I found this great blog post from Craig Harper, one of Australia’s most respected motivational speakers and educators from my blogging buddy Talia Mana’s “Emotional Eating Carnival” (sounds like cotton candy, but it means collection of blog posts, sorry to disappoint).
Remember this the next time you’re tempted to stuff your face with cotton candy, or cheesecake, or nachos, or fried cheese on a stick:

Nothing tastes as good as being in shape feels
I Love food.
Baked cheese-cake in particular.
And lasagne.
And dark chocolate.
Specifically, Lindt.
And I love a hamburger with egg, cheese and onion.
A massive hamburger, dripping with egg and sauce (ketchup for my American friends), covered in a pound of cheese and two inches of fried onions.
If I was hungry and someone got between me and that hamburger, there’s a fair chance I’d hurt them.
Badly.
I have food issues.
I’m a work in progress.
People think that because I do what I do for a living (trainer, exercise scientist, educator, etc.) that I have an aversion to anything with sugar, fat, salt or flavour.
Are you kidding?
Let’s get one thing clear:
If I could eat five pieces of thick white toast with crunchy peanut butter for breakfast every day, and stay lean and healthy, I’d do it.
No brainer.
Cheesecake every night and stay in shape?
Okay, I’m in.
Yes I love food (healthy food too), and yes I enjoy the odd, infrequent, splurge (oh, the frailty of the human condition)… but what I love more is:
…..being in shape.
I’ve been fat… and I’ve been lean.
It ain’t a big decision.
And for some people (like me) we need to make a decision.
And we don’t need to get all precious and melodramatic about it…
We just need to make the decision.
Soon.
Now even.
Do I want to eat junk (regularly), or do I want to be in shape.
I can’t do both.
So I Choose to be in shape.
I’m always talking to people who tell me how deprived they feel when they don’t eat their favourite junk foods.
Q. You know why they feel deprived?
A. ‘Cause they focus on what they’re missing (junk food), not what they’re gaining (a leaner, lighter, healthier body).
It’s an attitude and perspective thing, not a food thing.
So next time you’re feeling a little ‘deprived’, don’t focus on the cake (biscuit, ice-cream, chocolate) that gives you five minutes of pleasure… focus on the body that you live in twenty four hours a day.
By the way, I’m yet to talk to somoene who feels good (emotionally, psychologically or physically) after they have made a bad food decision or over-eaten.
Some practical suggestions:
Option 1.
No junk, get you’re head where it needs to be, don’t be a sook, enjoy your new body. Have the rare splurge (once a month).
Option 2.
Eat your five small meals per day (35 small meals per week) and allow yourself one meal per week where you eat a favourite junk food (not a wheelbarrow full).
Option 3.
Eat a very small amount of your favourite food daily. The problem is not that we eat a chocolate; it’s that we eat forty chocolates. I worked with a choc-o-holic who ate chocolate every day and lost twenty three kilos (50lbs)… because she reduced her intake from plenty … to two chocolates a day (every day).

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.