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Years ago I prayed for an end to "the food". I so badly wanted to hear from someone who had what I had and survived it. I never found that person. BUT YOU HAVE! If I can be that person for you, that makes it all worth while. In my book, we'll curl up and talk, we'll laugh at ourselves, and we'll walk through it all together. In the meantime, here's some of what you'll read:

- My strategy of S.A.F.E —Separate Always Food and Emotion

- The key to weight loss is structure. When diets work it's because of their structure, when they fail it's because of restriction. My book teaches you that creating a structured diet of your own cravings (85% healthy and 15% junky) is the key to long term endurance.

- Deprivation and restriction. We don't gain weight from eating "fattening" foods. We gain weight from overeating and bingeing. As soon as we say no to the foods that we crave, we set ourselves up to need them more and that plays out in overeating and bingeing.

- The alarm system. Food issues are not a curse. They are a red flag marking an area of discomfort. Any moment we feel out of control with food, that is our system beeping. It's saying, "Hey listen up, I don't like how that feels!" The avoidance of that feeling is what sends us to food. When we sit with the feeling, face it, and then make choices from that knowledge, we are listening to ourselves. That's when food loses its control over us as we learn to take care of our needs.

- Binges happen. My book teaches you to accept them. Don't fight, I say, negotiate. That cuts the food way down. Just as in life, acceptance is a form of control.

- Pain and depression. Allow them! It's a natural part of life to feel bad. Obsessions divert our attention. They protect us from everything we don't want to feel and face. And no wonder! Those feelings hurt like hell! But when we allow those feelings it's healing. We don't eat when we're in pain. We eat when we try to avoid it.

- Food energy redirected. Once we eat to hunger and cravings but in a structured manner, face our feelings and make knowing choices from who we are, feel pain and feel it some more, we get to take all of that powerful and committed energy away from food and shoot it into our lives. That's where life begins.

HERE ARE A FEW EXCERPTS FROM MY BOOK:

From Chapter 1

It’s not like the bagel was fresh. It was discarded. It wasn’t sitting on a plate with garnishes of lettuce, cream cheese or tomato. It was on the car floor. It wasn’t that I had no other options like the homeless who scrounge for any available food to survive. I had a wonderful home and a beautiful family with a kitchen full of food. Something must have been terribly wrong but I didn’t know what or why. All I knew was that the bagel which lay on the floor of my car, three bites missing from one of my kids, ended up getting eaten. And we had no dog.


From Chapter 2

Why should you listen to me? I am not a psychologist, dietician, nutritionist or doctor. I haven’t studied the behaviors of hundreds of subjects, nor have I studied rats. I AM the rat. I ran the maze, I ate the pellets and I know what if felt like to be there. Am I an authority? You bet I am. Anyone who spends over thirty years doing anything is an authority. Unlike those who study from behind the glass, gathering data and notes, I was the one in the cage. If you want documentation of all my behaviors, go read up on their findings. If you want to know how the rat got out,
you’ll have to ask the rat.


From Chapter 18

There was the room at the end of the hall. It had double doors. I didn’t want to open it. My husband didn’t want to either. It was so much easier to spend time in the other rooms of the house. The kids rooms, the family room, and certainly for me, the kitchen. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t want to make the room feel better. We just didn’t know how and we were much too afraid to try…


From Chapter 20

Think of the next chapters as my house, and I have invited you over…We’ll talk a lot about food. We’ll shop for it, cook it, and learn how to structure it…when a diet works it’s because of structure. When it fails it’s because of restriction. You will learn to structure foods that you like, and enjoy the diet of your cravings…
…I’ve got a great idea. We’ll have a slumber party…we’ll raid the fridge, cozy up on our pillows, and stay up all night talking. So go put on your jammies. We’re in for one very long night!


From Chapter 21

…here are some pearls of wisdom that infuriate me. They tell us to put the food where we can’t see it. Duh. Make the food hard to get to. Oh please. Any respectable binger knows how to climb on the counter…there’s a song that describes our commitment to finding food when we need it. Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, till you find ice-cream. Now let the rat have the floor.
Here’s how to preempt a binge…


From Chapter 23

The Kitchen. If you’re anything like I was, the kitchen felt about as safe as Central Park at 4 o’clock in the morning. And you’re sitting on a bench with ten thousand in cash. And your t-shirt says “Beat me up and take my money”. And all the cops are on strike. O.K. you get my point.


From Chapter 37

…take your focus off of thin. Put that focus on yourself and face the truth for once. Get ready because it’s going to hurt. Come on, what is it? What’s behind that obsessing? Who didn’t love you enough? Who told you that you weren’t good enough? It wasn’t you, it was someone else. We’re not born thinking we need to be better. Stay with me here…
There may be feelings inside that are making you sick. So come on. Let it out. Find someone’s arms to cry in, or hold this book to your chest. Know that I am here with you and I have been in that kind of pain. Look at me, I’m still standing. I got through it and so will you. Come on now, my friend. It’s time to just let it go.