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INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered why some people can keep many of their favorite comfort foods in the house, eat one small portion at a time, and save the rest for later? Perhaps they even forget that they bought those special imported cookies or chocolates, and, God forbid, they go stale. Those same folks can go to a buffet or social gathering with an abundance of delectable foods and fill up one level plate, go back for a small amount of dessert, and that’s it. They’re done. They don’t go back for seconds and thirds. And they don’t keep thinking about food.

If having too many favorite “trigger” foods around overwhelms you and leads to mindless or excessive snacking, overeating, or bingeing, then you’ve picked up the right book. You probably prefer to keep your cupboards and refrigerator bare of too many favorite comfort foods, because they call to you when they’re in the house. If these foods are in the house for the kids, your spouse, or company, you’re keenly aware of them, right?

Most likely, you have to prepare yourself to avoid overindulging in restaurants or at social gatherings or holiday meals where there will be many of your favorite foods. Lack of planning on your part can lead to feeling food focused, overeating, and then suffering that familiar remorse, guilt, and shame. And let’s be honest — sometimes you come home after overindulging at social events and eat more!

Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that your excesses aren’t really all that bad. You love good food — perhaps you even label yourself a foodie. Is that such a crime? Everyone you know eats and drinks to excess at times, so what’s the big deal? It could be worse — you’re not shooting heroin or gambling yourself into bankruptcy.

But, truth be told, you’ve picked up this book because you’re tired of feeling out of control with food and tired of the control it seems to have over you. You’ve had enough food hangovers for one lifetime. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you know that your life feels out of balance and that your excesses have something to do with it. You suspect, or you know, that your health is not optimal. You may not be satisfied with your weight. Perhaps you feel guilty about and ashamed of your eating behavior — at times you may hate yourself for it — and you’re tired of having a poor body image. Take heart: you’re not alone.

I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to feel so food focused all the time. I spent a good portion of my life stuck in a cycle of overeating comfort foods, gaining weight, and dieting. I found it especially difficult to stay away from my favorite foods, like bread, scones, muffins, crackers, pretzels, chips, cookies, and candy, as well as caffeinated beverages like diet soda, coffee, and tea.

If I kept my favorite foods in the house, inevitably I ended up feeling obsessed with them, overeating or bingeing, and then throwing them out. For many years, every time I brought them back into the house for a trial run, in any quantity larger than a single serving, I’d do okay for a day or two and then, unable to think about anything else, I’d start feeling compulsive and — well, you know the drill.

I was definitely an emotional eater. I had difficulty regulating my emotions, and I could get stuck for long periods in painful emotional states like anxiety, anger, sadness, hurt, shame, loneliness, frustration, depression, and hopelessness. Food altered my brain chemistry, helping to numb the pain of unpleasant emotions, self-doubt, and other negative thoughts. It also helped relieve stress. And because food is pleasurable and exciting, it was a good distraction. It temporarily filled up the inner emptiness and restlessness I regularly felt, a sort of spiritual hunger.

Throughout my overeating days, I always believed that eating and maintaining a healthy body weight — not overweight and not underweight — should be easy, comfortable, and intuitive. I knew we weren’t designed to count calories, track carbohydrate or fat grams, or weigh and measure food — or our bodies, for that matter. After all, our earliest ancestors did not count calories or weigh and measure food, and they maintained their weight in an optimal range. And so can you!

Decades of research have confirmed that our bodies, those phenomenal machines, do all those behind-the-scenes calculations for us. They signal us with hunger pangs and cravings, calculate the caloric and nutrient density of the food we eat, and attempt to shut off our appetite by signaling us with fullness cues. Restrictive dieting is not necessary, and it is not the answer to resolving weight challenges. In fact, it has disconnected many of us from our intuitive body wisdom. Clearly, there are more pieces to the overeating puzzle.

I’m guessing that like me, you’ve tried to improve your relationship with food many times. You’ve been on every diet and eating plan known to humankind. But you’ve found it difficult to stick with restrictive eating plans. Even though you initially lose weight and feel a renewed sense of control, hope, and motivation, at some point a craving or a discomfort sends you right back to that tried-and-true form of comfort, soothing, pleasure, relief, excitement, and distraction — food.

You know others who have conquered these demons, but, for whatever reason, you haven’t yet been successful. Perhaps you’ve concluded that these folks have more willpower or are more disciplined than you, or that they have less stress. Or that they have a nurturing partner, close friends, and a loving family, and you don’t. Or that they have more balanced brain chemistry or better genetics. Or that you have an “addictive personality.”

Although these factors may well represent pieces of the overeating puzzle, there is a more important piece that is often overlooked. The self-control other people seem to exhibit around favorite comfort foods may actually be the result of the quality of the caregiving they received as infants and small children; of the way their brain circuitry, brain chemistry, and stress-response mechanisms developed in a nurturing environment; and of the self-care skills they acquired early in life. Mastering the skill of self-regulation depends to a large extent on experiencing consistently kind, supportive, and nurturing early interactions with our caregivers.

The Complexities of Overeating

We all enjoy eating and, on occasion, eat when we’re not hungry or overeat just because the food is incredibly tasty or because it enhances our personal or social experiences. Enjoying food beyond simple sustenance is a normal part of life. It becomes problematic, however, when we overeat to the extent of causing a significant weight gain or posing a health risk.

Overeating may seem like a simple act, but it’s actually a complex behavior. All overeating behaviors (mindless or excessive snacking, overeating at meals, and bingeing) are the result of complex interactions among emotional, cognitive, biological, neurological, social, and spiritual factors. Temperament and constitution, genetically inherited brain and body imbalances, insufficient nurturing, traumatic childhood experiences, chronic stress, chronic dieting, and the easy availability of high-calorie, nutrient-deficient foods all play a role. Resolving the problem of overeating requires a comprehensive, multidimensional approach.

When we regularly eat in the absence of physical hunger cues, routinely choose unhealthy comfort foods, or keep eating when we’re full, something is out of balance somewhere. These tendencies suggest that we are missing important self-care skills that are generally learned in childhood. We may be lacking the ability to connect to and be mindful of our internal world — to consistently regulate uncomfortable emotional and bodily states, calm and soothe ourselves, and address our unmet needs. We may find it difficult to reframe self-defeating thoughts and self-belief distortions and to practice self-acceptance and self-love. Perhaps we never learned how to effectively grieve losses and disappointments, remind ourselves of our strengths and resources, and hold hope for the future. Without these skills, regulating our behaviors and setting effective limits for ourselves can feel like a daunting task.

Rewiring Your Brain and Your Response to Stress through Mindfulness

Throughout my own recovery from emotional eating, I was slowly piecing together the self-care skills I had been missing since childhood. As I practiced them, I noticed that something was happening to my brain that I wasn’t able to articulate until years later, when I began to understand the neuroscience behind the changes I had experienced.

Scientific discoveries of the last twenty years have demonstrated that the mindful, self-reflective skills I was practicing were activating and connecting the self-regulatory circuits of my brain and, in so doing, were actually changing the physical structure of my brain. As new brain circuits develop and strengthen, they facilitate more adaptive responses and behaviors, creating resilience and well-being. All of this translates into better handling of stress and less obsessive thinking and wayward eating.

Through therapy and the intentional exposure to other kind souls, I began to learn the language of self-nurturance: unconditionally loving, affirming, validating, supportive, compassionate, empathic, calming, and soothing words and phrases that could actually turn my mood from anxious to calm, from despair to a sense of possibility and hope. As I wrote these phrases in my journal, I was amazed to find that, over time, something was shifting inside. Slowly I was developing the voice of my very own Inner Nurturer and, with it, self-acceptance and self-love.

I found myself turning less often to external sources of comfort. As I strengthened this inner voice, I no longer felt obsessed with or compulsive about food. My weight and mood stabilized. I felt less overwhelmed. I procrastinated less. My inner chaos and outer clutter diminished. I felt more emotionally balanced than I had ever been in my life. And, as a side benefit, my relationships improved: as I was able to meet more of my needs on my own, I was more emotionally available to others. Connection and intimacy began to replace the emptiness and loneliness I had lived with for so long.

Learning to Nurture Yourself

In my previous book, The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual, I covered these self-care skills in depth. I also covered key body-balancing principles (such as adding whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods to your eating plan and addressing body and brain imbalances) and soul-care practices (like practicing mind-quieting exercises and learning to let go). I introduced the very important skill of self-connection, which simply means regularly checking in with your emotions, bodily sensations, needs, and thoughts and accessing an internal nurturing voice capable of reassuring and comforting you and helping you meet your needs.

After the book’s release, I received emails from readers all around the world describing how these skills, principles, and practices had helped them. They told me that they had never realized that they could learn how to nurture themselves. Over and over again, participants in my seminars, workshops, emotional eating groups, and Twelve-Week Emotional Eating Recovery Program echoed these sentiments and told me they felt encouraged by the notion that learning to nurture themselves could be the way out of a lifetime of food and weight obsession.

In this book, I expand on the concept of mindful self-nurturance and share with you the seven skills that constitute the practice I call inner nurturing. While it isn’t necessary to read The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual prior to reading this book, if you are struggling with emotional eating, becoming familiar with the skills, principles, and practices of my first book is an invaluable first step.

My goal in this book is to show you how to nurture yourself by building and strengthening your Inner Nurturer voice and related skill set. You’ll learn to soothe and comfort yourself, calm your stress-response apparatus, and grow and strengthen the regulatory circuits of your brain. You’ll learn to meet your needs without turning to food or other unhealthy substances or habits. As a bonus, you’ll enhance your resilience and sense of well-being.

Given that our early childhood environment has a powerful influence on brain development, and that you can’t go back in time for a redo, it can be easy to feel hopeless about your chances of altering your brain’s functioning, improving your self-care and your response to stressors, and resolving eating challenges. But there is good reason for hope.

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reconfigure itself — to establish and dissolve connections between its different parts in response to experience. Our brain is an incredibly resilient and plastic (moldable) organ, and we continue to develop and expand our brain circuits throughout our lives. Research suggests that well into old age, our experiences can actually change the physical structure of the brain. In other words, it’s never too late to learn to nurture yourself with the loving-kindness and self-compassion that you deserve, rewire your brain for optimal long-term emotional health, handle stressors more easily, and give your wayward eating the boot.

Ending Your Emotional Eating without Going on Another Diet

If you routinely snack mindlessly or excessively, overeat at meals, or binge, this book offers you a way out from a lifetime of suffering. If you’re ready for an alternative to dieting, this book will help you address the true causes of your overeating or imbalanced eating.

Whether you were fortunate enough to have been raised by loving, kind, well-intentioned caregivers or had the misfortune of being reared by unkind, abusive, or neglectful elders, this book gives you the tools you need to connect to and pay attention to your mind, body, and spirit signals and respond to them with love and care.

If you’re the parent, therapist, teacher, caregiver, spouse, sibling, or friend of someone struggling with emotional eating, this book will help you better understand, nurture, and support those you love and care for.

This book will also be helpful for anyone, not just emotional eaters, who may have missed out on consistent and sufficient emotional nurturance in childhood. You may not overeat, but you may overuse alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, or drama, or surf the internet to excess. You may spend money compulsively or gamble irresponsibly. Perhaps you’re a workaholic or an overexerciser or use busyness as your drug of choice. Maybe you have trouble controlling your anger and routinely lash out at others. Perhaps you’re chronically late or struggle with procrastination. If you have difficulty controlling your behaviors and disciplining yourself or activating yourself, this book can help you.

How to Use This Book

Since each chapter of this book builds on the previous one, it’s best to read the chapters in order. The Emotional Eating Checklist, which follows this introduction, will help you get clear on your particular emotional eating challenges.

Part 1 discusses how we develop self-regulation, or the ability to manage our emotions, moods, thoughts, impulses, and behaviors. In order for our brains to develop and connect the proper circuitry for self-regulation, we require attuned or “tuned-in” experiences with our early caregivers. These experiences help create secure attachments, activate certain pathways in the brain, strengthen existing connections, and enable new connections to be made.

Throughout the book, I share actual cases (with the individuals’ names changed to protect privacy) that demonstrate how insufficient emotional and physical attention, chronically stressful interactions with our caregivers, separations, or traumatic experiences early in life can cause significant alterations in the structure and chemistry of the developing brain. These can result in difficulties in regulating emotions, moods, and behaviors; chronic disconnection; and self-abandonment. They can also result in poor emotional and physical awareness, lack of emotional endurance and resilience, and difficulty activating ourselves throughout our lives.

In part 1 you’ll learn how you can enhance the structure and chemistry of your brain for improved self-regulation. You’ll also learn about your body’s stress-response apparatus. When, as infants and young children, we encounter responsive and nurturing adults, we develop healthy stress-response mechanisms. When we are exposed to chronic stress and negative emotional arousal, we are forced to manage this high-intensity activation through tension in many parts of our body. When we have developed these patterns in childhood, it is highly likely that we will continue to use these same patterns throughout life. Continual high emotional arousal can lead to physical changes that contribute to poor nervous-system regulation and multiple health challenges.

If you happen to be an overeater or imbalanced eater who had kind and loving parents and a great childhood, I show you how even the most well-intentioned caregivers may inadvertently fail to meet their children’s early developmental needs.

In part 2, you’ll learn that even if you missed out on emotional attunement early in life, or if you experienced insufficient or inconsistent nurturance as a child, you can still strengthen your neurological circuits and change the physical structure of your adult brain for improved self-regulation. By understanding how your brain works, you can learn to pay mindful attention, or internally attune, to your emotions, bodily sensations, needs, and thoughts. I show you how you can relate to yourself and others in ways that create and support healthy brain connections and facilitate learning and growth. Psychological and neurological maturation can continue throughout our lives.

Part 2 presents the seven skills that make up what I call inner nurturing, along with information, tools, and special tips that will help you begin using these skills to practice self-connection and self-nurturance. It’s best to practice the skills in the order in which they are introduced, as they are designed to regulate emotional and physical arousal (and to begin rewiring your brain and altering your stress response) before attempting to problem-solve and meet your authentic nonfood needs.

Through practicing these skills, you’ll learn to access an internal nurturing voice: a mature, wise, validating, affirming, unconditionally kind, loving, soothing, comforting, encouraging, protecting, hopeful, and helpful adult voice. This is the part of you that can help you stay with and process your unpleasant feeling states, reframe self-defeating thoughts, remind you of your strengths and resources, and help you meet your needs. Without this voice, a very young part of you — your feeling self — is running the show too much of the time.

As you establish and reinforce the alliance between this mature, wise part of you — your Inner Nurturer — and your feeling self, you strengthen the connection between the parts of your brain necessary for self-regulation. You can also apply these seven skills to other areas of your life where you’re having difficulties with self-regulation, such as exercising, spending, or procrastinating.

In part 3, we complete our work on nurturance by learning some strategies for attracting nurturing others into our lives. Many emotional eaters have had little exposure to nurturing people. Lacking consistent and sufficient external nurturance when they were young, they have difficulty establishing nurturing connections with other people and often settle for undernourishing relationships. If you’re dissatisfied with the quality of the nurturance you’re receiving, you can find solutions here.

We’ll also look at the four habits you’ll want to cultivate in order to better nurture others. The people closest to us, as well as those we interact with in our communities, benefit when we strengthen our nurturing skills. Giving is truly receiving: learning to nurture others helps you nurture yourself.

Inner Nurturing: Not a Quick Fix, but a Forever Fix

Building new skills takes practice and patience. You will not master them overnight. Allow yourself the time you need to proceed through the three parts of this book. A slow and steady approach is needed to conquer your emotional eating and meet your goals.

As you work on these skills and habits, watch any tendency toward perfectionism, which may imbalance you further. It’s more important to practice what you’re learning consistently — not perfectly. In the beginning, the skills may feel challenging. Learning to turn inward and use a kind, supportive inner voice may feel awkward. But as you build the integrative circuits of your brain, it will get easier, and you’ll feel better equipped than ever to address your needs and set limits on unwanted behaviors. That’s the power of inner nurturing. Now, let’s get started!