Nothing is going to work if it isn’t convenient,
enjoyable, and not too difficult, or if it lacks the ability
to be a smooth integration into one’s daily life.
Having information on hand that addresses problems
that are associated with correct eating and exercise,
without putting oneself through torture is valuable.

Once equipped with little, but effective, changes,
one needs to look toward effective maintainable weight loss,
which requires a healthy state of mind.

Keeping oneself motivated and inspired is difficult,
and sometimes it can be helpful to read or hear
just a few words of wisdom to help one keep going.
This is what I am hoping to accomplish by my daily writings
here at DietHobby, and my short “Words of Wisdom” videos.

Anyone can easily read past articles by going to the ARCHIVES.
Also, under RESOURCES, Videos, Words of Wisdom
you can find more than 100 videos of inspiration
that are all less than thirty seconds long. 

I am hoping that my son will write me a code that will make
this into a "playlist", but until he does that,
you can access such a Playlist by going to my DietHobby YouTube Channel
and clicking the first "Words of Wisdom" video there.
This feature makes all the videos in that playlist run automatically.

  To inspire myself, I frequently go to DietHobby at YouTube and click
the first Words of Wisdom video, then let the list run through while
I do other things in the room.  In that way, I hear the inspirational sayings
back to back in about a ten minute time frame.

I usually hear at least one saying there that helps me with  my day,
and this process...repeated over and over, day by day....
helps to firmly implant those positive thoughts and
positive affirmations into my mind. 

I find this personally helpful. 
Perhaps it will help you also.

Do exactly what you can do, no more and no less.
Do not judge yourself if you falter on this journey
because it is about progress, not perfection.
And most importantly, never judge yourself against others.

Each of us are unique individuals going on a very personal journey.
We can support, inspire, and motivate each other along the way,
but in the end this is a very personal experience.

So be kind to yourself.

  I am pleased to be able to report to you
that I am making progress with the recovery of my wrist and hand,
and yesterday I was able to make another new cooking video: Chocolate Milkshake
You can find it at DietHobby in the RECIPE section under Sweet Tastes,
although it could also be used as a Mini-Meal.

I believe that each person needs to choose their own individual diet or food plan. Every diet works for someone,but every diet doesn’t work for everyone.

The choice of a diet, or food plan, needs to be based on the food and information that is available to each person, as well as a person’s personal preferences. Cultural issues and one’s tolerance for hunger are also important.

My own food and diet choices are a continual “experiment-of-one”. Dieting is my Hobby, and I am always learning more about it. I read diet books, I think about the information in them, and I try out different diets, and different food plans.

I’ve learned something new about myself from every diet I’ve used, and many of the new foods and recipes have become favorites that stay with me long after a particular diet is History.

 This is the process I used for weight-loss, and it is the way I maintain that weight-loss.

The choice of a food plan might seem to be an obvious or easy one, but each of us has a cultural and family food history that strongly influences what foods and eating patterns we can tolerate.

Also a great deal of misinformation exists about nutrition, dieting, weight-loss, and how the body processes energy. This often makes that food and diet choice difficult and confusing.

According to the American Dietetic Association’s (ADA) Nutrition and You: Trends 2000 survey, one in five consumers report being confused by news reports that give dietary advice.

Ten Red Flags of Junk Science

The Food and Nutrition Science Alliance (FANSA), a partnership of the ADA, American Society for Clinical Nutrition, and the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and the Institute of Food Technologists, has developed the “Ten Red Flags of Junk Science” to help recognize nutrition misinformation:

• Recommendations that promise a quick fix
• Dire warnings of danger from a single product or regimen
• Simplistic conclusions drawn from a complex study
• Recommendations based on a single study
• Dramatic statements that are refuted by reputable scientific organizations
• Lists of “good” and “bad” foods
• Recommendations made to help sell a product
• Recommendations based on studies published without peer review

Recommendations from studies that ignore differences among individuals or groups

 So, my advice is to continually gather and process information, and make your food and diet choices based on your body’s needs, together with your own personal preferences and tolerance for hunger.

This video primarily addresses Kindness to others,
but Kindness to oneself is also important,
and is helpful in resolving body image problems.

Before my successful weight-loss I learned to have
compassion for the unwanted parts of myself,
and gained willingness to appreciate myself as lovable
even with my imperfections.

Research exists which shows that as body perception improves,
women are better able to self-regulate their eating, and lose weight.

Dr. Pedro Teixeira, from the Technical University of Lisbon,
who led such a research project, said:

“Body image problems are very common amongst overweight
and obese people, often leading to comfort eating and more
rigid eating patterns, and are obstacles to losing weight.

“Our results showed a strong correlation between improvements
in body image, especially in reducing anxiety about other peoples’ opinions,
and positive changes in eating behavior.

“From this we believe that learning to relate to your body in healthier ways
is an important aspect of maintaining weight loss and should be addressed
in every weight control program.”

At a future time, I plan to write more about this issue, including a few things we can do 
to improve our personal body image.

                
  The dictionary definition of bingeing is:

to be immoderately self-indulgent and unrestrained;
to engage in excessive or uncontrolled indulgence in food or drink.

I personally agree that Bingeing isn’t usually because of lack of self control and weakness.
We binge because of a complex interaction of habit, brain chemistry, and external cues that signal us to eat. This interaction can be overcome, but it's harder to do and takes longer to change than most of us realize.

In the 1960s the Health Profession began attributing psychological reasons, rather than physiological reasons to people who overeat to the point of obesity. Since that time, there has been a tendency on the part of Health Professionals to classify every kind of eating outside “moderate eating” as an “eating disorder”. There are many reasons for this…and one of them is financial motivation. Unless a behavior is labeled a “disorder” or and illness, health insurance won’t pay for treatment.

You may call me cynical, but since “Binge Eating Disorder” is far more common than anexoria and bulimia. It has a much larger population base. This means more patients to treat with Therapy, and/or Eating Disorder programs, and more money and more profit for that specific Health Industry field.

Binge eating disorder first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, in 1994. Until recent times, “Binge Eating Disorder” has been categorized under the umbrella term 'eating disorders not otherwise specified”, or EDNOS for short. EDNOS includes a wide variety of disordered eating patterns.
It's often used for people who meet many of the symptoms of anorexia or bulimia but not all. For example, a woman who meets all of the symptoms for anorexia,  but still menstruates regularly -- a criteria for an anorexia diagnosis -- would be diagnosed with an eating disorder not otherwise specified.

Health professionals admit that a Binge Eating Disorder is more than simply eating too much food, and that many obese patients don't have it. However still they claim that up to 5 percent of obese patients and 30 percent of patients participating in weight loss programs meet the criteria for binge eating disorder.

"It is important that clinicians and the public be aware that there are
substantial differences between an eating disorder such as
binge eating disorder and the common phenomenon of overeating,"
says B. Timothy Walsh, chair of the DSM-V Eating Disorders Work Group,
in a press release. "While overeating is a challenge for many Americans, 
recurrent binge eating is much less common and far more severe and
is associated with significant physical and psychological problems."

Proposed changes in the upcoming DSM-V, to be released in May 2013, would categorize BED as a specific eating disorder.
The proposed criteria require that episodes of binge eating, defined as:

“the consumption of unusually large amounts of food,
accompanied by a sense of loss of control
and strong feelings of embarrassment and guilt”

occur a minimum of once a week over the last three months for a diagnosis.

Such a diagnosis would fit almost every obese person that I’ve even known.….I’ve been one myself and I’ve known many, many others… Almost every obese person…and some of those who are not obese… experiences a sense that they have lost control of their behavior, and has strong feelings of embarrassment and guilt after eating an “unusually large amount of food”.

Weekends come every week, vacations and holidays come rather frequently, other celebrations and special events happen frequently as well.  Plus, most of us experience times of sadness, anxiety, or crisis more frequently than we like. It is common for an obese person to engage in excess overeating on these occasions. In fact it is also a very common occurrence for an obese person to “binge out” at least once a week for months at a time.

The disgust and aversion that modern Society has for fat people pretty much guarantees that fat people will feel embarrassment and guilt due to their failure to keep from engaging in behavior that contributes to their fat condition.

It is my opinion that, despite the “conditions” that psychologists attach to the “Binge Eating Disorder”, by their proposed definition, almost everyone who engages in excessive or uncontrolled indulgence in food, which is the dictionary definition of Bingeing, could easily fall into thecurrent medical classification of having an “eating disorder”.

I find something really wrong with this reasoning, and it is one of the reasons I was drawn to Gary Taubes’
research and theories about obesity having a physiological cause, with the psychological problems being a RESULT of the condition, not a CAUSE of the condition.

Taubes makes a compelling argument. My own experience and my observation of the dismal long-term success rate
of “eating disorder” treatments, especially those that include the use of “Intuitive Eating” as a tool of recovery tend to support my belief that while Therapy is helpful to gain self-understanding of one’s behaviors, and can help one learn alternative behaviors, the underlying conditions causing obesity are not cured through that process.

So…my position is that, for those who are obese, bingeing is normal, and not abnormal, eating behavior.

Society’s current label of “eating disorder” and suggested “treatment” is simply another attempt to shame fat people into believing that they need not starve themselves to become thin and stay thin. This is a misplaced effort, because an obese body wants to maintain itself, and this is a survival instinct that will never leave, no matter how thin one becomes, or how much therapy one has.