{"id":17,"date":"2010-10-15T16:25:27","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T23:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eatingreport.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2010-10-15T16:25:27","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T23:25:27","slug":"get-rid-of-conditioning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/get-rid-of-conditioning\/","title":{"rendered":"So How Do You Get Rid Of The Conditioning That Makes You Eat?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an example of how the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process works to
\nde-condition eating as a very effective way to deal with emotional eating<\/a> triggers and rewards, based on my notes from a recent client.<\/p>\n

This woman compulsively ate whenever she experienced negative feelings, such as general upset or anxiety\u2014a very common emotional eating pattern.<\/p>\n

How was this conditioning formed?<\/p>\n

As a child anytime she got upset, her mom gave her a cookie or some
\nother \u201csweet.\u201d The food provided her a pleasurable distraction from the
\nanxiety or upset, which conditioned the eating, so that whenever she felt
\nanxious or upset from then on, she would compulsively eat in order to attain
\nthe pleasurable distraction.<\/p>\n

In other words, because eating gave her the pleasurable distraction from the strong negative feelings that she wanted, eating got conditioned to occur whenever she felt the strong negative feelings.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how I helped her de-condition eating whenever she felt anxious or
\nupset.<\/p>\n

When the session began I asked her why it was important to her to stop
\nher emotional eating. She told me it made her gain weight, which wasn\u2019t
\nhealthy and made her very dissatisfied with the way she looked. Eating when
\nshe didn\u2019t really want to also made her feel out of control and then guilty
\nafter she finished eating.<\/p>\n

I had her imagine a situation in which she felt anxious or upset and then
\nasked her if in this type of situation she could imagine easily not eating
\nwithout using a lot of will power. She said she couldn\u2019t imagine not eating. I
\nask this question to make sure that we are dealing with a real trigger and also to provide a benchmark experience, because I ask the same question at the end of the LDP, so the client can experience the difference after the de-conditioning process is
\ncomplete.<\/p>\n

Next I asked her: What value do you get from eating when you are
\nanxious or upset? She answered: I experience pleasure and I am distracted
\nfrom my negative emotional state.<\/p>\n

I got her to make a crucial distinction: She realized she never really
\nwanted to eat; she wanted a pleasurable distraction from her negative
\nfeelings. Eating was only a means to the end, not an end in itself.<\/p>\n

I then helped her reach two important realizations: (1) The only reason
\neating had been desirable was that it produced a pleasurable distraction
\nthat nothing else had at the time. And (2) if she had found other ways to
\nget a pleasurable distraction when the conditioning first started, she
\nwouldn\u2019t have needed to eat.<\/p>\n

I then helped her realize that, while eating might have been one way to
\nget what she wanted, it wasn\u2019t necessarily the only way.<\/p>\n

Next I showed her that eating when she was experiencing negative
\nfeelings never really gave her what she wanted. In other words, she had a
\nmomentary pleasurable distraction from her upset or anxiety, but the
\nunpleasant feelings didn\u2019t go away for good. As soon as she finished eating,
\nthey were still there.<\/p>\n

I then asked her to imagine a situation when she had eaten in response
\nto an experience of negative feelings. She took a moment to do this.
\nThen I asked: Didn\u2019t it seem as if you could see that eating is the best
\nway to get a pleasurable distraction. In other words, didn\u2019t you discover that it
\nwas \u201cthe truth\u201d as a result of seeing it in the world?<\/p>\n

She told me she could really see that.<\/p>\n

When I asked her to look closer, to describe what \u201cit\u201d looked like, she
\nrealized she couldn\u2019t really \u201csee\u201d that eating was the best way to get a
\npleasurable distraction. It was only a conclusion she had reached in her mind
\nand wasn\u2019t necessarily true.<\/p>\n

Finally she realized that the connection between eating and
\nexperiencing negative feelings had been an accidental connection made in
\nher childhood, and that there was no inherent connection between the
\ntwo.<\/p>\n

If her mom had taken her to a movie or played a game with her
\nwhenever she had been upset or anxious, then that behavior would have
\ngotten conditioned and now she would go to a movie or play a game
\nwhenever she experienced negative feelings.<\/p>\n

At this point the \u201ctrigger\u201d\u2014namely, negative feelings\u2014had been de-
\nconditioned and would no longer result in her eating compulsively.
\nIn order to deal with negative feelings in the future, she identified
\nseveral things she could do to deal with them in the future,
\nsuch as exercising, calling a friend, and reading a book. As long as she was
\nnot compelled to eat, these activities would do the job.<\/p>\n

To make sure that de-conditioning really had taken place, I asked her
\nthe same question I had asked earlier in the process: Imagine a situation in
\nwhich you are experiencing negative feelings. Can you imaging yourself easily
\nnot eating without having to use a lot of will power?<\/p>\n

Her answer this time was, \u201cabsolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before she left I told her I was convinced that the de-conditioning had
\nbeen effective, but that the only way to know for sure would be to test her
\nbehavior in life. I asked her to watch her eating and let me know if she was
\neating whenever she felt negative feelings.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later she told me that despite having had negative feelings
\non several occasions, she hadn\u2019t even been tempted to eat in those
\nsituations.<\/p>\n

After going through a similar process with all of her triggers and
\nrewards, she stopped overeating and began to lose weight.
\nAnd she\u2019s not alone. Other clients have told me about similar results
\nafter several sessions with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an example of how the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process works to de-condition eating as a very effective way to deal with emotional eating triggers and rewards, based on my notes from a recent client. This woman compulsively ate whenever she experienced negative feelings, such as general upset or anxiety\u2014a very common emotional eating pattern. How … Continue reading “So How Do You Get Rid Of The Conditioning That Makes You Eat?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}