The Chew Tamer's Journey

Each New Year brings a sense of renewal and rebirth. It can also bring a guilty awareness that you ate your own weight in chocolate during the holidays and an avid vow to eat well from here forward. Did you make any New Year’s resolutions as you entered 2006? Has this year’s resolution, like last, been to lose weight, get more exercise and become healthier? Statistics indicate that a full 90% of us state such good intentions each year. Some people (perhaps a few) follow their resolutions and are able to transform their lives. Most of us, however, begin fervently and soon become discouraged and fall back into old, self-destructive patterns. What has happened to your well-intentioned resolutions? Have they fallen by the wayside?

Although there is nothing wrong with making plans to become healthier, new years may not be the best time to start a new eating and exercise plan. There is a lot of pressure attached to making a resolution and remember there is never be a good time to be on a diet. We already know that diets make us fat but it has become second nature for us to seek magical diet products to solve our weight problems. Dieting is an obsession in our culture and the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. We are bombarded with messages to be thin and to try fad diet products, diet pills and wraps that promise to ‘melt off pounds’ while we do nothing. When these products fail and our diets fail to bring us the contentment, balance and good health we so avidly seek, we may feel discouraged, more frustrated and helpless. The tendency then is to soothe these difficult emotions with sugars and simple carbohydrates. We then get fatter and the cycle repeats itself. Does this sound familiar?

If your intentions for 2006 have fallen away, please do not beat yourself up. Stating your intention generally means that you plan to behave perfectly from now on and that is not realistic. You are perfect just as you are, but being human means you cannot behave perfectly at every moment in time and in every situation. Instead commit now to doing the very best you can to take the most loving and gentle care of yourself possible on a daily basis, better still on a moment to moment basis. If you set perfection as your goal, you set yourself up to fail and will likely fall back into old, familiar, unhealthy patterns. Do your best to stay in the present moment and to make as many self-loving choices as possible. When you stop beating yourself up and starving yourself, you will gradually develop healthier habits that will lead to permanent changes. Remember, you deserve this and you are worth it!

My warmest wishes as you continue to nurture yourself,

Dr. Denise