The Power of Doing Nothing: How to Accept the Unacceptable

by Alison M.

I am a perfectionist, which means that I find it impossible to accept people and situations that are less than perfect. And why should I? If I work harder, try harder, figure it out, and expect the best, I'll be perfect in no time.

This is the attitude that brought me to my knees three years ago and gave me the willingness to change my behaviours around food. I was a perfectionist with my food, counting calories and weighing myself obsessively. I was always on a diet, trying to get the food and weight "thing" right. If I worked out more, if I restricted more, if I ate less meat, if I drank less water, then surely I would get the magic formula, and lose the twenty pounds I was dying to lose. Then, I would be perfect, and life would be great.

Unfortunately, I used up huge amounts of energy trying to be perfect and ended up bingeing because I couldn't sustain my "perfection program." I needed to escape from that incredible pressure. Of course, the bingeing forced me to control my behaviours even more stringently, which, in the end, lead to more bingeing. It was a cycle of trying to be perfect and then trying to escape the pressure of trying to be perfect, and it lead me to uncontrollable eating and a deep depression full of self-hatred, despair, and negative thinking.

It wasn't until I accepted the weight I was at and gave up trying to control my food that the obsession was lifted and the weight came off. This experience has proven to me the power of acceptance: nothing changes until I accept I cannot change it. Then, and only then, can I begin to grow.

Do We Really Need to Exercise and Eat Low Fat To Get Into Heaven?

Contributed by Jonathan I Robison PhD, MS

From the Healthy Weight Journal, Sept/Oct 2000:74-75

Health is much more than the absence of disease or behavioral risk factors for disease. We need to shift towards a more holistic conception of what it means to be healthy, taking into consideration the social, emotional and spiritual as well as the physical aspects of the human experience.

Our culture's at times almost religious fervor regarding the importance of weight and exercise to health is making this difficult. Can we truly say that someone is not "healthy" because they choose not to exercise and eat less than 30 percent of their calories from fat? Is a person with anorexia nervosa who eats virtually no fat and exercises constantly healthy? How about someone who hates their job, is in a failing relationship and abuses their children? Is he healthy if he works out at the gym 5 days a week and has a body mass index of less than 25?

By, Michelle Morand, Founder and Director of The CEDRIC Centre.

This month I'm reviewing: Kids are worth it! Giving your child the gift of inner discipline.

Wow, what a great book! Anyone who grew up in a dysfunctional family (and let's face it, that's most of us) would benefit from reading this book whether you have children or not.

Coloroso is a noted expert on child development. Once a Franciscan Nun, then a teacher and parent herself she is now a renowned Parenting Expert though it is said she would never refer to herself as such.

Coloroso's entire approach to parenting and to the establishment of a healthy family unit centers around her belief that children need not to be told what to think and do but to be taught how to think and do for themselves. Supporting this philosophy are the principles that, whenever possible, children are to be left to determine the right course of action for themselves in any situation unless doing so would be illegal, immoral or life threatening to the child at which point it is the role of the parent to intervene. In all other matters, she insists, we are doing our children a great disservice if we become involved without first giving our children an opportunity to consider their own solutions to problems.

Coloroso differentiates between 3 types of families to help us, as individuals to determine what family structure we grew up with and what type of structure we are modeling for our children. She clearly identifies the pitfalls of two of these three types: The Brick Wall family and The Jellyfish Family.

Our special thank you to Sandy Szwarc, the writer of this article, for letting us reprint her fabulous work from Tech Central.

As incredible as it sounds, nutrition is no longer the priority for the government's Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new guidelines put the entire nation on a diet and its key message is "eat less and exercise more to lose weight." This certainly isn't an unprecedented idea, but decades of following this advice has also shown it doesn't work. Tragically, the unsupportable and erroneous information about weight and nutrition in these new guidelines isn't just innocuous, but will likely have harmful consequences far beyond any good it might do, especially threatening our children and elderly.

When food guides were begun over 100 years ago, the government was tasked to make recommendations on the minimum number of servings of various food groups to ensure the general population could meet the recommended dietary allowances of nutrients. People were free to choose what additional foods they wanted to enjoy to make up their energy needs. That changed in 1977 when politicians got involved and its focus became outlining the goals for federal food programs, and hence what foods would receive government funding. From then on, as a glut of special interests sought to get their piece of the money pie, it has moved further from sound science. And not surprisingly, it's become increasingly questioned among nutrition scientists and health care professionals.

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines became untenable the instant they abandoned the long-term pledge to promote better health for all Americans and instead made everything about weight. "Weight" appears 150 times in the 84-page document. We're told that being thin is more important than being healthy and that good nutrition isn't just eating a healthful balance of nutritious foods. Our focus must become counting calories, restricting what we eat, eating low-fat or fat-free foods, and what size pants we wear.

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is about our schedule. Most of our clients work a 9-5 day and are concerned about how to fit sessions into their already busy lives.

Fear not!

While those 5-8 pm slots are popular, our counsellors have varying schedules, and we work to accommodate our clients as best we can.

For example, Karen Stein is in the office Mondays-- Thursdays, and is available for evening appointments Wednesdays and Thursdays. Monday and Tuesday nights are reserved for groups facilitated by Karen. If you'd like to book a session with Karen please contact us by phone or e-mail.

Michelle has an equally flexible schedule. She is in the office Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, taking her last appointments at 8 pm. Currently, Michelle isn't taking any new clients, so if you'd like to begin to work with her, please contact us to have your name put on a waiting list.

Our newest counsellor, Beth Burton-Krahn is in the office Thursdays and Fridays and is currently accepting new clients. Beth has a Masters in counselling and is a Registered Clinical Counsellor, so if you have extended insurance coverage, a portion of your fees can be reimbursed. Please contact us by phone or e-mail to make an appointment with Beth.

Our phone number is 250-383-0797 and our e-mail address is info@compulsiveeating.com.

Our web program has been an astonishing success!

We have clients from all over the world who are using it to change thier lives, and end thier unbalanced relationships with food.

But you know us, we can't resist making a good anything even better.

So, starting with the next web group, we're enhancing our web program and increasing the number of counselling sessions. Instead of meeting with your web group every other week, now, participants can meet on a weekly basis.

Meeting on a weekly basis means more reinforcement, more connection, and more structure.

All of the other elements of our web program will be exactly the same, but we know that more frequent contact in groups will help our participants get better, faster.

To sign up for our enhanced web program, just scroll down and fill in the information.

We look forward to working with you!

Wow, what an amazing experience.

We had a diverse group of women attend and were able to cover a large amount of information, in a short period of time.

Michelle's been honing her presentation skills, and working on simplifying the concepts surrounding ending compulsive eating and the feedback we got from the workshop really testifies to that!

Here's what some of our participants had to say:

"I enjoyed the simplicity of always seeing my maladaptive coping strategies as unmet needs."

"Tools that work, more arrows in my quiver!"

"I came here thinking that my emotions were the underlying problem, and my disordered eating, and that food was the coping mechanism for my emotions, and that was how deep it got-there was nothing more. I now realize the emotions were coping mechanisms for something deeper-my unmet needs! I can focus on what I'm needing, and meet those needs with something better suited to the need than food."

Diet and Lose Weight? Scientists Say 'Prove It!'

Written by Gina Kolata, NYT Science Writer

With obesity much on Americans' minds, an entire industry has sprung up selling diets and diet books, meal replacements and exercise programs, nutritional supplements and Internet-based coaching, all in an effort to help people lose weight.

But a new study, published today, finds little evidence that commercial weight-loss programs are effective in helping people drop excess pounds. Almost no rigorous studies of the programs have been carried out, the researchers report. And federal officials say that companies are often unwilling to conduct such studies, arguing that they are in the business of treatment, not research.

"In general, the industry has always been opposed to making outcomes disclosures," said Richard Cleland, the assistant director for advertising practices at the Federal Trade Commission.

"They have always given various rationales," Mr. Cleland said, from "'It's too expensive,' to even arguing that part of this is selling the dream, and if you know what the truth is, it's harder to sell the dream." The study, published in today's issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, found that with the exception of Weight Watchers, no commercial program had published reliable data from randomized trials showing that people who participated weighed less a few months later than people who did not participate. And even in the Weight Watchers study, the researchers said, the results were modest, with a 5 percent weight loss after three to six months of dieting, much of it regained.

We're developing a new general brochure that outlines our services, and instead of plastering it with pictures of people we don't know, we thought we'd invite you, our readers and clientele, to model for it.

What kind of "models" are we looking for?

Well, you, to be exact!

We'd like to show the regular people who use our services in our new brochure. So you won't have to wear anything fancy, or, have gobs of makeup on, we just want some candid photos to illustrate the work we do at The Centre.

If you signed on to be a model, we'd need you to sign a release waiver that gives us ownership of the photo. The actual photos would consist of group shots, photos of people speaking with a counsellors, and a celebratory cover photo that speaks to the joy and peace our cleints experience after they have begun to deal with their issues.

If you're interested in being a model for a CEDRIC Centre brochure please give us a call or e- mail.