Dr Susan Albers
Quit Comfort Eating is a unique book with new weight loss tips. You aren't going to find your same old plain Jane techniques. These are scientifically based to changed your relationship to food for the long run. I created the concepts in the book because many of my clients and readers are brilliant when it comes to nutrition knowledge. In fact, many of my readers could rattle off the fat grams and sugar content of every food you could imagine. But what they don't know is how to talk themselves into making the healthy choice.
In this book, I tackle five topics including social eating, stress eating, pleasure eating, dieting and distress. Throughout Quit Comfort Eating I dive into these topics because they are all things that are common issues that get in the way of dieting. This book gives 25 new needle moving strategies for eating better and losing/managing weight. You will notice that it's not a diet. I believe we need to focus as much on changing the feelings as we do the food on our plate.
Here’s Some of What You’ll Find Inside:
· 6 Quizzes
· Evidence-Based Tips
· Introduction to the EAT Method
· 25 Scientifically-Based Mindful Eating Tools
· Mindful Eating Exercises
· Plus: Groundbreaking Information About Social Eating, Stress Eating, Pleasure Eating, Dieting & Distress/Trauma
I wrote Quit Comfort Eating for busy, smart, people who are juggling a lot and need easy and quick tips. It was important for me to include women and men. I have had a lot more men in counselling over the past ten years and wives who indicate that their significant other also struggles with overeating. This is a book you could read together as a couple and get a lot out of it. Basically, anyone who has said to themselves, “I want to lose weight” or “I want to quit stress eating!” would gain life changing strategies in Quit Comfort Eating.
What is comfort eating?
Comfort eating is eating when you are not physically hungry but in response to an emotion. It's a myth that it is just negative emotions. We also eat when we are happy as a way to keep those positive feelings going. Eating distracts us from our feelings. It numbs them out or turns them off almost like a kitchen sink water valve. If the water is on full blast, you turn it and tone down the intensity of the spray. Food is like this in that it can tone down the intensity of the emotions. This can be bad news for eating because emotions can actually be helpful. Feelings give us clues about when to stop and start eating. Comfort eating often makes us feel better now. Unfortunately, research indicates that the feeling is short lived. In fact, the good feelings chocolate give us only last about three minutes!
The good news is that there are many other ways to comfort ourselves when we press the reset button and change our habits. Deciding what to eat can often be one of the most emotionally imbued decisions you make during the day. It starts with the question, “What do I feel like eating?” What you choose often hinges on your mood at the moment. Think about the quality of your choices when you are happy versus angry (many people crumble down to “I don’t care what I eat” when upset). The process of eating ends with an emotional response—satisfaction, joy, guilt, longing etc.
Why do we eat after we are full?
In part, it's not our fault. Our bodies are wired in a way to slowly digest food. There is a lag time between eating and feeling how much we eat. Therefore, we have to use a mixture of our brains and our bodies to know when to stop eating. We accidentally miss the mark. Food products don't make it easy! They are loaded with fat and sugar which entice us to keep eating way past our natural stopping point. We also don't have a lot of practice with the "stop" mechanism and waiting. We want things to move fast! The good news is that you can teach yourself with these practices how to slow down and cool off your cravings.
Why is work a place for a lot of binge eating?
There are many reasons we binge eat at the office. The most significant one is stress! When we are stressed out our decision making skills plummet. It's difficult to juggle being stressed and not turning automatically back to old habits of comfort eating. A recent study showed that women who are burnt out at their job are at the highest risk for binge eating and being overweight.
Why do we turn to food when we are stressed, angry or upset?
On a biological level, food changes the feel good chemicals that are pumped through our bodies. Comfort food also taps deep into our memories. Eating comfort food from your childhood may bring up memories and feeling associated with being a child. When you look closely at advertisements for food and chocolate, they are often subtly pushing comforting yourself with food. I recently saw an ad in the US that had a woman lying in a bathtub of chocolate. Instead of urging you to soothe and comfort yourself with a nice, hot bath, it was suggesting you should relax with chocolate. These ads start to get into our subconscious and make us think this is the "right" way to cope with stress.
Why does boredom trigger eating?
Most of us have very little tolerance for boredom. It gives us time to dwell on things. Also, we are so used to being entertained all the time it is difficult to have empty space. Think about computers and text messaging. We have access 24/7 to information and entertainment in our hands. Standing in line without your phone can feel like an eternity. Many of my clients also use eating to procrastinate. It feels like a purposeful task. So, they don't have to pay the bills, or something else they are putting off until later.
What made you want to specialise in weight loss?
For the past ten years, I’ve been working as a psychologist helping people eat healthier, stop mindless eating, and to lose weight. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that deciding what to eat is much more complex than it appears on the surface. However, honestly, I’ve known this fact for a long time. I noticed from an early age that my parents had very different food cultures from each other. On my mother’s side of the family, there are many old black and white photos of family get-togethers with tables heaping full of pastas, bread and cheese. Every event was all about eating good food. In contrast, my father grew up on a farm with a utilitarian relationship to food. They used every single thing they had from the apples on their apple tree to the side of beef from their own cattle. Food was fuel. Food decisions were based on what they had available to eat—period. After forty-six years of marriage, you can still see remnants of their upbringings. My mother asks, “What do you feel like having for dinner.” My father asks, “What do we have for dinner.”
I understand that we all grow up with a very unique food culture. It shapes, for better or worse, how you think about and interact with food. In Quit Comfort Eating, I tackle five topics including social eating, stress eating, pleasure eating, dieting, and distress. You will also find 25 new needle moving strategies for eating better and losing weight. In my office, every day I help people who really want to lose weight and they want to accomplish this by eating healthier. I know that the process is HARD and at times, incredibly frustrating. Yet, it is critical. Wrestling with your eating robs people of so many opportunities to enjoy life to its fullest from being uncomfortable in your clothing to doctor bills for medication. Taking care of yourself is an absolute priority and weight loss is often the doorway to better health. The good news is that I’ve seen people make lasting changes that bring amazing results—and you can do it too!
Please can you tell us a bit about your professional background?
I've been writing about mindful eating for about 10 years. I am a licensed clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic specializing in eating issues, weight loss, body image concerns, and mindfulness. I work with people one-on-one who want to lose weight or improve their eating. We meet each week to unravel their relationship to food. I love writing and talking about food!
I graduated from the University of Denver, completed an internship at the University of Notre Dame and was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University. I am the author of Eating Mindfully, Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful, Mindful Eating 101 and 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food. Visit Dr Susan Albers online at www.eatingmindfully.com and www.eatq.com
What is one of the most common emotional barriers to losing weight?
There are many! Social eating is a significant barrier to losing weight. I have a lot of clients who say, "my friends often want to go out to eat" or my "husband is an overeater and brings home all kinds of treats into the house." For people who struggle with social eating, the holidays are a huge challenge. However don't worry! I have an entire chapter for how to navigate all of these situations without overeating. I also talk about how to say "no" to food pushers in your life. We tend to unconsciously eat like those around us. In fact, we are 57% more likely to be overweight if we have a close friend who is overweight. Thus, start being mindful of how you might be eating like they do. Maybe you match them bite for bite or eat at the same rate? I believe we can still enjoy eating out with others and eating pleasurable food as long as we begin to do it in a different way!
You have developed 25 tools and techniques to manage your emotions, please can you tell us about one of these?
Here are two easy things people can try right now…
1. Use your non-dominant hand to eat. A recent study showed that this strategy can reduce your eating by 30%. This action breaks up the automatic hand to mouth flow. You have to think about each bite similar to writing with your opposite hand.
2. Impulse control is something you can build through practice. Play the game “Simon Says” with yourself throughout the day. Take a few steps and say “stop.” Or when you are taking a drink of water say “stop” to yourself. This will help you to “stop” and actually do it when you are eating because you’ve build up your impulse control.
If people buy the book and send me a copy of their receipt via email, they can join my elite membership group free for a year where I will send them exclusive info on events and tips.
What is next for you?
I do a lot of what I call "sneaky food experiments" on people. When I invite friends and family to my home or at the office, I take research I've read about and try it out (for example, see my M&M experiment in France in the Huffington Post). It would be fun to write another book on this or to do a TV show on it. The experiments are quite fun!
This is my six book. Maybe a seventh will shortly be in the works. Many people ask how that is possible to have written this many book at this time in my life -I'm always thinking about writing and taking notes in my old school little notebook.
Also, I'd love to travel and write about eating habits of people all over the world… our common struggles and valuable lessons we can learn from people around the world. I lived in London for a semester while in college. I’d love to go back and live their again for year.