I’m half-way into the 7th week of this mission…originally I had planned to do it for 4-6 weeks, but I haven’t reached my goal yet (having six-pack abs), so I’m going to continue until I do.

I am definitely making progress, albeit slower than I had planned. One thing I hadn’t planned on was how much planning I would actually have to do to accomplish my goal. I’ve found that if I don’t have a good plan of what I’ll eat and what I won’t eat at the beginning of the day, it can be very difficult to eat healthy.

There is also the planning of what I will get at the grocery store, how much to buy, and how long it will likely last. It can take a lot of planning when you start to eat differently.

So this weekend I will be focusing on planning, while continuing delving into my Shrink Yourself notes…

As I’ve said in some of my recent blogs, I went through the 12-week Shrink Yourself program a few years ago, and it helped me to finally break past my “plateau” weight of 185 and lose another 30 pounds.

I wanted to share a quote from Dr. Roger Gould, the creator of the Shrink Yourself program:

In the Shrink Yourself program, I will help you unravel your pattern of emotional eating, the same way that I would help you if you were a patient in my office.

When you turn to food for comfort, or when you overeat, you may not even be hungry. You are probably just feeling a gnawing, nagging emptiness that makes you reach for something to fill you up and over time you have found that food is the easiest answer.

Week by week, we will get to the bottom of what that emptiness is about; we will uncover what exactly you are trying to fill with food.

From years of work with my patients I can tell you that you don’t need another lecture about what to eat or how much to eat; so I won’t give you that. Each week is designed to provide you with an insight and they all build on one another so that you arrive at your own conclusions about what YOU need to stop overeating.

For me, alcohol was the biggest thing that I had to cut back on. Not only was it accounting for so many empty calories, but at the same time, it weakened my willpower and I would end up eating more junk because of that.

When I went through the Shrink Yourself program, I actually stopped drinking alcohol for a period of about 6 months, which is something that I never could have done by willpower alone. I used to drink almost every day. It was essentially an addiction…The Shrink Yourself program helped me to make the psychological changes I needed to be able to not only avoid alcohol and other junk foods, but also to deal with the reasons I was driven to drink and overeat, in healthy ways.

I owe a lot to the Shrink Yourself program and I highly recommend it to you if you have struggled to get to your goal weight.

I have also decided, in honor of the Shrink Yourself program and my Mission: Six Pack Abs quest, to abstain from drinking alcohol until at least the end of the month. I don’t drink nearly as much as I used to these days, but when I do, I feel that it’s holding me back from reaching my six-pack abs goal.

Unhealthy Tanning

Slather sunscreen all over your body and then go lie on the beach for hours at a time. Yes, this may be the fastest way to get a tan, but it can come with some major consequences.

First, according to this article on Mark’s Daily Apple, sunscreen only prevents you from getting burned, it doesn’t protect you from DNA damage and skin cancer.

Second, sunscreen blocks your body’s ability to synthesize vitamin D from the sun…and vitamin D is one of the most important factors in the overall health equation.

Third, who really wants to sit and bake in the sun for hours? It gets really hot…it dehydrates you…and you inevitably end up with one or two burn marks where you didn’t put enough sunscreen.

Healthy Tanning

Skip the sunscreen. Go out and lie in the sun every day that you can, for about 15-20 minutes (more if you are darker-skinned). Expose as much of your body as you can without the neighbors complaining. Be sure to limit yourself to 20 minutes or less, especially if you are fair-skinned.

I’ve been doing this routine almost every day (when it’s not cloudy) for the past 5 or 6 weeks and not only have I built up the darkest tan I’ve ever had, but I feel great from all the vitamin D I’ve been getting.

Plus, there’s the added bonus that darker skin makes muscles look more defined, so that will definitely help my six-pack.

A quote from the Shrink Yourself program:

At some point in time part of you saw that food offered something other than nutrition; it offered relief, comfort, emotional satisfaction. From then on part of you was hooked and you haven’t been able to escape the cycle since.

But why is it so hard to stop emotional eating or to really take control of what you eat?

The reason that you have had such a hard time getting rid of the habit is not because you don’t have enough self-discipline or willpower, as some people may suggest. We live in a world where we will always be surrounded by food and you can’t go cold turkey. Willpower is NOT enough.

In order to truly eliminate emotional eating you have to unlearn the pattern and end the conflict. You have to break the connection between food and comfort.

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve told myself that I was going to start eating better, or drinking less, or eliminating something from my diet, etc. But it’s so easy to fall back into old and familiar habits – habits we’ve built up over years and years.

That’s why trying to go cold turkey doesn’t usually work. We need to make changes in our psychology, changes in the way we act, think and feel about food. We need to recognize how we’ve been using food inappropriately to stuff our feelings down.

By far, the best way for doing this that I have found has been the Shrink Yourself program. Just so you know, I’m not getting paid to endorse this program. The reason I’ve been talking about it so much lately is because of the HUGE difference it has made in my life. I used to be 30+ pounds heavier than I am now, and I tried everything imaginable to try to lose weight, but I could never get below about 185 pounds.

Once I started the Shrink Yourself program, the weight just started to come off. And the amazing thing was that I didn’t even feel like I was trying to lose weight. I just felt like I was living my life again, rather than constantly living in a struggle against the part of me that wanted to keep overeating and “overdrinking”.

Today I wanted to share some more information from the Mastering Food (now Shrink Yourself) program that I completed back in 2006 and that I’m going through again now.

7 signs that the hunger you feel may actually be emotional hunger

1. When you get hungry, does it often come on fast?

2. When you get hungry, do you often feel a need to eat something right away?

3. When you eat, do you often eat without really noticing how much you eat?

4. When you get hungry, do you often crave a certain type of food or treat to satisfy yourself?

5. Do you ever feel guilty after you eat?

6. Do you sometimes feel a strong urge to binge?

7. Do you sometimes feel like you are just stuffing food down rather than eating at a regular pace?

Here’s a pretty startling fact: If you eat an extra 100 calories a day (100 calories more than your body needs), you will gain about 12 pounds in a year.

That’s why it’s so important to keep emotional eating in check. If you’ve discovered that you are an emotional eater (and almost everyone is to some degree), I highly recommend the Shrink Yourself program. I lost about 30 pounds when I went through the program 4 years ago and I honestly haven’t gained any of that weight back.

Here is another weight loss secret taken from my notes from the Mastering Food (now Shrink Yourself) program:

“I cannot resolve my self-doubts with food! Just because I don’t feel good about myself right now, doesn’t mean eating is the answer. I can find a different way today to feel good about myself and I don’t have to deny who I am.”

As a freelance consultant and entrepreneur, it’s not uncommon for me to reach the end of a particularly difficult and stressful day and feel some kind of self-doubt; self-doubt about whether I’ve done enough work today, whether I’ve made enough money today, whether I’ve done good work, whether my business will grow like it needs to in order for me to continue doing what I love and being able to set my own schedule.

I’ve come to realize that when I start to feel these feelings of self-doubt at the end of the workday, I tend to have a drink or 2 (and occasionally more) and when I do that, in addition to those empty calories from  the alcohol, I often end up eating more dinner and dessert than I’d like, because alcohol tends to allow me to let my guard down a bit.

So I’ve decided to abstain from alcohol through the end of June. I think this will help me to eliminate a lot of the extra “emotional calories” that I’ve been taking in. Plus, it will allow me to process my feelings of self-doubt in a much healthier way.

I considered not sharing this bit of information, because it’s pretty personal and some people might be inclined to judge, but I’ve decided that honesty is the best way to go, and I know that there are people in my shoes who would like to know that they’re not alone in their struggles to lose weight or stop emotional eating…and by sharing this, I hope I can give you some courage to be more honest with yourself and look into the reasons that you may emotionally eat (or emotionally drink).