bust some myths about indulging, and while I’m at it, let me remind you that many bad habits such as overeating, procrastination, and spending too much time online or “not doing” what you really need to do, happen because you aren’t indulging enough.
When your spirit and soul aren’t being fed, you will grasp at straws (or potato chips or chocolate chip cookies) to try to make up for it. When you don’t allow yourself to truly indulge, you will find yourself reaching for poor substitutes that might help you feel better temporarily, but that don’t make anything better in the big picture.
Here are some more truths about indulging:
1. Indulging is not about greed or sloth. Indulging isn’t about excess. It’s about allowing yourself something wonderful or special and allowing yourself to really experience and savor it–without guilt or shame. It’s not eating the whole box of Cookies or bingeing on clothes at the mall. It’s about allowing yourself just the right amount of what you really crave and fully enjoying the experience. Indulging is not about gulping, it’s a melts-in-your-mouth experience.
2. Indulging is not laziness. Indulging is a way of feeding an important part of yourself and adding dimension to your life. Some women worry that if they start to indulge they’ll “lose control.” The truth is, when you really allow yourself to indulge, you tend to be more satisfied with less.
3. Indulging does not have to be earned or “deserved.” Some women believe that they haven’t “worked hard enough” or “accomplished enough” to indulge. When you don’t allow yourself this kind of self-care, it’s easy to become caught in a cycle of working harder and harder and feeling more and more behind and burnt out. Again, indulging yourself is a way of refueling. It actually enhances your productivity.
4. Indulging does not decrease your productivity or make you fat. I’ve already addressed this, but this is such a common myth, it’s important to restate. Allowing yourself truly indulgent experiences, ones where you are completely present and savoring the moment, satisfies you. Real indulgences don’t leave you hungry and craving more—they rejuvenate you and fuel you to be your best. What does leave you primed for a binge of food or laziness is the feeling that your special treat is forbidden or undeserved. The message that you are never going to be allowed to rest or feel like “enough” or eat chocolate again will almost certainly create a craving for the forbidden that can be almost impossible to resist.
My challenge to you:
Start indulging. Make a list of things that you experience as special treats. Keep it somewhere where you can add to it as new ideas occur to you. Begin scheduling these into your life on a regular basis and enjoy.

Are you fed up with struggling with overeating, starting another d-i-e-t that you know will probably blow up on you, or wishing your pants were not so tight? Here are five simple things you can implement today to control your cravings, eat less, and thrive more.


Are you fed up with struggling with overeating, starting another d-i-e-t that you know will probably blow up on you, or wishing your pants were not so tight?
Here are five simple things you can implement today to control your cravings, eat less, and thrive more.
1. Sleep. Don’t keep working harder and harder. Play it smart. Women who average five hours or less of sleep per night weigh more, gain weight more easily, and crave more carbohydrates and fattening foods—and it’s not in their heads! Sleep deprivation leads to chemical changes in your body that cause overeating and weight gain (even if you don’t overeat). Aim for at least seven and a half hours of sleep per night. Not only will you be less hungry, your productivity, focus, and creativity will probably improve. You may even find yourself accomplishing more than when you were burning the midnight oil.
Additional bonus: you’re likely to feel a whole lot better.
2. Pay attention to your feelings. Emotional eating—eating as a response to feelings—is a major cause of overeating and packing on the pounds. Stress eating, comfort eating, eating out of frustration and even eating out of boredom or happiness can all sabotage your weight loss plans. Develop strategies to check in with yourself and with how you are feeling so that you can respond to your emotions in ways that don’t involve food.< /p>
Added bonus: when you address your feelings instead of feeding them, you will be taking charge of your life and responding to what you really need. When you do this, life gets better.
3. Carve out time for you. Stress and overload can be a direct path to weight gain. If you’re feeling time crunched, you’re likely to make the all-too-common mistake of cutting out the activities that are actually the best for you. Me-time helps you relax and unwind. It also gives you an opportunity to pay attention to yourself and what you need to function and flourish. When you meet your needs and care for yourself in quality ways, you are less likely to find yourself using food as a “special treat” or a “band aid” to help you get through the day. Practice giving yourself a five or ten minute time out a few times a day.
The bonus: these short breaks help you get perspective on your day. You’re likely to feel more organized and relaxed as a result.
4. Feed yourself quality food at regular intervals. If you are trying to eat less, it can be tempting to cut back too far and allow yourself to get too hungry. Big mistake. While depriving yourself with strict diets may initially seem to create results on the scale, in the long run, eating too little leads to stronger cravings (usually for foods that will spike your blood sugar levels quickly), overeating, and binge eating. Do you find that your healthy eating plan always gets blown in the afternoon or evening? Try eating smaller, more frequent meals during the day and make sure that you are including some Protein each time you eat.
Bonus: when you feed yourself well, both your energy levels and your mood are likely to improve.
5. Savor. You might be surprised to find how little of what you eat you actually allow yourself to savor and enjoy. Eating on the run and multitasking while you eat mean that your attention is divided between food and your hunger and whatever else you are doing. When you eat without giving it your full attention, you are likely to eat more and not feel as full. Impose a ban on multitasking when you eat. Take your time and practice eating mindfully—paying complete attention to your food—the taste, smell, even the texture. Notice how full or hungry you are and allow yourself to enjoy the act of eating.
Bonus: savoring is a pleasant activity and it tends to be relaxing. Practicing enjoying your food in this way and getting in the habit of doing one thing at a time is a great strategy for reducing stress. If you apply the concept of not multitasking to other areas of your life, you’re also likely to see an improvement of the quality of your results.

Peace with food and weight loss that lasts are possible. Here are some common traps that even the smartest women fall for and the success strategies you can use to avoid them:


Peace with food and weight loss that lasts are possible, and yet, these aren’t the places where most women who struggle with overeating end up. Emotional eating and overeating can feel like a never-ending battle and a roller coaster ride of diets, gimmicks, and “new” approaches that don’t take you where you want to go.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some common traps that even the smartest women fall for and the success strategies you can use to avoid them:
1. Getting too focused on what to eat. Cycles of overeating and weight gain are rarely fixed by focusing only on the food. A focus on what to eat doesn’t address or fix the situations, feelings, or relationships that may be triggering overeating. Yes, portion size matters and sometimes food intolerances or metabolic difficulties cause weight gain. However, even these situations become clearer and easier to sort out when you start listening to yourself and paying attention to how you feel, instead of focusing your attention on every bite, calorie, or fat gram that you put into your mouth.
2. Disregarding what you really need. You know yourself better than anyone. Instead of focusing on what “should” work and what you “should” do, take this bold step that many high-achieving women skip:
Ask yourself what you really need to be successful—and then give it to yourself. You’re likely to spend less time, energy, heartache and even money in the long run when you trust your inner wisdom. Do you need the help of an expert? Be honest about that. Better tools to deal with stress or difficult emotions? Do you need some one-on-one mentoring or support? Don’t cheat yourself. Investing in what you know to be true and getting the targeted help you need will likely make more of a difference than all the self-help books you can’t figure out how to make work for you.
Too many women spend too much money on solutions that aren’t comprehensive or individualized enough and don’t really meet their needs. Not only does this lead to failure, it burns up your hope and your sense of effectiveness. Do you feel like you know what you need but it isn’t possible? Don’t let that stop you. Ask yourself what it would take to make it happen and ask what is do-able that would start allowing you to have more of what you need. Start believing that you deserve to get what you need and start asking for it. You might be surprised what shows up.
3. Refusing to ask for help. High-achievers can fall into the trap of believing that lifestyle change has to happen solo. Many women who are successful in other areas of their lives feel embarrassed and even ashamed of their struggles with overeating. They feel like they are alone in their struggles. Unfortunately, not reaching out for help increases the sense of isolation and decreases your potential effectiveness. Asking for help might be the scariest step you take in order to make peace with food, but stepping outside of your own head, your own mindset, beliefs, and traps, can start change happening—and quickly.
4. Not addressing time issues. My heart almost broke when I heard an outwardly successful professional woman tell me that given the hectic state of her life, she believed that she wouldn’t be able to focus on her own goals for the next ten years. Really? What kind of life is that and what kind of example are you living? Change requires a commitment to making it happen. Whether it’s taking the time to attend a class, listen to audios, create a plan for healthy meals, or meet with a coach, if you don’t create the time, it isn’t really a priority. Honest truth. If you need help learning how to make or find the time, or how to put yourself first, make this your first action step.
Coaching Challenge:
What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to making peace with food? Where do you get stuck or thrown off course? Please join the conversation by sharing a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Then, be bold and share one step you will take to start doing it differently. Peace with food is possible. I challenge you to go for it.

Many women find themselves using food as a treat, or resorting to stress eating or comfort eating at the end of a long difficult day. Try out these new strategies:


If you are an emotional eater or someone prone to overeating, you know well that it’s one thing to decide to change your eating habits—to cut back your portions, stop snacking in the evening, or to stop turning to food at the end of a long day. It’s another thing entirely to act on your intentions and not overeat when you find yourself in the situation where that’s all you want to do.

Many women find themselves using food as a treat, or resorting to stress eating or comfort eating at the end of a long difficult day. In fact, for most people, this is the time when good intentions unravel.

Why? Well, you’re tired, your defenses are pretty low, and you likely don’t have a lot of energy or creativity to conjure up an alternative to that big bowl of popcorn or ice cream or the leftovers that are calling to you from the refrigerator.

Relying on willpower alone is a recipe for self-sabotage and frustration. Plus, it’s not very fun. If evening is a tough time for you food-wise, I recommend you take some time NOW to sketch out a list of things you can do instead of eating.

Here’s an important tip: this list should not be a to-do list of projects you’ve been neglecting in disguise. If you’re turning to food for comfort or to help you relax, the alternatives you come up with should have a similar effect and they should take into account your low energy level (i.e. your exhaustion).

Make a list now and start trying out these new strategies. Expect to tweak and revise it as you learn what works and what doesn’t.

Here are some ideas of what to do instead of overeating in the evenings to get you started:
Take a bath
Soak your feet (really—this feels great)
Blow bubbles
Brew a cup of tea
Listen to music
Watch a movie
Sit outside (or if it’s cold, by a fire)
If you have a cat who will let you, pet him/her and be one with the purr
Curl up with a good book
Update your Netflix list or put some new books on hold at the library
Buy yourself some new music for your mp3 player
Call a friend
Play Scrabble or chess or even solitaire online. Better yet, get your family to play a game—live and in person
Catch up on magazines
Do a crossword puzzle
Work on your birthday wish list (no matter how far away your birthday is)
Listen to a relaxation CD

I’d love to hear what you’ve found as an alternative to eating when you are tired and want to overeat.

The real way to break free of overeating must start with understanding why you’re doing it. Get started now!


Have you checked out a newsstand recently? You won’t be surprised that there are dozens and dozens of tips, plans, and miracle programs being promoted just this month to help you slim down, lose a pant size, make your butt smaller and lose your midlife muffin top.
More and more women—many of you–are struggling with the scale than ever before, and it’s not just concerns about appearance that motivate you. Many of you have concerns about heart disease, diabetes, and losing your energy and vitality. You want to feel good about yourself—you want to feel like yourself again and you’d love to take all the energy that gets spent on struggles with food and your body and put it somewhere more productive and fun.
Concerns like this can lead a woman to pursue all sorts of craziness. I won’t ask you about the weirdest plan for weight loss you’ve ever pursued. Just about all of us have stories that make us roll our own eyes.
The truth is that most of you have read, tried, witnessed, and researched more approaches to slimming down or ending overeating than you ever, EVER wanted to. And you are well aware that you still don’t have the answers that you need. Because even if you feel one hundred percent certain that you know what you need to do, if you haven’t been able to make it happen, something is missing.
Food plans, calorie counting tools, and fat burning tricks don’t do you any good if you can’t or won’t stick with them.
Women do break free of overeating and emotional eating, they do achieve a size they love and maintain it, and they find out how to make food a much smaller part of their lives. There isn’t one way that works for everyone, but there is one thing that all the successful women I know have in common. This includes women who’ve battled obesity and eating disorders, women who’ve had weight loss surgery and women who’ve dieted their entire lives.
The real way to break free of overeating must start with understanding why you’re doing it.
Until you’re clear on what’s behind your constant hunger and what triggers you to reach for more than your body really needs, you won’t be able to effectively address the biggest source of your struggle. Here’s the other—brilliant—side of the story. Once you discover how to tune in to what your appetite and cravings are really about, you’re empowered to take care of those needs in ways that are going to take you places that the bag of chips never will.
It’s really not an exaggeration to say that creating peace with food changes lives.
Where ever you are in your journey with food and eating, if it’s not a happy, successful place, I challenge you to try this. For a few hours, stop thinking about what to eat and allow yourself to focus on why you eat. What’s the pull that eating has for you? What gets you craving the snack you don’t need and what makes it hard to stay on track? Stop and write down everything you know about what your overeating is about. This simple exercise can be an eye-opening starting point and a great way to identify your next best step in breaking free.

Peace with food and weight loss that lasts are possible. Here are some common traps that even the smartest women fall for and the success strategies you can use to avoid them:


Peace with food and weight loss that lasts are possible, and yet, these aren’t the places where most women who struggle with overeating end up. Emotional eating and overeating can feel like a never-ending battle and a roller coaster ride of diets, gimmicks, and “new” approaches that don’t take you where you want to go.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some common traps that even the smartest women fall for and the success strategies you can use to avoid them:
1. Getting too focused on what to eat. Cycles of overeating and weight gain are rarely fixed by focusing only on the food. A focus on what to eat doesn’t address or fix the situations, feelings, or relationships that may be triggering overeating. Yes, portion size matters and sometimes food intolerances or metabolic difficulties cause weight gain. However, even these situations become clearer and easier to sort out when you start listening to yourself and paying attention to how you feel, instead of focusing your attention on every bite, calorie, or fat gram that you put into your mouth.
2. Disregarding what you really need. You know yourself better than anyone. Instead of focusing on what “should” work and what you “should” do, take this bold step that many high-achieving women skip:
Ask yourself what you really need to be successful—and then give it to yourself. You’re likely to spend less time, energy, heartache and even money in the long run when you trust your inner wisdom. Do you need the help of an expert? Be honest about that. Better tools to deal with stress or difficult emotions? Do you need some one-on-one mentoring or support? Don’t cheat yourself. Investing in what you know to be true and getting the targeted help you need will likely make more of a difference than all the self-help books you can’t figure out how to make work for you.
Too many women spend too much money on solutions that aren’t comprehensive or individualized enough and don’t really meet their needs. Not only does this lead to failure, it burns up your hope and your sense of effectiveness. Do you feel like you know what you need but it isn’t possible? Don’t let that stop you. Ask yourself what it would take to make it happen and ask what is do-able that would start allowing you to have more of what you need. Start believing that you deserve to get what you need and start asking for it. You might be surprised what shows up.
3. Refusing to ask for help. High-achievers can fall into the trap of believing that lifestyle change has to happen solo. Many women who are successful in other areas of their lives feel embarrassed and even ashamed of their struggles with overeating. They feel like they are alone in their struggles. Unfortunately, not reaching out for help increases the sense of isolation and decreases your potential effectiveness. Asking for help might be the scariest step you take in order to make peace with food, but stepping outside of your own head, your own mindset, beliefs, and traps, can start change happening—and quickly.
4. Not addressing time issues. My heart almost broke when I heard an outwardly successful professional woman tell me that given the hectic state of her life, she believed that she wouldn’t be able to focus on her own goals for the next ten years. Really? What kind of life is that and what kind of example are you living? Change requires a commitment to making it happen. Whether it’s taking the time to attend a class, listen to audios, create a plan for healthy meals, or meet with a coach, if you don’t create the time, it isn’t really a priority. Honest truth. If you need help learning how to make or find the time, or how to put yourself first, make this your first action step.
Coaching Challenge:
What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to making peace with food? Where do you get stuck or thrown off course? Please join the conversation by sharing a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Then, be bold and share one step you will take to start doing it differently. Peace with food is possible. I challenge you to go for it.

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Learn about the 5 most common triggers now!


In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point–Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.
Here are five common overeating triggers that you can take control of by taking some smart, proactive action before they sabotage your weight loss efforts.
1. Getting too hungry
Do you stick to your plan through Breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples’ hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it’s not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.
The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don’t arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in Protein can make all the difference.
2. Evening eating
Evening (and late night) is a strong overeating trigger time for many busy women. If you are working hard all day long, it’s easy to come to see the quiet of evening as your reward. And if you are too tired and depleted to really enjoy it, food and emotional eating can become a big part of the evening ritual. “I eat in the evening because I want to treat myself.” “It’s my me-time.” “It’s the only time of the day where no one expects anything of me.” Women also overeat in the evening because they are tired (but don’t want to go to bed because this is the only alone time they have).
Breaking free of the evening overeating triggers can be challenging, but it’s essential. Start by creating a policy for yourself about eating after dinner. Be realistic but be firm. Now, identify the bedtime you need to honor so that you are getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep a night. This alone can make a huge difference in your overeating. Trust me. Create a new wind-down ritual that includes some nice things for you but that doesn’t include food. Finally, start carving out some me-time (even ten minutes) on the front-end of your day. You might need to get up earlier, but you’ll be focusing on you when you have the energy to do it.
3. Snacking on treats at work
Are you overeating or grazing at work on the sugary treats that your coworkers leave all over the office or the break room? Make it easy on yourself by making one decision instead of hundreds. Set a policy with yourself about your eating at work. Make sure it’s a policy you can stick with. Sometimes something as simple as “I’ll only eat homemade food that is truly a treat that I can’t easily have any time” will do the trick. Spend a bit of time strategizing how you will avoid temptation and how you will reward yourself for doing so. And don’t forget to enlist support. If you are putting on pounds at the office, I guarantee that you aren’t the only one being haunted by the food.
4. Stress eating and overeating
Emotional eating—using food to cope with feelings—is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain. Smart women take this one seriously! Take the time to check in with yourself before you eat. Try to identify how you are feeling. Become aware of patterns. Are you a stress eater? Comfort eater? Boredom eater? The key to taking control of emotional eating is to create better strategies—ones that really address the emotions you are having. Start creating ways of addressing your feelings that you can use INSTEAD of turning to food.
5. Too much on your plate
When you are too busy, stressed, and overloaded, overeating can seem like an easy way to sneak in a reward, some comfort, or a much-needed energy boost. The problem is that any benefits tend to be short-lived and the costs and negative consequences aren’t. If you want to take control of your weight, your eating, and your relationship with food, you MUST take control of your life. Learn to say no, cut back your schedule, carve out time that’s just for you and start practicing the art of asking for help.
The best part of addressing overeating triggers is that when you take charge of what drives your overeating and emotional eating, you are almost always fixing a problem that’s bigger than food. When you get to the root cause of your overeating and address it head on, the triggers often lose their power. When you find strategies for dealing with stress, overeating, and overload, you are also creating strategies for living a better life.

Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel and this can many times lead to overeating. Get some tips on how to make peace with food!


Which causes you to consume more calories—physical hunger and physical hunger pangs or stress, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, excitement, a need to Celebrate, a desire for comfort and other emotional triggers?
When WAS the last time you ate because you were physically famished? When was the last time you ate that you weren't?
Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel. Diets mess with our relationship with food and add so many “shoulds” to the equation that many chronic dieters hardly know if they are hungry or not. They are conditioned to judge their “fullness” by calorie counts, the clock, fat grams, carbs, and other external cues that are not hunger.

To make peace with food and break free from emotional eating, it’s essential to identify the root cause of your hunger—the feelings or needs that trigger overeating. Find a program that will show you how to identify what you are really hungry for and how to start using tools and strategies that address your needs and emotions in ways that food never will. That’s critical, but there is also another piece.

Taking control of overeating and making peace with food also means making peace with your physical hunger.

Hunger isn’t a negative thing. It’s not something to deny (like diets may tell you to do). It’s a signal that helps you take care of yourself. Honoring your hungers and cravings with respect is an important aspect of self-care.

That doesn’t mean you always eat everything your impulsive brain tells you that you want. You also don’t impulsively gratify all your emotional hungers or desires. But it’s important to acknowledge them.

That means learning to really listen to yourself.

It means learning how to understand your hunger and what it is telling you about what you need.

It means taking this information and making choices that are in your best interest (and that include compassion and respect).
A woman who is at peace with food feeds herself in high quality ways (and I'm talking about feeding her spirit and her soul as well as her stomach).
She also allows herself to savor the food and the experiences that she takes in. Eating doesn't trigger guilt or self-loathing and responding to her hunger isn't something she does in secret.
Let’s evaluate your relationship with hunger.
How do you decide when you are hungry?
Where do you feel hunger in your body?
On a hunger scale of 1 (ravenous) to 10 (stuffed to the gills), how hungry do you allow yourself to become before you feed yourself? How full do you fill yourself when you do eat?
When you determine that you are hungry, how do you decide what to eat?
How do you tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger?

If your Inner Champion was running the show and helping you live your BEST version of your life, how would you be responding to your physical and emotional cravings? Would it be different?
If you don’t know all the answers to these questions, don't panic. Many emotional eaters don’t. Knowing what you don’t know is an important step to making a change.

Asking questions like I’ve just asked you will help you take control of your relationship with food in new ways and start creating strategies that work for you.

Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel and this can many times lead to overeating. Get some tips on how to make peace with food!


Which causes you to consume more calories—physical hunger and physical hunger pangs or stress, restlessness, boredom, anxiety, excitement, a need to Celebrate, a desire for comfort and other emotional triggers?
When WAS the last time you ate because you were physically famished? When was the last time you ate that you weren't?
Emotional eating is a major part of most women’s lives. We’re taught to use food for so many things in addition to fuel. Diets mess with our relationship with food and add so many “shoulds” to the equation that many chronic dieters hardly know if they are hungry or not. They are conditioned to judge their “fullness” by calorie counts, the clock, fat grams, carbs, and other external cues that are not hunger.

To make peace with food and break free from emotional eating, it’s essential to identify the root cause of your hunger—the feelings or needs that trigger overeating. Find a program that will show you how to identify what you are really hungry for and how to start using tools and strategies that address your needs and emotions in ways that food never will. That’s critical, but there is also another piece.

Taking control of overeating and making peace with food also means making peace with your physical hunger.

Hunger isn’t a negative thing. It’s not something to deny (like diets may tell you to do). It’s a signal that helps you take care of yourself. Honoring your hungers and cravings with respect is an important aspect of self-care.

That doesn’t mean you always eat everything your impulsive brain tells you that you want. You also don’t impulsively gratify all your emotional hungers or desires. But it’s important to acknowledge them.

That means learning to really listen to yourself.

It means learning how to understand your hunger and what it is telling you about what you need.

It means taking this information and making choices that are in your best interest (and that include compassion and respect).
A woman who is at peace with food feeds herself in high quality ways (and I'm talking about feeding her spirit and her soul as well as her stomach).
She also allows herself to savor the food and the experiences that she takes in. Eating doesn't trigger guilt or self-loathing and responding to her hunger isn't something she does in secret.
Let’s evaluate your relationship with hunger.
How do you decide when you are hungry?
Where do you feel hunger in your body?
On a hunger scale of 1 (ravenous) to 10 (stuffed to the gills), how hungry do you allow yourself to become before you feed yourself? How full do you fill yourself when you do eat?
When you determine that you are hungry, how do you decide what to eat?
How do you tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger?

If your Inner Champion was running the show and helping you live your BEST version of your life, how would you be responding to your physical and emotional cravings? Would it be different?
If you don’t know all the answers to these questions, don't panic. Many emotional eaters don’t. Knowing what you don’t know is an important step to making a change.

Asking questions like I’ve just asked you will help you take control of your relationship with food in new ways and start creating strategies that work for you.

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Learn about the 5 most common triggers now!


In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point–Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.
Here are five common overeating triggers that you can take control of by taking some smart, proactive action before they sabotage your weight loss efforts.
1. Getting too hungry
Do you stick to your plan through Breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples’ hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it’s not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.
The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don’t arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in Protein can make all the difference.
2. Evening eating
Evening (and late night) is a strong overeating trigger time for many busy women. If you are working hard all day long, it’s easy to come to see the quiet of evening as your reward. And if you are too tired and depleted to really enjoy it, food and emotional eating can become a big part of the evening ritual. “I eat in the evening because I want to treat myself.” “It’s my me-time.” “It’s the only time of the day where no one expects anything of me.” Women also overeat in the evening because they are tired (but don’t want to go to bed because this is the only alone time they have).
Breaking free of the evening overeating triggers can be challenging, but it’s essential. Start by creating a policy for yourself about eating after dinner. Be realistic but be firm. Now, identify the bedtime you need to honor so that you are getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep a night. This alone can make a huge difference in your overeating. Trust me. Create a new wind-down ritual that includes some nice things for you but that doesn’t include food. Finally, start carving out some me-time (even ten minutes) on the front-end of your day. You might need to get up earlier, but you’ll be focusing on you when you have the energy to do it.
3. Snacking on treats at work
Are you overeating or grazing at work on the sugary treats that your coworkers leave all over the office or the break room? Make it easy on yourself by making one decision instead of hundreds. Set a policy with yourself about your eating at work. Make sure it’s a policy you can stick with. Sometimes something as simple as “I’ll only eat homemade food that is truly a treat that I can’t easily have any time” will do the trick. Spend a bit of time strategizing how you will avoid temptation and how you will reward yourself for doing so. And don’t forget to enlist support. If you are putting on pounds at the office, I guarantee that you aren’t the only one being haunted by the food.
4. Stress eating and overeating
Emotional eating—using food to cope with feelings—is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain. Smart women take this one seriously! Take the time to check in with yourself before you eat. Try to identify how you are feeling. Become aware of patterns. Are you a stress eater? Comfort eater? Boredom eater? The key to taking control of emotional eating is to create better strategies—ones that really address the emotions you are having. Start creating ways of addressing your feelings that you can use INSTEAD of turning to food.
5. Too much on your plate
When you are too busy, stressed, and overloaded, overeating can seem like an easy way to sneak in a reward, some comfort, or a much-needed energy boost. The problem is that any benefits tend to be short-lived and the costs and negative consequences aren’t. If you want to take control of your weight, your eating, and your relationship with food, you MUST take control of your life. Learn to say no, cut back your schedule, carve out time that’s just for you and start practicing the art of asking for help.
The best part of addressing overeating triggers is that when you take charge of what drives your overeating and emotional eating, you are almost always fixing a problem that’s bigger than food. When you get to the root cause of your overeating and address it head on, the triggers often lose their power. When you find strategies for dealing with stress, overeating, and overload, you are also creating strategies for living a better life.

In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Learn about the 5 most common triggers now!


In the battle to lose weight, stop overeating, or break free from emotional eating, it’s important to pay attention to the things that trigger your eating to go awry. Simply focusing on what to eat misses an essential point–Your eating choices may be strongly affected by your emotions and your environment. And your food plan is useless if something is preventing you from following it.
Here are five common overeating triggers that you can take control of by taking some smart, proactive action before they sabotage your weight loss efforts.
1. Getting too hungry
Do you stick to your plan through Breakfast and lunch only to find yourself irritable, craving carbs, and ready to eat everything in sight by the time late afternoon or evening rolls around? The end of the day tends to be stressful for many. The transition between work and home, mealtime decisions, and other peoples’ hunger or tiredness can push a busy woman over the edge. When I start coaching a new private client, it’s not unusual to hear that this is THE most difficult time of day.
The key here: take control of what you can. This means doing what you can so that you don’t arrive at the end of the day feeling exhausted and starved. Too many women who are trying to lose weight, eat too little in the middle of the day and, as a result, lose control and overeat before, during, or after dinner (or all three). Make sure you are eating a balanced lunch (with protein) and then calculate the hours you are expecting yourself to last before eating again. Most women do well with a small snack midafternoon. Again, adding in Protein can make all the difference.
2. Evening eating
Evening (and late night) is a strong overeating trigger time for many busy women. If you are working hard all day long, it’s easy to come to see the quiet of evening as your reward. And if you are too tired and depleted to really enjoy it, food and emotional eating can become a big part of the evening ritual. “I eat in the evening because I want to treat myself.” “It’s my me-time.” “It’s the only time of the day where no one expects anything of me.” Women also overeat in the evening because they are tired (but don’t want to go to bed because this is the only alone time they have).
Breaking free of the evening overeating triggers can be challenging, but it’s essential. Start by creating a policy for yourself about eating after dinner. Be realistic but be firm. Now, identify the bedtime you need to honor so that you are getting a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep a night. This alone can make a huge difference in your overeating. Trust me. Create a new wind-down ritual that includes some nice things for you but that doesn’t include food. Finally, start carving out some me-time (even ten minutes) on the front-end of your day. You might need to get up earlier, but you’ll be focusing on you when you have the energy to do it.
3. Snacking on treats at work
Are you overeating or grazing at work on the sugary treats that your coworkers leave all over the office or the break room? Make it easy on yourself by making one decision instead of hundreds. Set a policy with yourself about your eating at work. Make sure it’s a policy you can stick with. Sometimes something as simple as “I’ll only eat homemade food that is truly a treat that I can’t easily have any time” will do the trick. Spend a bit of time strategizing how you will avoid temptation and how you will reward yourself for doing so. And don’t forget to enlist support. If you are putting on pounds at the office, I guarantee that you aren’t the only one being haunted by the food.
4. Stress eating and overeating
Emotional eating—using food to cope with feelings—is one of the biggest causes of overeating and weight gain. Smart women take this one seriously! Take the time to check in with yourself before you eat. Try to identify how you are feeling. Become aware of patterns. Are you a stress eater? Comfort eater? Boredom eater? The key to taking control of emotional eating is to create better strategies—ones that really address the emotions you are having. Start creating ways of addressing your feelings that you can use INSTEAD of turning to food.
5. Too much on your plate
When you are too busy, stressed, and overloaded, overeating can seem like an easy way to sneak in a reward, some comfort, or a much-needed energy boost. The problem is that any benefits tend to be short-lived and the costs and negative consequences aren’t. If you want to take control of your weight, your eating, and your relationship with food, you MUST take control of your life. Learn to say no, cut back your schedule, carve out time that’s just for you and start practicing the art of asking for help.
The best part of addressing overeating triggers is that when you take charge of what drives your overeating and emotional eating, you are almost always fixing a problem that’s bigger than food. When you get to the root cause of your overeating and address it head on, the triggers often lose their power. When you find strategies for dealing with stress, overeating, and overload, you are also creating strategies for living a better life.

Emotional eating is a powerful force that can become a deeply ingrained, almost automatic response to certain feelings. Find out how to address the root cause and be free forever!


If you don’t address the root cause of your overeating (especially emotional eating) you’ll keep on overeating. If you stop, or gain control for awhile, it will come back. True story. Emotional eating is a powerful force that can become a deeply ingrained, almost automatic response to certain feelings. The idea of t aking control of emotional eating  sounds good, but I frequently hear from women trying to wrap their minds around the reality of looking their emotions squarely in the eye.
“It won’t help. What’s the point?”
“Why should I be angry, that’s just unpleasant and it feels awful.”
“He’s not going to change so why get upset about it.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it so I just eat. How do I stop?”
We’ve come full circle.
Breaking free of emotional eating (and most overeating) means honoring the reality that you have feelings and learning how to approach them in ways that help you feel authentic and cared for and responded to—even if sometimes you are the one doing the responding.
The beliefs that you can simply decide not to feel the way you feel or that you can make your feelings go away simply by not thinking about them are myths. While there are some exceptions, feelings shift, transform, and evolve when you respect them, acknowledge them, and address them in a purposeful way.
“Eating your feelings” may temporarily soothe, numb, or distract you, but in the big picture, it doesn’t address the real problem, won’t make you feel better, and the emotions or the situation that triggered them will still be real.
How do you start facing your feelings if you are used to burying them with food?
Remind yourself that feeling and doing are two different things.
Even in the most powerless situations, it’s important to acknowledge and respect your own reality. When I acknowledge that I’m scared or nervous or feeling hurt or angry or misunderstood, I can start looking for ways to take care of, soothe, or respond to myself in some kind of helpful way—even if I can’t change the actual situation. When I have the flu, I can’t fix it, but if I acknowledge that I don’t feel good and do nice things for myself, I feel better. It’s the same with feelings. If I drown my feelings in ice cream, my fear or helplessness isn’t really being addressed. It’s just covered up and not really tended to at all.
In a related vein, know that expressing yourself and creating change are both important.
Just because you can’t have one, doesn’t mean you should deny yourself the other. Yes, some people and situations are difficult and they aren’t going to ever be what you want them to be. That’s no reason to deny how you feel. And sometimes, simply expressing that feeling is important, validating, or empowering—even if the other person doesn’t hear you. Yes, sometimes it’s not prudent or helpful to share your feelings, but it’s always a helpful option to consider.
You don’t need an audience to express yourself.
Maybe you aren’t ready. It might feel too scary, or you’ve got so many pent up feelings that when you start to speak it turns into a gloppy emotional scene that you aren’t comfortable with. If you aren’t used to respecting your emotions, it’s pretty common to feel self-conscious when you are in the middle of them. That’s okay. Give yourself permission to be where you are with your feelings. Practice being your own audience. Express yourself to you. Write, talk, and think to yourself about your feelings. And remind yourself, “This is hard for me.”
And be proud of yourself.