This holiday season, I keep hearing the word “binge” tossed around really casually, online and in conversation. Like: “How to recover after your Thanksgiving binge”-type stuff. This is a ludicrous misuse of the word. And pretty reckless, too: are we seriously teaching our kids that big family meals are binges? Imagine a typical holiday meal. You’re…
Tag: binge eating
5 mantras to make it through the holidays
The holidays are a fraught time of year for anyone with food issues. Are you worrying about facing your fear foods? Wondering how to stay “on track”? Afraid that if you start eating you won’t be able to stop? It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a cure for binge eating, and it…
You can survive Halloween candy
So it’s the day after Halloween, and you’re surrounded with candy. Now what? First things first: Candy isn’t bad. And you aren’t a bad person for wanting to enjoy candy! Applying moral values of goodness and badness to food is a sign of disordered eating and an old standby from the diet-guilt playbook. Now that that’s out of the…
You don’t need to learn portion control
You need to learn to listen to your body, which has a portion control feature already built in. They’re called hunger hormones, and they’re truly amazing. When your body needs fuel, a hormone called ghrelin will alert you: time to eat! So you eat. Then, a second hormone called leptin will inform you when you…
Just a friendly reminder that bathroom scales have nothing to do with health
And everything to do with marketing. I’ve rounded up a few old ads for bathroom scales, and they are doozies. From the late 19th century and into the Depression era, scale manufacturers successfully parlayed their machinery into a smaller moneymaker for humans: a novelty item where people could pay a penny to find out their weight at department…
Just because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen
Months ago, when the New York Times published a piece about the former Biggest Loser contestants, I noticed a reader comment that has stuck with me ever since. As a rule, I aggressively avoid comment sections of…pretty much anything. But there it was, highlighted in the sidebar, in all its judge-y, preach-y glory: “Sorry. But cravings are…
six months to sanity 