| Wow, Andy -- thanks a bunch! Here's the outline; I wrote it shortly
after the book came out and, if I remember correctly, it's the Table
of Contents, then outlined each chapter, and added my own comments.
Catherine
OVERCOMING OVEREATING
by
Jane R. Hirschmann and
Carol H. Munter
Foreword
Introduction
1. Curing Compulsive Eating
2. The Diet/Binge Cycle
3. Signing Up for a New Life
4. Rethinking the Problem
THE PLAN: PHASE 1
Freeing Yourself
5. I Am What I Am
6. Living in the Present
7. Dumping the Diet
8. Living Free in a World of Food
THE PLAN: PHASE 2
Feeding Yourself
9. Food on Demand
10. When to Eat
11. What to Eat
12. How Much to Eat
13. Everyday Life as a Demand Feeder
THE PLAN: PHASE 3
Finding Yourself
14. The Compulsive Reach for Food
15. The Obsession
16. When You Try to Break the Circuit
17. Fat, Skinny, and In-Between
FOREWORD by Janet Polivy, Ph.D. and C. Peter Herman, Ph.D.,
authors of Breaking the Diet Habit.
INTRODUCTION - gives an overview of the book. Some of the things
mentioned are:
The authors' approach to cure compulsive eating will enable you
to:
o give up dieting forever and discover that you eat much less
without the restraints of a diet.
o learn to eat from physiological hunger and, perhaps for the
first time, enjoy the enormous satisfaction of meeting that
hunger with the foods you most desire.
o stop overeating and lose the weight that has been its
by-product.
o move beyond your negative preoccupation with eating and
weight into a fuller life.
CHAPTER 1: CURING COMPULSIVE EATING
The Compulsive Eater Identified
Physical Appearance
Self-Portrait
The Compulsive Eater - A New Perspective
The Problem of Control
Self-Help
The Cure - The Hunger/Food Connection
The Plan
CHAPTER 2: THE DIET/BINGE CYCLE
The Fight-Back Response
The Urge to Diet
The Yucks
The Diet
The Binge
CHAPTER 3: SIGNING UP FOR A NEW LIFE
One More Time
Change Your Shape and Change Your Life
The Motivation to Play
The Players
The Rules
Rule No. 1 - Fat is Bad
Rule No. 2 - Fat People Eat Too Much
Rule No. 3 - Thin is Beautiful
Rule No. 4 - Eating Requires Control
Rule No. 5 - Criticism Leads to Change
CHAPTER 4: RETHINKING THE PROBLEM
The Rebellion of Eating
Beyond Rebellion
The Linguistics of Eating
Food Feels Good and That Ain't Bad
Eating Your Way Out of an Eating Problem
THE PLAN: PHASE 1
Freeing Yourself
CHAPTER 5: I AM WHAT I AM
The If-Only Syndrome
A Fantasy
"How Can I Accept Myself When I Really Hate Myself?"
Moving Toward Acceptance
The Mechanics of Acceptance
Stopping the Thought
The Words of Acceptance
CHAPTER 6: LIVING IN THE PRESENT
Purchasing a Mirror
Facing Up to More Than Your Face
Know Thyself
Looking at the Looking Glass
Tossing a Scale
Cleaning a Closet
CHAPTER 7: DUMPING THE DIET
Remember:
1. 98% of dieters regain their weight plus some.
2. Diets make you fat.
3. Deprivation ensures a fight-back response - the binge.
Giddiness
Terror
Sadness
Relief
CHAPTER 8: LIVING FREE IN A WORLD OF FOOD
Carrot Sticks versus Carrot Cake
Legalizing Food
To Market, To Market
The List
Enough Is Not Enough
On the Aisle
Home Again, Home Again
The Cupboards
Legal Costs
THE PLAN: PHASE 2
Feeding Yourself
CHAPTER 9: FOOD ON DEMAND
The Urge to Eat
Stomach Hunger
Mouth Hunger
The Ledger
The Hunger Connection
Demand Feeding - for Adults
Recognizing Stomach Hunger
When the Signal Is Dim
When the Signal is Gone
Responding to Stomach Hunger
The Binge - I've got to quote from this one:
...If you fight it [the binge] with angry, abusive
words, you only prolong it. If, on the other hand,
you go with the binge, it will come to its own end.
What does "going with the binge" involve?
o No more abusive remarks. If you find yourself
yelling, remind yourself that negative thoughts
make you feel bad, and feeling bad makes you want
to binge.
o Replace your yelling with a reminder that your
binge is a symptom of anxiety. Something is
making you uncomfortable and you need soothing.
You need compassion, not rebuke.
o Tell yourself that you don't have to know why
you're upset before you can be sympathetic to
yourself.
o Be as tender and nurturing to yourself during your
binge as you possibly can. Give yourself the
foods you really want.
o Go back to the beginning of this new approach to
eating and make sure to have food available in
large quantities, to wear comfortable clothing
that you like, and to stay off the scale.
CHAPTER 10: WHEN TO EAT
When Do I Eat?
The Meaningless of Meals
An Eating Exercise
The Food Bag
What to Pack
The Feelings You Carry with the Bag
Making Peace with the Food Bag
Humans, the Grazing Animals
CHAPTER 11: WHAT TO EAT
The Nutrition Question
Matchmaking in Theory (matching food to hunger)
Is There Life After Chocolate?
A Weighty Issue
Matchmaking in Action
Some Complications
Remember [listen to your stomach signals]
CHAPTER 12: HOW MUCH TO EAT
How Much is Enough?
Becoming the Boss of Your Own Eating
What Constitutes a Serving
Technique
It's so Hard to Say Good-bye
Feeling Satisfied with Less
Sweet Farewells
Fine-Tuning When, What, and How Much
CHAPTER 13: EVERYDAY LIFE AS A DEMAND FEEDER
(A question-and-answer chapter)
Eating normally
Restaurant eating
Eating in others' homes
Eating at parties
Feeding a family, too
Turning your family on to demand feeding
Demand feeding and pregnancy
Exercising
Special problems - diabetes, high blood pressure, allergies
Watching calories vs. watching hunger
Eating from mouth hunger - is that like going "off" a diet?
THE PLAN: PHASE 3
Finding Yourself
CHAPTER 14: THE COMPULSIVE REACH FOR FOOD
Fat Thoughts
Reaching Out for Food
Less Than Ideal
Forbidden Feelings
Strong Feelings
Making Food into Magic
Teddy Bears ("security blankets")
Whiteout ("Compulsive eaters use food the way a typist uses
whiteout")
The Implications of Making Food into Magic
CHAPTER 15: THE OBSESSION
What Is All the Yelling About?
I'm Bad . . .
Because I Shouldn't Need Help
Because I Have Bad Thoughts and Feelings
Breaking the Circuit - again I have to quote:
When you eat from mouth hunger, you eat because you
must. When your mind starts moving in the direction
of self-condemnation, however, you have an
opportunity to intervene. You can break the
addictive circuit in two ways:
1. Remind yourself each time you eat from mouth
hunger that you will not scold yourself after
you eat.
2. Never take a fat thought at face value. Each
time you find yourself shouting at yourself
for eating or being fat, remind yourself that
you are referring to something else and, if
you can, make an effort to find out what that
something else is.
Why The Yelling is Compelling
The Emergence of a Complex Self
CHAPTER 16: WHEN YOU TRY TO BREAK THE CIRCUIT
More questions and answers
CHAPTER 17: FAT, SKINNY, AND IN-BETWEEN
The Reality of Weight Loss
Dealing with Doctors
When the Weight Begins to Go - Theme and Variations
Leveling Off
Pushing Yourself
Holding On to Yourself
The Food/Fat Connection
Friendly Fat Fantasies
Doing versus Sitting
The Triumph of Fat versus the Submission of Thin
Fat Visibility
The Fear of Thinness
Invisibility
On Display
The Function of the Fantasy
And then, there's this great "Supplementary Reading" section:
Bennett, William, M.D. and Gurin, Joel. The Dieter's Dilemma.
New York: Basic Books, 1982.
Bilich, Marion. Weight Loss from the Inside Out: Help for the
Compulsive Eater. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
Chernin, Kim. The Obsessions: Reflections on the Tyranny of
Slenderness. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Hirschmann, Jane R., and Zaphiropoulos, Lela. Are Your Hungry? A
Completely New Approach to Raising Children Free of Food and
Weight Problems. New York: New American Library, 1987.
Kaplan, Louise. Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to
Individual. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
Orbach, Susie. Fat is a Feminist Issue. New York: Berkley,
1982.
------, Fat is a Feminist Issue II. New York: Berkley, 1982.
------, Hunger Strike. New York: Norton, 1987.
Polivy, Janet,a nd Herman, C. Peter. Breaking the Diet Habit.
New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Roberts, Nancy. Breaking All the Rules. New York: Viking, 1986.
Roth, Geneen. Feeding the Hungry Heart. New York: Signet, 1983.
------, Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating. New York: Signet,
1986.
Siegel, Michele, Brisman, Judith, Weinshel, Margot. Surviving and
Eating Disorder: New Perspectives and Strategies for Family
and Friends. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
One other thing that I would like to add - throughout the book,
the authors seem to understand that it is NOT EASY for the
compulsive overeater to lose weight, or even to attempt a diet
that they may or may not stick with.
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re: -.1
Well, this note is over a year old but...
This book, _Overcoming_Overeating_ is wonderful. I went right out and
bought it after reading the outline. Lots of the things the authors
say in this book make sense. I had started to figure out some of
this stuff myself, as I observed my reactions to diets, or indeed, any
type of control that I attempt to impose on myself. This book pulled
it all together and clearly articulated the half-formed ideas I had.
In just a few days, it's made such a great deal of difference in my
life. It's like a great weight has been lifted (pun intended).
Seriously, I have never been able to diet successfully for very long.
While I don't really binge, I do eat sometimes when I'm not physically
hungry, or I'll start off satisfying a physical need to eat, but eat
more than is required to fuel my body. I would try to diet, but I just
felt deprived, cranky and rebellious. I hated the control imposed by
diets: you can't eat this, you can only eat at these times, and so on.
The more I berated myself for my lack of control, willpower, etc., the
worse I felt about myself, and the more I wanted to eat. I realized how
much of my mental energy was being expended in an internal war over food,
with the "parent" me badgering the "child" me not to eat and castigating
"bad child" me when I rebelled and ate. I realized how this continuing
"failure" was making me feel bad about myself all the time, which made
eat to make myself feel better: a vicious cycle. Also, by trying not to
eat, I just caused myself to think about food all the time. As the book
says, diets make you fat!
By resolving never to diet again, and to accept myself
_just_as_I_am_right_now_, I have freed myself. Now I can think about
many things besides food. This feeling of accepting myself has made
me feel much calmer and happier, more alive.
Instead of waiting to get thin before I <fill in the blank>, I'm just
doing it NOW. By letting myself eat whatever I want, whenever I want,
in whatever quantity I want, I find that I just want to eat what my
body needs. I don't need a "parent" anymore to tell me not to eat; I'm
an integrated adult doing what seems reasonable to me.
If I find myself wanting food when I'm not really hungry, I start asking
myself questions like, "What is making feel like I want to eat?" Usually,
it's because there is some uncomfortable emotion I'm trying to bury.
Once I figure out what the feeling is that I'm about to use food to keep
from feeling, I start probing to find out why I have that feeling. Then
I try to figure out what I can do to solve the problem that caused the
uncomfortable feeling. If I do choose to eat something, I just say,
"Well, I need to eat now to feel better, and that's ok." Since this is
soothing, compassionate treatment of myself, I haven't created more stress,
so even when I do eat, I don't eat as much.
I've also noticed that the compassion and acceptance I now give to myself,
I am giving to other people. When I see an overweight person now, if I
have automatic, critical reactions, I quickly counter those with thoughts
accepting that person as they are right now. I am trying to get rid of
such thoughts as, he's too fat, or if she'd only lose weight, she'd be
so attractive. This is very important to me, to completely reject our
culture's notions that there is a "right" body size that everyone should
strive for.
The ideas in this book have helped me in other areas besides dealing with
food. The whole larger notion of the control aspect of diets is something
I can apply to other situations when I find I am trying to force myself
to do or not to do something. I have much better success when I can
silence the critical, negative, controlling thoughts. The more I try to
make myself do something, the more I rebel and sabotage myself. It's
like trying to control myself, or dumping on myself when I fail to control
myself, is the "action", and the rebellion or sabotage is the "reaction".
No action, no reaction.
Then I started thinking about the concept of diets and food obsession as
mind-control devices in the context of our society. I think the book is
right: we live in a culture that is obsessed with control. We, as
part of this culture, internalize and reflect this obsession. Either we
become part of the "establishment" and buy into the control, and impose
it on ourselves and others, or we act as rebels against control by others
and ourselves. The diet/binge dichotomy is an instance of this played
out over food. It is hard to let it all go by you, and just be.
<warning: following is mostly my humble opinion, not much from the book>
Women have been concerned about their weight and appearance for eons,
I suppose, but I think it's very interesting that the rise of the
current ideal body size for women, an ideal that's impossible to attain
for most of us, was concurrent with the rise of the women's movement.
I started to see this preoccupation with body size and food and dieting
as a devious backlash mechanism for preserving the status quo of our
society. The obsession with thinness is a way of keeping women's
attention off women's REAL problems in our lives. Think of the change
we could effect with all of that mental energy, strength,
and resolve, if we weren't expending it obsessing about our bodies and
food, and dumping on ourselves. What would happen if women stopped telling
themselves, "I'll wait until I'm thin" before they ask for that promotion,
get that job, leave that man, go back to school, etc.? This "I'll wait
until I'm thin" trick is magical thinking and a way of avoiding living.
I think it's the modern day version of "some day my prince will come" -
it makes you passive, instead of putting you in charge of making your
life the way you want it to be.
Not only does the cultural status quo profit by controlling women by
keeping them preoccupied with their appearance, but whole
industries have risen to exploit women-as-consumers' insecurities
about the acceptability of their bodies: the diet industry, the
cosmetic surgery industry, the fashion and cosmetics industries.
What would happen if women everywhere decided that they
would never diet again, that they accept their bodies just as they are?
I think that as long as we continue to take our feelings of worth from a
society that sets women's value primarily according to how closely we meet
a narrow and unattainable standard of female beauty, we can never be free.
Mostly, I thought about these issues with respect to their impact on
women's lives. But it occurred to me that increasingly, during the '80s,
men began to be vulnerable to the same concerns about weight and ideal
body shape that women traditionally have been. I wondered what the causes
of this new trend could be. Could it be that the superficial '80s, with
their emphasis on style over substance, image over reality, have pressured
men into this preoccupation with size, too? Could it be that in our
increasingly complex world, where everything seems to be out of control
and deteriorating, and people feel unable to do anything about it, that
focusing on your own body is a way of retreating to a space where you
feel you can exercise some control? Traditionally, women have not had
as much autonomy over their lives as men; if some men are beginning to
feel less powerful, could they be adopting some of the coping mechanisms
women have used?
<end of soap-boxing and philosophizing, back to the book>
But what about weight control for health reasons? Isn't that a legitimate
concern, and a good reason to diet? As the book discusses: yes, health
concerns of severe overweight are real. But even with this good reason, and
armed with all kinds of nutritional and behavioral factoids, most people
either can't lose or can't keep the weight off using diets. Recently, I
read that researchers now believe that repeated dieting and gaining is
more harmful than staying steady at some greater-than-normal weight. To me,
the high rate of failure to lose weight and keep it off for this most
compelling reason, survival, is the most damning evidence that
>>diets don't work<<.
The book's authors claim to have had a 75% success rate (lose weight and
keep it off) with about 400 clients.
If the book is correct that dieting as a method of weight control is such
a failure (claims 98% of dieters eventually regain the weight, I think),
why not try NOT dieting? What have you got to lose :-)?
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