The real cause of overeating (more)

The real cause of overeating (less)

It's in your mind, not your stomach.

Using food as a short term emotional fix is a habit, it's a reflex, it's something you learned to do and can learn to undo, it's built into your brain's pleasure center as the favorite short cut to feeling better and this can be changed, it's an image in your mind that eating makes you feel temporarily okay, it could be part of an old conversation with one of your parents, it's a way of feeling safe, it could be your old outdated form of rebellion and independence, it could be your protection from sexual impulses, yours and others, it's an expression of your frustration and sometimes your anger or your loneliness. It feeds your self doubt or emptiness. In short, food is no longer just food, but has become an all purpose medication.

Truth is, you have to overeat now because you don't know any other way to make yourself feel better. You can rid yourself of that horrible feeling of failure by truly, deeply understanding why you have HAD to eat too much in the past and by undoing the false lessons that led you into the trap of using food as a short term fix. It's not easy to do and almost impossible to do it alone. If I could see you in my office, we could work on this together. But that's not practical or economical (our program costs less than a cup of coffee a day, I charge more). So for the last 25 years I have been developing, refining, testing and using a method that puts all my knowledge and experience into an interactive program that gets pretty close being a to counseling sessions with me. That's the Shrink Yourself Program and through that I can help you learn the mental skills you need that will eliminate the intense cravings and the automatic reaching for food when you are really not hungry for food but for something else.

How we help you end cravings (more)

How we help you end cravings (less)


Step by step, made just for you.

Once food has acquired an emotional meaning, it can serve many different psychological purposes. In our program you will come to know what it means to you personally, given your history and your current life situation. And as you make these discoveries in each of the twelve weekly online "sessions" (organized like a face-to-face session with me), the power of food over you will diminish, until one day you wake up and the cravings you have fought with for decades suddenly just aren't there anymore.

That's the day you will be free.

Ending the habit of overeating means changing the connection in your brain so that you can find better ways of making yourself feel better than using food as a quick psychological fix.

We aren't going to do neurosurgery. We can't get into your brain directly, but we can change the way your brain works through highly focused and personalized mental exercises. You can't simply tell yourself to change a mental habit any more than you can tell yourself to play great tennis without practicing. You will be practicing a new way of thinking about the connection between food and your life in each of the online counseling sessions each week. That will be reinforced by our active forum community, a diary to record and practice your new and healthier habits, stories and exercises in your own weekly workbook, weekly tips from me and the creation of your own personal weight control secrets — three big ones, one for each month.

That may sound like a lot, and it is. It has many layers, requires practice, and it is deep. But it is also step-by-step and very clear so it's easy to follow. Your own thoughts will be captured and remembered (securely and privately) so you can review them, something that you couldn't do if you were in a talk therapy session. You will have plenty of time, there's a free one month extension, and more if you need it, so you never get far behind. You can create your own pacing, even take a vacation from the work if it gets too intense for a while.