Continue reading »]]> What exactly happens when you go to therapy to heal from an eating disorder? What is therapy anyway?

This is the first of a series about different levels of treatment.

Unfortunately, most people who suffer from eating disorders don’t get treatment, either because they don’t have the money, the time or they feel that they should be able to heal from eating disorders all on their own, or that their particular issue isn’t severe enough to warrant treatment. What is important to remember is that it’s always okay to get help. Your eating disorder thrives in isolation and reaching out and getting help is what will heal it. Trying to work through it alone often perpetuates the issue. It doesn’t have to get to the point of totally unmanageable before you ask for support. You don’t have to hit bottom. You don’t have to be vomiting all day long, or starving yourself down to nothing or eating constantly all day to get help. It’s really common for someone to come in and feel embarrassed that they’re asking for help because they feel that they’re “not sick enough” or even “not skinny enough” to qualify for an eating disorder. If food feels hard for you, if you find that you’re simply overthinking eating, if you’re uncomfortable in your body, or you just want someone to talk to in order to suss out your situation  and figure out if you even need help and what kind of help you need, it’s okay to call someone. Going to therapy or to treatment doesn’t mean you’re crazy or that you “need help.” Therapy is a place for you to take care of yourself. It gives you time and space to think about your needs and to act on them. It’s a way to take care of yourself.

You can choose to see a Psychologist (Psydoc), a Licensed Social Worker, (LCSW), a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, (MFT) or a Licensed Mental Health Professional (LPC) or a Psychiatrist (MD).  Psychiatrists are the only ones who can prescribe medication, but many psychiatrists don’t do counseling. If you need meds, your therapist will usually consult with your psychiatrist, so that you are getting med management one place and therapy elsewhere.

Before a therapist becomes licensed, she or he must see patients a certain amount of hours (usually 3000) and then take some exams in order to be licensed in their state. This process can take anywhere from 3-6 years after finishing from graduate schools. Before getting licensed, these interns are supervised by licensed professionals while seeing clients. If you would like to see an intern, they usually charge much less than those who are licensed.

When you go in for eating disorder treatment with a therapist, they will often want to treat you along with a nutritionist and sometimes a psychiatrist.

So what happens in therapy? That’s difficult to say. First off, a therapist will not fix you. Therapy isn’t a magic cure, but it’s an open space that gives you the opportunity to think about your situation and strategize ways to improve it. There are a million different ways that therapists work to heal eating disorders. My own personal brand of therapy is eclectic integrative, which means I draw from many different modalities of psychotherapy to create  my own brand. I most often utilize a mixture of psychodynamic therapy  - which is more of the classic Freudian approach- where we discuss your family dynamics and past events in your life and how they have contributed to your current ways of existing in the world. This is incredibly helpful because it makes the unconscious conscious. It allows you to understand why you are behaving in ways that you’re behaving rather than purely reacting as you always have. It gives you some perspective and the ability to step outside of yourself so that you can make better choices about your behaviors. This goes well with cognitive behavioral therapy- which then takes your unconscious that you have now made conscious and enables you to make a choice by giving you options of different ways to think about your situation and react toward your situation. I also utilize somatic therapy and mindfulness which both make you more aware of the feelings that you are holding in your body so that you can work with the actual feelings that you are having rather than hiding from them by acting out with food. I also utilize hypnotherapy which is another way of increasing mindfulness and making you aware of your behaviors and the choices you have.

When you start with a therapist you will begin by education your therapist about your specific eating issues, how long you’ve been suffering, what your behaviors are and the severity of them. They might take your weight and find out how many times a day, week, or month you’re bingeing or bingeing and purging. Understanding the severity of your eating disorder is key to understanding what kind of treatment you will need. You might need weekly therapy sessions as well as sessions with a nutritionist and/or group therapy and a psychiatrist, or weekly sessions might be enough. It’s also possible that  you might need a higher level of care, such as an IOP, a PHP, residential treatment or hospitalization. But your therapist can help you to assess that. Sometimes, if you don’t seem to be on track with your healing, you might need a higher level of care as therapy goes on.  With eating disorder treatment, the first course of action is working to reduce the behaviors, as those decrease, you then begin to work on the feelings or the issues that trigger the behaviors. Often, as the symptoms decrease, challenging feelings increase.  I personally believe that it’s very helpful to stay in therapy after the symptoms (eating disorder behaviors) end in order to work deeply on the underlaying issues. This helps to prevent relapse and also helps you to continue moving forward in your life and achieve the things that you couldn’t before because your eating disorder was taking over.

To find a therapist who treats eating disorders, you can look on ED referral, Something Fishy, or  NEDA.

You can also search on Good Therapy or Psychology Today. Look for someone who specializes in treating eating disorders.

It is possible to find low-fee therapy. You might want to call a University near you that probably has students and interns in counseling centers. You might call a local hospital or mental health agency. If that fails, call a local therapist who probably knows where to refer you go.

Next up: IOP (intensive outpatient treatment)

Continue reading »]]> There is a theory that many people binge on crunchy food, such as cereal or chips when they are trying to process unconscious anger.  Anger is a  challenging feeling for many women to feel. When rage and anger goes unexpressed, it turns inward and becomes depression. What’s important is to learn how to be in touch with your feelings so that you can recognize anger when it occurs. Perhaps someone cut you off when you were driving, or someone at a store said something rude or insensitive, or your boss upset you. Lots of women internalize that and believe that if someone said something mean or rude or insensitive to them, that they probably deserved it. But the truth is, no one should ever treat you with unkindness or disrespect, even if you mess up.  If they do, it is a character flaw within them.  In my opinion, being kind, being compassionate and holding yourself in integrity will get you far in life. And everyone deserves to be treated with kindness unless proven otherwise. When someone treats your poorly, it’s their fault, not yours.  When a binge eater is mistreated, rather than either standing up for him or herself or processing her anger, she will eat over it. It’s ironic. Someone hurt you and your response is to hurt yourself. When you begin to choose recovery, you will notice that your feelings are more apparent to you. When someone makes you angry, either talk to them about it (if it’s safe). If it’s not safe, write an angry letter and put it in a bottle and send it out to sea. Don’t let that anger fester inside of you to hurt you. Don’t stuff it down, get it out. You can talk to a close friend about it, you can punch a pillow, you and put on heavy boots and clomp up a hill.  It’s not easy to recognize when your default has always been to eat as soon as you even begin to feel anger, but if you can stop yourself and ask, “what am I feeling?” you might find that you are able to save yourself.

Continue reading »]]> It’s really hard to not binge when you want to binge. It’s really hard to go out for a run or to the gym or for a walk when you want to sit home and sit in front of the television and binge. It’s really hard to sit down for 20 minutes and meditate when you’re sitting in front of your laptop staring at Facebook. It’s really hard to go to a yoga class when your couch is so comfy. It’s really hard to go to the DMV or the post office or to clean your house or do dishes or straighten things out with your insurance company or any other mundane task that has to get done when you can put them off for another day.

It’s hard but it’s not really. But it is all at the same time. I mean, really, how hard is it to walk out of your house or apartment and talk a walk or a jog around the block. It’s easy. How hard is it to close your laptop or turn off your TV and go do your laundry? None of it is really hard. But it feels hard. It’s that resistance to doing that can feel so challenging.

Waiting for the motivation to study or to do art or to work on your novel or sit down to meditate or to go to the gym often doesn’t work. Sometimes we have to fight through our own resistance. This is a practice. It’s about understanding that you don’t want to do these things but doing them anyway. The reward is on the other side.

For instance, if you know that you really, really want to binge, it takes a great deal of effort not to. It takes more effort to call a friend or to write in your journal or to do something different. However, think about the future. Take a few moments to think about how you will feel if you do give into the binge. What will you be feeling later? Tomorrow? What if you choose not to? How will you feel then? When you are addicted to bingeing, you associate the binge with pleasure. The idea here is to create new synapses in your brain so that you begin to associate not bingeing with pleasure. So that you begin to find not bingeing more effortless. This is the same with doing things like menial chores that you don’t want to do or things that would be good for you like yoga, meditation or exercise. Try to think about the future. “If I meditate for 20 minutes, I will feel great later. If I go for a 1/2 hour walk, I will feel great afterwards.” As you begin to push through the resistance, you will find that getting things done takes much less effort because you begin to associate productivity with pleasure.

As you practice this, you will be rewarded by having a bed that’s always made, clean dishes, no bills or debt piling up. You will find that life just feels easier. The resistance isn’t necessarily real, it just is. You don’t even have to fight the resistance. You can bring it with you, put it in the car next to you and bring it to the DMV (it will certainly have lots of company there)! This can be so empowering as you begin to take responsibility for your own life and begin to meet your own needs.

If you find that it feels impossible to move through your resistance, you might want to begin to ask your resistance why it’s there with you and what purpose it serves. As you begin to understand why it’s there, you might find that you don’t have use for it anymore. Motivation is hard to muster up, but don’t wait for it. Bring your blase’ attitude with you on whatever you do. You don’t have to say, “I’m going to meditate for 20 minutes” but you can say, “i’m going to meditate for 20 seconds,” and let yourself sit for just a moment. You don’t have to go to the gym for 45 minutes, you can take one quick walk around your block. You don’t even have to do that, you can take a walk out your front door and walk for exactly one minute then turn around. Sometimes, the idea of having to do something can be so overwhelming that it stops you. Don’t make it into an event. Just do whatever you can. You might find that once you get started you can continue longer than you planned. Maybe not. Even just a bit will find your rewards.
Rather than completely resisting a binge, tell yourself that you’re going to put it off for 20 minutes.

You will find that giving in (to a binge, to facebook, to procrastination) is much less pleasurable as you begin to find the joy in taking control of your life. Things just begin to get easier.

Continue reading »]]> Question: Submitted via email by Dagny from Vilinus, Lithuania

Continue reading »]]> Question: Submitted in person during a session by a client of mine. Anonymous, San Francisco, CA

Every year I make all these great New Years resolutions, and every year I fail at them. What am I doing wrong? Everyone else knows how to stick to their new years resolutions, why can’t I? I feel like a loser.

Answer:

First off, everyone else definitely does not know how to stick to their New Year’s resolutions. In fact, according to Wikipedia, “52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals.”

I think that many people don’t really know how to make attainable or realistic New Year’s resolutions. What I see often are people creating very rigid black and white New Year’s resolutions that are set ups to failure.

New Year’s resolutions are great! They are a way to reflect on the past year, think about what worked and what you want to bring of into your life and a way to think about what didn’t work so well and what you want to let go of in your life.

People often make resolutions that sound something like this:

• Lose 10 pounds.
• Be more confident
• Stop eating sugar
• Quit drinking alcohol
• Make more money
• Go to therapy every week and never miss a session
• Get a boyfriend/girlfriend
• Quit smoking
• Stop wasting time on the internet
• Quit drinking diet coke
• Go to the gym every day
• Save more money

But come January 4th, when you’re back at work and stressed out and that guy walking down the street puffing on a Camel light passes you, and you compulsively bum a cigarette off him, well then you’re screwed. 2011 is ruined. You now have to wait another year to quit smoking. Okay, that’s extreme, but often that’s how black and white it can be with resolutions. A better way to make resolutions is to try and create more of a life that you want by integrating more of the kinds of behaviors that you have seen worked for you in the past.

For example:

• I will work on decreasing my binge eating by calling supportive people when I know that I’m heading into a challenging situation and by eating three meals a day and by getting enough protein.
• I will join Quitnet to get some support in helping me quit smoking.
• I will try to be kinder to myself. When I notice that I’m being mean to myself, I will take a breath and promptly stop.
• I will decrease the amount of processed sugar that I eat by integrating more fruit into my diet and letting go of processed sugary snacks.
• Rather than drinking 6 diet cokes a day, I will drink water, kombucha, green tea, and allow myself to have 1 diet coke each day if I choose.
• I will set a timer to allow myself 20 minutes twice a to waste time on the internet.
• I will let people know that I am interested in being introduced to a potential partner or start dating online.
• I will decrease the amount of alcohol that I am drinking. If I find that I cannot do that, or if it is a major problem for me,  I will consider my treatment options.
• I will prioritize my therapy appointments, though I understand that things come up at times that are beyond my control.
• I will look for jobs or think about ways to increase my earning potential by talking to people who have skills that I admire or by going back to school or being open to suggestions from other people.
• I will find an activity partner to go hiking with or I will join a run club/tri-club.
• I will bring lunch from home twice a week and take the money I save and put it in a savings account.

Resolutions should be flexible and malleable. Not rigid and fixed. They should have wiggle room and the ability to grow and evolve. Integrating small changes can have a snowball effect.

Rather than expecting to be one person acting one way on December 31s and an entirely different person on January 1st, think about yourself as a small snowball. As rolls down a snowy hill,  it picks up more snow, gaining speed, power, strength, mass, surface area and momentum. Eventually it becomes a gigantic ball of snow.  You can create a snowball effect by implementing small, doable changes that become very large grandiose changes.  Start small, implement more changes, get some momentum and let it take on a life of its own.

What kinds of things worked for you in 2010? What didn’t work for you? What do you want to bring in more of? What do you want to bring in less of?

Telling people about your resolutions and talking about the changes you are making can be helpful in growing them. Joining with people who have similar goals and resolutions can also be helpful.

What kinds of resolutions do you have and how do you plan on implementing them?

Do you have a question about binge eating, bulimia, anorexia, or anything associated with eating disorders? Send an email to bingeeatingtherapy  at gmail dot com. All questions will be kept confidential. Include your first name or the name you want to be referred to as and your location.

Continue reading »]]> “Just because I want it doesn’t mean I have to have it. ”

Is a mantra that can be tremendously helpful in fighting binge eating. So often, people believe that they need to satisfy their urges immediately. And why not? We live in a world where instant gratification is the norm. The media sells directly to our compulsive sides because the feeling of wanting can be painful.  It is okay to want. But just because you want, just because you have an urge or an itch doesn’t mean you have to satisfy it. You can be in the wanting. Fortunately, when the wanting is  about food it is one of the easiest wantings to get past.

It’s heartbreaking to want to be with a certain person who rejects you.

It’s heartbreaking to want a child when you’re unable to have one.

It’s heartbreaking to want your mother to be alive again.

It’s not heartbreaking to want a whole  cheesecake or a gallon of ice cream. That want is fleeting. However, it’s a want that is very, very easy to satisfy.

That being said, of course people often eat when they are wanting something else that they can’t have. For instance, sometimes, when people want something like  money, a partner, a child, love from a parent, they will eat. They can’t satisfy the real want, but the want for food can be easily placated. Unfortunately, after the want of food is satisfied, the other want remains, and you still must learn to live with the pain of yearning after something that you have no control over.

Next time you find yourself in a place of wanting to binge eat or binge and purge, remind yourself “Just because I want it doesn’t mean I have to have it,” and just sit with that for a little while. You might find that it wasn’t actually food that you were craving.

Continue reading »]]> It is so  common that someone comes into my office who is suffering terribly with bulimia or binge eating disorder but they haven’t told their boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife. There are some people who are in new relationships and don’t feel comfortable or ready to disclose that information yet. However,  there are many more people who have been married ten years or more and have been suffering terribly with bulimia or binge eating disorder or other eating disorders the whole time.  If you are in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know about your food issues, you’re not alone. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about, many people feel ashamed or embarrassed, they don’t want to expose themselves as having this big issue or open themselves up to judgments, or even let their partners know that they are not perfect and they’re struggling. Talking about the eating disorder, exposing it, makes it real. If it’s real,  it’s unsafe and unprotected secrecy. Once you expose it, it’s harder to act out with food. You might think that someone is watching over you or judging you. For lots of people, the eating issue is like a secret lover or a best friend and telling your partner about it might force you to give it up.

Here are some tips for talking to your partner about your eating issues.

Explain to them that your eating issues have nothing to do with them.

Explain to them that you don’t want them to “fix” you or to tell you how to eat or what to eat or what not to eat. That’s not their responsibility, nor is it good for the relationship, but they can help by being supportive or available to talk about your feelings with them.

Ask them not to talk about diets, calories, burning calories, losing weight, or what your body looks like.

If there are some foods that you would prefer they not bring into the house, ask them to support you in that way.

If they “catch” you in a binge, it’s not their responsibility to make you stop doing it, nor should they take food away from you. Instead, maybe they can say something like, “hey, is everything okay? do you want to talk? I’m here for you.”

Explain that it’s not about the food, it’s about what you’re feeling inside. Try to talk about what you might be feeling. If you need help, this might resonate for you.

Ask them not to interrogate you or police you.

Give them space to talk about their feelings and what it’s like for them to learn this about you.

Give them the opportunity to ask you questions. If you feel uncomfortable with certain questions, let them know that you’re not ready to answer that yet or that you don’t know the answer yet,  but as you work through recovery, you will let them know what emerges for you.

You can always bring them into your therapist with you or to an OA meeting or EDA meeting to help them understand more about what you are going through. If you don’t have a therapist, make sure that you work with an ED specialist who can help your partner understand through psychoeducation what you two are dealing with.

You are only as sick as your secrets, but secrets are like monsters. They grow and thrive in the dark. After you shine a  light on them, they disappear.

One of the beautiful things about revealing your truth it out is that it increases intimacy and communication with your partner. So many people reject their partners in order to be alone so they can act out with food. When a secret eating issue or addiction is present in a relationship it keeps the relationship distant and decreases love and intimacy. When it is acknowledged, it creates space for a deeper more intimate relationship with one another.

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In order to carry out the processes that keep your body alive, your body needs to be fed (given fuel). Thus, your body is in a continual state of hunger  which can be quickly relieved by  eating. Having food present in your GI tract neutralizes the feeling of hunger which helps you to feel calm both physically and emotionally. Once your body metabolizes this food and utilizes it to carry out the functions that it needs to survive,  you feel hungry again and it’s time to eat. Simple. But not really, right?

If hunger were such a basic biological process, then no one with access to food would ever starve or overeat, right?  Well clearly that’s not the case. Somehow, along the way, when food became plentiful and a doctrine of thin became dictatorially pervasive, our minds and bodies began to disagree on what we should eat and how much we should eat.

We have more access to food and we have more rules about what our bodies are supposed to look like. Food is everywhere, it’s advertised all over the place, but so are promises of an ultra thin body if you follow this one diet- the very last diet you will ever need. It’s not uncommon to be watching TV when a commercial for the Olive Garden’s never ending pasta bowl comes on followed by and advertisement for NutriSystem. Wait. What? It’s kind of insane. It’s like the media wants us to have  eating disorders because it’s the only way all sides win. EAT! EAT! EAT!  STARVE! STARVE! STARVE! EAT! EAT! EAT!  STARVE! STARVE! STARVE! EAT! EAT! EAT!  STARVE! STARVE! STARVE! EAT! EAT! EAT!  STARVE! STARVE! STARVE!

It’s incredibly confusing and messes with our ability to understand what we need or don’t need physically.

No wonder our cues for hunger and satiety are so out of wack. We are told at some young age that we need to lose weight and so we begin to deny our hunger. Then, of course we binge because we are biologically predisposed to overeat after times of restriction to keep our physiological processes going. This is a survival mechanism, just in case we are restricted food again, we must binge to stay alive. But then, our neurosis kicks in, full of guilt, full of shame, full of anxiety, and we either start some kind of new diet to gain some control (thus denying our hunger which ultimately backfires) or we eat compulsively to stuff the feelings of stress and anxiety.

We begin to confuse real physiological hunger with cravings or we begin to deny our hunger and confuse the feeling of hunger with virtuosity, self control and willpower.

When you don’t eat enough, your body begins to shut down. You become tired. Your body tries to conserve what it has to carry out basic functions such as respiration. When you go long periods of time without eating, your organs shut down and you die. This is what happens with anorexia and unintentional starvation.

When you eat more than your body needs, you are overloaded with energy and your body has to work extra hard to process that food. This is why people often feel sluggish and tired the day after a binge. For you biology nerds out there, check out this more in depth piece on the pathophysiology of digestion.

But so how do you know if you’re hungry or not?

1.)When you think that you are hungry,  ask yourself how you know that you’re hungry before you eat anything. Sometimes people think they’re physically hungry, but they’re actually bored, procrastinating, tired, anxious, lonely, angry, stressed, sad, happy or thirsty.

2.)Check in with your physical cues for hunger. These signs might be your stomach growling, pain in your stomach, a feeling of emptiness, a lack of energy, fogginess, lack of concentration, headache, dizziness, obsessing about food, or other feelings. Your body will let you know when it is ready for more food.

3.)If you are not having any physical cues of hunger, see if you can wait 10-15 minutes and do something else. Set a timer and walk around the block. If you are still obsessing on food, think about what it is that you actually need. Sometimes it’s easier to just eat than to deal with the real issue at hand. Food is always there if you need it, but push yourself a little bit to tend to your other needs. Eating can be a way of neglecting our other needs.

4.)Don’t neglect your body if you are hungry. Feed yourself.

The hunger and satiety scale can be helpful here. This is a scale that helps you to relearn your hunger.

Hunger & Satiety Scale

0- Beyond Hunger

At this point, you have denied your hunger for so long that you don’t even have any symptoms of hunger. Your body is in starvation mode. Your metabolism is slowing down. You probably feel low energy, tired, and empty.

1-    Ravenous

At  this point you feel like you’re starving. Your body is just looking for nutrients before it shuts down and you begin running on adrenaline. This is this place where many people binge. Your body needs food now and will eat as much as it possibly can to get the nutrients it needs to run without you having the power to intervene.

2-    Very Hungry

You are thinking about food a great deal now, unable to focus on work or conversations.

3-    Hungry

You notice that your stomach might be beginning to growl, you begin to lose your focus a bit, you are becoming distracted easily.

4-    Almost Hungry

This is when your first thoughts of food begin, or, if while you are eating, you stop too soon, still feeling as though you need more food.

5-    Neutral

At this point, you don’t feel hungry, nor do you feel full. You are not fixated or even thinking about food.  You are able to be productive and focus on work or conversation.

6-    Satisfied

You have eaten enough to feel content. You have fed yourself what your body needs. You are no longer hungry, yet you are not feeling too full. You are able to stop eating at this moment if you want.

7-    Slightly Full

You are a little more than satisfied, you aware of the feeling of food in your stomach, possibly feeling as though you’ve had a few bites too many.

8-    Very Full

You are feeling your belly pushing out, you feel like you’ve had too much.

9-    Uncomfortably Full

Your body feels uncomfortable. You just want to go to sleep at this point. You might be feeling depressed or regretful.

10-Completely Stuffed

At this point, you feel like you might throw up. You have eaten so much that you are in pain. Your belly hurts and you can’t focus on anything else.

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When using the hunger and satiety scale, you should try not to let yourself get lower than a 3 or higher than a 7. Meals and snacks should be slow and mindful to allow you to understand what your body needs.

It’s not easy to get this after spending years dieting, restricting, bingeing or comfort eating. I suggest starting by checking in with yourself a few times a day. Am I hungry? Where am I on the hunger and satiety scale? When you find that you are at a 4, you know that you are going to need a snack fairly soon.

And then, at meal times, before you eat, ask yourself where you are on the scale. If you consistently notice that you are at a 2 or lower when you begin your meals, you are waiting too long to eat. This can of course lead to bingeing because your survival instincts are kicking in and storing up food for the next starvation cycle.

When you are halfway through, put your fork down and ask yourself again. If you are at a 5-6, try and put your food away for a couple of hours then let yourself return to it rather than finishing everything on your plate. This is to help you remember that you do have more food coming to you when you need it and that you don’t have to compulsively eat what’s in front of you.

As you begin to understand what you personally need, you are able to take care of yourself better. There is no set time for how long you should wait between meals. We are not all built to scale. We are different sizes, different shapes and have different structures, and thus different needs. Some people need to eat every 2 hours, some people can go longer periods of time without eating. Find out what you need, don’t look to someone else’s plan to tell you.

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Fritz Perls, who developed Gestalt Therapy, encouraged us to understand the way we eat as a metaphor for the way we live.

At your next meal, watch yourself eat. Do it without judgment and without trying to change anything, just watch.  It can be enlightening to draw some parallels around how you eat and how you live.

Do you take in all of your food at once without smelling it, tasting it, chewing it? Do you do that with life? Is that overwhelming?

Do you avoid food? Do you avoid your feelings?

Do you eat foods that you don’t like? Do you allow other people’s negative thoughts to invade the way you feel about yourself?

Do you think constantly about what you’re going to eat next rather than focusing what you’re currently eating and enjoying it? Is life overwhelming because you’re always nervous about what might or might not happen in the future? Anticipating the next thing?

When you serve yourself a meal, pay attention to what’s on your plate. Try not to anticipate what’s coming next or how much you should or should not eat. Just go ahead and begin to look what’s on your plate and to allow yourself to eat that.  When you pay attention to your food and to your body and what it needs, you will find that at your next meal, you are able to make better choices about what you need. Your digestion will be a little easier as will your feelings of peace around food.  In life, it’s the same thing. What’s on your plate?  When you begin to worry and obsess about “what ifs” and the future, you can become overwhelmed. Pay attention to what’s in front of you. You will metabolize your experience more efficiently and be able to move through life with less worry, less anxiety, and with  more of a sense of peace, knowing that you are clear and focused on what’s in front of you rather than what’s behind or ahead.