Emotional Eating Workbook , livre ebook

“ The Emotional Eating Workbook is a delightful, informative, and passionate tour of the underpinnings of emotional eating. It is filled with timely and effective tools designed to end one’s battle with food. As a reader-friendly text, it will serve as an important work in the treatment of emotional eating.”
— Ralph E. Carson, RD, PhD , consultant for the Pine Grove Women’s Center at Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Services in Hattiesburg, MS, and board member of The International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals
“ The Emotional Eating Workbook nourishes body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Carolyn Ross’s inspired and accessible program enhances mindful awareness, which leads to more natural, authentic, and skillful choices. If emotional eating is a problem for you, this book holds the keys to a breakthrough.”
— Joan Borysenko, PhD , author of The PlantPlus Diet Solution and Minding the Body, Mending the Mind
“With compassion, wisdom, and creativity, Carolyn Ross’s The Emotional Eating Workbook can open a pathway to healing for individuals struggling with the complex issue of emotional eating. Ross’s approach looking at the core issues will help readers discover the underlying factors that drive their struggles with food. I highly recommend this valuable workbook!”
— Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, MD, FAED, CEDS , executive director of the Oliver-Pyatt Centers, www.oliverpyattcenters.com


Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books
Copyright © 2016 by Carolyn Coker RossNew Harbinger Publications, Inc.5674 Shattuck AvenueOakland, CA 94609www.newharbinger.com
Cover design by Sara Christian
Acquired by Melissa Kirk
Edited by Gretel Hakanson
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
This book is dedicated to my sons Dutch and Sam and my granddaughter, Malia, for their inspiration and support. Finally my son Noah has continued to be a source of inspiration to me in all that I do both before and after his untimely death.
I: The Anchor Program’s Five Levels of HealingII: Healing Yourself: Your Journey to Soul Satisfaction
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Anchor Program’s Five Levels of Healing
Chapter 1: Stopping Surface Behaviors: Why Diets Don’t Work and Why It’s Not About the Food
Superficial Behaviors
Changing Superficial Behaviors
Do I Really Need to Eat That?
Why Diets Don’t Work
Chapter 2: Emerging from the Emotional Soup
What Are Emotions?
Identifying Emotions
Emotional Expression
How Did You Learn to Express Your Emotions?
Emotional Regulation
Why Is Emotional Regulation Important?
Why Can’t I Manage My Emotions?
Attachment Style and Expressing Emotions
Chapter 3: Embracing the Wisdom of the Body
What Is Body Image?
Parental Relationships and Body Image
Attachment Styles and Body Image
Body Sensations and Having a Mindful Relationship with Food
Body Disconnection and Obsession: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Trauma and Your Relationship with Your Body
Chapter 4: Level Four: Creating New Core Beliefs
Being Aware of Core Beliefs
Origination of Core Beliefs
Effects of Core Beliefs
Changing Your Core Beliefs
Chapter 5: Level Five: Finding Soul Satisfaction
What Is Soul Satisfaction?
What Does It Mean to Be Anchored?
Food, Body Image, and Soul Satisfaction
The Road to Soul Satisfaction
Accessing the Deeper Urges of Your Soul
Part II: Healing Yourself: Your Journey to Soul Satisfaction
Chapter 6: Learning the Joy of Eating Well
Joyful Eating
Becoming a Joyful Eater
Food Confusion Leads to Disordered Eating
How Did You First Learn to Eat the Way You Do?
The SIMPLE Plan
Getting Started
Chapter 7: Learning to Move Your Body
Rediscovering the Natural Joy of Movement
I Really Don’t Need to Exercise?
When Joyful Body Movement Is Not Good for You
Emotional Exercise Blocks
Chapter 8: Learning Skills for Stress Management
What Is Stress?
How Stress Affects Your Body and Leads to Disordered Eating
How Early Life Stress Contributes to Food and Weight Issues
What Determines How You Cope with Stress?
What Causes Stress?
Other Ways to Manage Stress
Adaptogens
Other Techniques
Chapter 9: Learning to Nourish Your Spirit
Spirituality and Well-Being
Spiritual Depletion
The Hole
Restlessness
Hopelessness
Loss of Passion and Purpose
Nourishing Your Spirit
The Practice of Forgiving
The Practice of Gratitude
The Practice of Living Mindfully
Chapter 10: Finding Your Anchor
Your Hero’s Journey
Finding Your Anchor
Chapter 11: The Seven-Week Guide to Soul Satisfaction
Week 1: Next Steps
Week 2: Detox
Week 3: Stress Management
Week 4: Addressing Cravings
Week 5: Enhancing Your Energy Level
Week 6: Good Gut Function
Week 7: Connecting Your Brain and Heart for Maximum Soul Satisfaction
Conclusion
References
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my agent, Chris Tomasino, who spent a lot of time and effort in the preparation of this book and continued to have faith in my writing and in the book project for two years before it even went to the publisher. Thanks also to my hardworking editors at New Harbinger, Jess Beebe and Melissa Kirk. I have had the pleasure now of completing two books with them, and I know that all their hard work has taken my writing to a better level.
Introduction
F ood and weight issues and associated body image issues affect a large portion of the world’s population. You may be one of the over 1.4 billion adults across the world (in 2008) who were overweight and more than half a billion who were considered obese (World Health Organization 2014). Even if you aren’t overweight or obese, you may struggle with food issues such as food cravings, food fears, or compulsive overeating. You may also have body image issues in which you feel your body has betrayed you by not being the size or shape you’d want it to be, or for whatever reason, you may feel dissatisfied with your body. If any of that is true, you may be spending a lot of your time worrying about your appearance or body size, trying to lose weight or fighting not to regain weight you’ve lost, trying diets, worrying about shopping for clothes, and feeling ashamed of how you look. By now, you may have also realized that dieting doesn’t work—at least not in the long run. If you are feeling hopeless or you feel as if nothing has really worked for you, then this book will make a lot of sense.
This book will help you understand why you’ve had such trouble with your weight. You will learn how your weight, food, and body image issues are connected to experiences you may have had as a child or adult, to your emotions, and to beliefs you’ve formed (usually unconsciously) about yourself and life that keep you stuck. But besides telling you the “why” of your food and weight issues, this book will provide you with ways to remove these blocks and also practical and sustainable solutions for the common pitfalls that most people with food, weight, and body image issues struggle with—issues such as how to stop emotional eating, deal with stress without food, and remove blocks to moving your body. Most importantly, you will learn to shift your focus about your food and body image issues and your weight from a place of dissatisfaction and nothing-ever-works hopelessness to one of reaching your goals by living to satisfy your soul, not the scale. This may seem like a foreign concept now, but just ask yourself why you really want to lose weight or why you are really dissatisfied with your body or why you really overeat or binge eat. Perhaps you, like many of the clients I work with who have these issues, secretly feel that if you could just be thin or just lose weight, then your life would work out. In fact, it’s the other way around. If you can live with more joy in your life, reaching a healthy weight becomes less difficult. If this statement confuses you, this book will provide you with proof that what I’m saying really works.
In part 1, you will learn how to remove emotional blocks and shift any unhealthy beliefs you may have. You will learn more about the “whys” that got you to where you are today. This is essential because emotional blocks and unhealthy core beliefs contribute to your inability or difficulty maintaining progress in your goals to have a better body image, to have a healthy relationship with food, and to reach a healthy weight. In part 2, you will develop daily practices to reduce emotional eating, to be better at stress management, and to improve your ability to bring more mindful joy back into your life, which will have an effect on your eating as well as on other areas of your life. Finally, at the end of the book, you will be presented with a seven-week program that will help you incorporate all that you’ve learned into daily practices that will support you in reaching your goals.
This book is about hope. It is about helping you take your focus off the number on the scale and put it on what really underlies your ability, and what blocks that ability, to live the best, most authentic life you can live. This book is about the Anchor Program. It’s about helping you find your own anchor. Finding your anchor is about living from your authentic self and accessing your inner strength. It’s not about offering you another diet, because diets don’t work. It’s about offering you a life in which food is enjoyed but is not used for unhealthy reasons that impact your self-esteem, your weight, and your body image. If you are ready to really transform your