Blog 6 - Binge Eating Therapy

How Do I Tell My Husband about My Eating Disorder?

Leora Fulvio August 24, 2015

This one comes from a reader in Australia… Question: I’m in a bind. How do I tell my husband about my eating disorder? I want to tell my husband about my eating disorder but I’m so stressed out because I really don’t know how to tell my husband about my eating disorder. I know things have to change. I don’t know how to have this conversation, how to start it or where to get help. I’ve had this since I was 17

The 1200 Calories a Day Myth

Leora Fulvio August 17, 2015

Have you ever gone online to find out how many calories you should be eating to lose a certain amount of weight and the calculator spits out something like “you should be eating 1200 calories a day to lose 10 pounds by… ” whenever? The fact that a 1200 calorie per day diet is healthy is an evil myth. The idea behind the 1200 calorie diet is that it is enough calories to allow your body to keep up with

How to deal with Boredom in Recovery

Leora Fulvio June 30, 2015

“God,” she told me, “it’s not that I WANT to keep binge eating, but when I’m not bingeing, I’m just so fucking bored…” It’s true, boredom is the enemy of recovery. Stella, a new client of mine was explaining to me why she continued to binge each night despite having lots of tools, support and repeated attempts at recovery. I understood what she meant. The binge was exciting. Although she hated the feeling afterward, she couldn’t resist that desire. She

Q&A Friday- My family is causing me to binge eat!

Leora Fulvio June 5, 2015

This one comes from L in the UK. Question: Dear Leora, Thank you so much for your book and emails. Could you help me with a problem? I had just started the first few chapters of your book and felt that I was making progress with my Binge Eating Disorder. I only had to cook for myself, I had no binge foods in the house and because I have just retired my life was calm and I felt in control. BUT

Thoughts on Suicide

Leora Fulvio June 1, 2015

It’s been many weeks since I’ve written a blog post or sent out a newsletter. Oh, it’s not that I have nothing to talk to or that I’m not thinking about you guys or my clients or that I’m not still out there crusading against eating disorders and working to help people find self acceptance and self love, that’s all still going on. It’s not that I don’t have new to anything to tell you. It’s just that I’ve been tripped up.

The vegetables are Dizzy!

Leora Fulvio April 20, 2015

When I was home from college one weekend, I walked into the kitchen and lifted the cover off the pan to see what my Mom was cooking us for dinner. Squash, onions, brown rice, tofu… the usual. I picked up the wooden spoon and began to mix the stir-fry. “Stop,” my mother told me as she gently placed her hand over my wrist, “you don’t want to make the vegetables dizzy.” My Mom had lots of new-agey philosophies and was always reading a book or participating

Q & A Friday- Why Can’t I Eat Just One…

Leora Fulvio April 16, 2015

This most recent comes from Jodi a new reader: Leora, I am having a hard time with a binge that comes from “just one candy, cookie, etc.” I will be craving something sweet and then say I’ll have one piece of chocolate and then keep going back for more. I don’t know how to avoid that cycle and do something else instead of binging. Sometimes after the one sweet thing I want something salty, too, and then I’ll end up

How to Raise Your Self Esteem in 10 Easy Steps

Leora Fulvio April 9, 2015

Last week, one of my clients said to me, “Leora, can you just teach me how to gain self-esteem? If I just had some self esteem my life would be so different…” I knew what she meant. She tries to use her eating disorder to give her self confidence. She believes that if she were thin enough that she would be worthwhile and important, but if she is not thin enough, she is a worthless human being with no value. But she is never thin enough.

The New Binge Eating Miracle Drug

Leora Fulvio March 25, 2015

I’ve had a lot of people ask me to talk about Vyvanse, which is being touted as the new miracle drug for binge eating. The New York Times ran an article about it last month and lots of folks have been calling me and asking me if I recommend it. Before I discuss my thoughts and feelings about the drug itself, lets discuss what it is. Vyvanse is an ADHD drug and it’s an amphetamine. It’s been used for years

10 Ways to Train your Brain to Stop Overeating

Leora Fulvio March 3, 2015

10 Ways to Train your Brain to Stop Overeating You know how sometimes it’s not even noon but you know that you are going to have a binge when you get home from work that night? You begin planning it, thinking about what stores you’re going to go to, what foods you’re going to get, where you are going to eat it, what you’re going to do when you eat it, what it will feel like in your mouth,

How to Raise Your Self Worth

Leora Fulvio February 26, 2015

When we were in our very early 20’s, my friend Catherine and I were working together as tech journalists in Silicon Valley. It was the first tech boom, we were recently out of college and people around us had lots and lots of money. People who were 24 years old were worth many millions of dollars, but we, two grammar geeks who worked as reporters for an online dot com journal were worth much, much less. At least on paper. One day, while we

Should I throw my scale away?

Leora Fulvio February 10, 2015

When I was in college, I knew a beautiful woman. She was beautiful because she was kind and thoughtful and she spent her summers in Haiti helping young pregnant women and new young single Mommies. She also spent many afternoons playing with children in a nearby shelter. She was raucously hilarious, and scary smart in a Bill Gates/Steve Jobs sort of way but with social panache and kindness. She was (is) incredibly adorable and honest and everything that you’d want in a

Q & A Friday- How can I stop Binge Eating on Weekends?

Leora Fulvio February 5, 2015

This question comes to us from Sarah in New York. Leora, I just can’t seem to want to take care of myself all the time. It’s just easier to not think about whether or not I’m hungry, so if I’m stressed, or particularly tired, or angry at the world, that’s what I do. Things are fine when I care about myself, when I’m focused on listening to my body. But I can’t seem to stay in that frame of mind.

How Not to Binge On Superbowl Sunday

Leora Fulvio February 1, 2015

You might be at a superbowl party right now feeling totally anxious about the giant display of 7 layer dip, tons of chips and ridiculous amount of beer, wings, pizza and whatever else there is there. You might not even care about football but be more interested in the food display. Okay. Stop and take a deep breath and step away from the food table. Let’s strategize a little bit here. How Not to Binge on Super

How to Stop Dieting

Leora Fulvio January 30, 2015

“As soon as I stopped focusing on losing weight, I healed from my eating disorder…” or “As soon as I stopped dieting I lost weight…” I’ve heard this from clients again, and again and again and again. Why do you think that this is true for so many people? I know that focusing on weight loss keeps people pulled into the bingeing and restricting cycle and pulled into the “I’ll be better when…” syndrome (and there’s never an ending to

How To Love Yourself: 41 Tips For Self-Love on Valentine’s Day

Leora Fulvio January 26, 2015

Valentines Day is Self Love Day! But do you know how to love yourself? Here are 40 ways to love yourself on Valentines Day and Every Day! 1. Give up the belief that you need to change in order to like yourself. You are perfect, whole and complete right now at this very moment. Take a breath, be still and just for 30 seconds be with the essence of who you are. Meeting goals and evolving is what we naturally do as

Top 10 Binge Busting Foods

Leora Fulvio January 21, 2015

Do you ever feel like recovery is impossible because you will binge on whatever foods you have in your house? Even if you refrain from keeping your trigger foods in your house, you still feel unsafe unless your cabinets are empty? But sometimes an empty refrigerator is even more unsafe because a starving brain will behave in a compulsive manner and order take out or delivery and binge in a way that you never prepared for. Stay prepared by keeping

Dealing with Jealousy and Comparative Thinking

Leora Fulvio January 9, 2015

I’ve always prided myself on being completely free of jealousy. I believed that everyone had their own path and their own dharma… she had hers and he had his and I had mine. In fact, I spent so much time with my clients helping them not to make comparisons of their bodies and their hair and their dating lives or lack thereof to their friends and I felt completely immune to jealousy and envy. I didn’t think I had a

Only Rich White Girls Get Eating Disorders

Leora Fulvio December 24, 2014

I tend to shy away from talking about what I do for a living when meeting someone in social situations like at parties or on an airplane. The phrase “I am a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders,” is met with either awkward silence, or uncomfortable reactions such as, “I wish I had an eating disorder, but I could never stop eating…” or someone telling me in detail about their friend/college roommate/friend’s daughter’s eating disorder… or other conversations that are

Going Home For the Holidays When you Have an Eating Disorder

Leora Fulvio December 10, 2014

In my first semester of graduate school, right before we left for Thanksgiving break, one of my professors asked who was headed home for the break. Most of us raised our hands. “Well,” he said, “I don’t care how much therapy you’ve had, I don’t care how much you meditate, I don’t care how much healing you’ve done, when you go home, you are going to be that same twelve-year old kid that you used to be. Same family of

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