Has anyone actually gone and had a therapist talk to you about your emotional eating issues, or read a book? Care to share what you learned?

Me!

I'm sure people are tired of reading my posts bout how much the treatment program I joined has changed my life so I won't go into it. But it has helped SO much.

I'm not fully recovered. In fact, as I have gone on (day 101!!!), the anxiety over food has dropped but I am struggling more with the desire to diet when I just want to maintain in as I continue therapy.

If you have questions, you are welcome to PM me or just ask me on this thread.

This book written by a psychiatrist and therapist is what is healing me

http://http://marciasirotamd.com/emotional-over-eating

I am also seeing a therapist.

Thanks so much for replying! By now, I know that stressors and anxieties (with their sources known) are causing me to overeat and have obsessive feelings about food and diet. But these stress sources aren't things that are 'solvable.' It's more things that I have to learn to be okay with (like being okay with having had cancer and not being afraid of it happening again, etc). So once you figured out the sources for your eating issues with your therapist, what did they have you do so that you can cope better?

I've done both: therapy (CBT) and self-help books. I've learned that there is no "quick fix" or easy answer. LOL (helpul, huh?)

Seroiusly though, CBT helped in some respects, but maybe my expectation of it was too high. I had been wanting to try it for a long time, and when I finally had an insurance plan that would cover treatment, I was elated (thinking I would be cured). Not so much. It worked in the sense of giving me "tools" to put in my tool box for when I was faced with the urge to binge, but I still felt like I was white-knuckling it a lot of the time. I also read the book Brain Over Binge, which I found to be *very* enlightening. I would suggest it to anyone who struggles with binge eating; however, for me anyways, that didn't end up being the end-all/be-all either in the long-run, although it DID make me see binge eating in a much different light.

So, I've kind of come full circle and I've gone back to what has worked for me in the past -- eating one big meal mid-day with no restrictions and limiting my food intake the rest of the day. For some reason, this stops me from bingeing and I feel good. That's just me personally though. Other people find success with cutting out certain ingredients (sugar, wheat, etc) and others swear by many small meals throughout the day, and still others say that a certain book or a certain therapy method worked for them. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer and we're all individuals so it's not practical that the same method will provide the solution for all of us. Not sure if that makes sense, but it takes a lot of trial and error (and that's OK) to find what is helpful for each of us individually. We all came to this via different paths, so it stands to reason, we'll all have to take a different path out.

I am so glad to read that some of us have had success with therapy. I was sent to a therapist by my doctor years ago because she said that until I learned to deal with my emotional eating that I would never get the weight off. Well, she was right. Unfortunately, the therapist decided that my emotional eating had to be the result of sexual abuse. Regardless of how many times I told her that I was one of the lucky ones who grew up in the Land of Oz, she was sure that I had been abused. I finally stopped going and actually filed a complaint against her.

In terms of reading and therapy, I get more therapeutic help from coming to this group than I've ever gotten from a "professional" and the Internet has provided much of the access to written materials that I need.

So, has therapy helped? I would say yes. It just needs to be taken with a grain of salt because a lot of the therapy has been through self examination and awareness.

Yes and no. I'd given up on weight loss when I saw a therapist, and I'm actually quite glad I did, if that makes sense?

It took the pressure off eating being the central problem and allowed me to look at the underlying stuff. I had to set boundaries with people in my life (it's the hardest thing I've ever chosen to do). Once things settled down from that, and I found a new way to live, the self-respect started to make itself apparent. Weird, when you've not experienced it before! THAT is when I started losing weight, quite by accident. I decided to do one small thing at a time, and before I knew it, I was away! I've stopped losing for a bit, had a small gain but nipped that in the bud. I'm ready to move on again, and I'm sure more therapy would help the process, but by the time I get a referral and appointment, I'd have figured it out on my own anyway.

I'm going to contact the therapist I saw once I'm small, and doing ok at uni, and thank her for how much she helped me

First, they teach you coping techniques to help you avoid binging when your emotional state becomes too stressful, and once you regain your stable emotional state, how to examine the emotions that led to the binging thoughts and how to deal with the emotion the proper way (without food).

You also work with dieticians to help you with proper eating habits, portion sizes, and how to read your hunger and fullness cues. Learning about nutrition and eating a variety of foods - even the "unhealthy" ones - in order to feel emotionally and physically satisfied is a key part of the program.

Ultimately, they are trying to get you to break that tie between emotions and food, and to use food for fuel and not as a coping mechanism. They work with you to help you cope with emotions without using food, and to help you eat the way people without this disorder eat. Also, the program stresses body image acceptance. That doesn't mean you have to love the way you look, or that you don't try to change things. It just means that you accept your current state and not channel that energy into self hatred anymore, while you work to change those things that are truly changeable.

Let me know if there is ome thing you want more info on.

^^^ Yes

Losing weight BECAUSE you love yourself, rather than SO you can love yourself is infinitely easier. And you don't have to be "perfect" at loving yourself before you can start, it's a gradual process that therapy helps to make easier.

The therapy helping me is dealing with why I overeat. It is dealing with how overeating has been a coping mechanism, an addiction. Like all addictions there is connection to trauma. Not always easy to see and hear the truth but it is helping me. The focus is on healing and cutting out unhealthy behaviours including relationships.
Not all therapy is equal. Some simply teach alternate techniques to mask feelings (obsessive tapping- not all tapping does this but some people tap 2 hours a day-a replacement addiction), or teach distraction-never helpful. Find someone that works for you. I know some people had a great therapist but ran when asked to face truths they were not ready for, so we have to be ready for therapy to work. Good luck.