Welcome Dr. Oz viewers! You may have been directed here from my amazing boss, Dr. Oz. Welcome to the site!! I hope you stop by every Monday. Especially if you are someone who starts a diet every Monday. Since many of you may be first time readers, in today’s post I thought I’d help you understand a little more about me. For my die hard readers, you know who you are, I wanted to recap what I hope this blog can do for us together.

This personal blog is a place where I discuss the reality of being a woman in a world where we constantly wage war against our bodies. I hope as I share my personal stories relating to food, you peel back the layers and understand your own struggles of being in a lifelong battle with a body you never feel thin enough or good enough in. As we all begin to understand ourselves emotionally, we’ll naturally slip closer to our happy weights without crash dieting. AND hopefully learn to perfect the love of our imperfections.

As you now know, I am a producer for The Dr. Oz Show.  I am also a lifelong dieter. I have battled the scale my entire life.  My weight has fluctuated for as long as I can remember. I’ve had 4 sizes of jeans in my closet at all times. I’ve had high weight highs and low weight lows. Losing weight is always on my mind. A few years ago, in the throws of obsessing over what I weighed, I decided to explore therapy. I learned I was an emotional eater. I soothe myself with food. I numb my stress and anxiety with carbohydrates. I turn to a full box or bag when I am struggling.  I also learned that a side effect of emotional eating is yo yo dieting. After I overeat, I punish myself by restricting or crash dieting. Once I understood this, I was able to better understand my relationship with the Monday Diet. The need to start a diet every Monday. Because of that, I decided to start my blog, Monday Dieter.  The “Monday Diet” represents the emotional component to dieting. If losing weight was as easy as eating healthy, eating less and moving more, we’d all be at our goal weight, we’d never need to start a Monday Diet. It’s NOT though. There is an emotional component to dieting and we need to bring awareness to that.  You may be just like me.

Do you ever look back to the times you overate and blame your sheer lack of willpower? Do you blame cravings? Do you blame social outings? Do you wish you could be like your friends who’ve never had a weight problem? Are you frustrated because you feel you’ve been trying to lose the weight our whole life? I feel all these things.  Until I began to talk out the days I binge. I am able to see an emotional trigger.  For example, we always tend to overeat on holidays. We blame the cookies, cakes and meals that accompany these holidays. Yet, holidays are filled with family and friends who trigger emotional eating. Do you ever head to the office candy jar when work gets stressful? Again, we blame our lack of willpower or our cravings. We never stop to see how the stress of work is why we eat. Ever find yourself saying screw my diet, I’ll start again on Monday? No idea why you are falling off your diet? You may not even realize that something someone said or something you may have read on Facebook can trigger that. We all have triggers that set us off emotionally and thrust us into the arms of food for comfort. They take time to uncover but once we start to discover them, we can steer clear and work to better manage them without food.

Some signs I’ve learned represent me as an emotional eater, maybe you can relate to one or all.

• An all or nothing mentality, we’re either being 100% good or completely off the wagon.
• We’ve labeled food as “good food” and “bad food”
• We look to crash diets in times of desperation or to undo any damage
• We let the number on the scale dictate our moods
• We believe in the fairy tale of weight loss (our problems will melt away with the pounds)

I’ve learned that simply bringing words and validation to these things has helped stop the big weight fluctuations and made a lifetime of weight stress more manageable.

This week on The Dr. Oz Show Monday Dieter series we talk about The Mediterranean Diet Shopping List! The Mediterranean Diet emphasizes eating heart healthy foods like fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts and oils. All foods that are good and good for you! The reason I love this way of eating is because freedom from dieting comes when you stop counting calories and start counting ingredients. Freedom from body shaming comes when eating becomes about health and not about being skinny.  Try these foods today:)

Thanks for stopping by! If you want, tell me a little about you! Write to me, mondaydieter@gmail.com

xo

Nicole