I know what it means to binge eat: To close the door and hud­dle behind my desk with a large can of toffee-covered peanuts and eat until my head aches and my stom­ach burns.

To stand in my dark kitchen going from refrig­er­a­tor to pantry for lit­tle bites of this and that — two olives, five crack­ers, a slice of cheese, a hand­ful of raisins, a swig of cof­fee creamer — until my belly is so bloated it’s hard to breathe.

To sit in my car in the gro­cery store park­ing lot, eat­ing 100-calorie pouches of cook­ies in rapid suc­ces­sion, won­der­ing what in God’s name is so wrong with me that I can’t even be trusted with portion-controlled “good-girl” food. Read more

About a week after launch­ing our Fierce Body Love com­mu­nity page on face­book, Simone Goudreau (my part­ner in this project) and I were con­tacted by an indi­vid­ual in the body pos­i­tive com­mu­nity ask­ing us to change the name of that page. This per­son feared our name was con­fus­ingly sim­i­lar to the name of her com­pany. Simone and I didn’t see the prob­lem, and sent back a cor­dial reply say­ing as much. Turns out, this per­son is seek­ing to have the phrase “body love” trade­marked and threat­ened legal action. Yikes! We were stunned. Could a phrase like “body love” actu­ally be owned by some­one? Could we really get in trou­ble for some­thing like this? And did we really have to give up this name that we absolutely loved? Read more

This month’s host­ess with the mostest for the Self-Discovery Word by Word Blogger Series is the incred­i­bly insight­ful Margarita Tartakovsky. If you don’t already read her blog, Weightless, get your tail over there right now. It’s an amaz­ing haven from the insan­ity of our diet-obsessed cul­ture. You’ll get major inspi­ra­tion and edu­ca­tion on how to love your body and break free from the num­ber on the scale. Her blog has become one of my absolute favorites.

Margarita has selected “cre­ativ­ity” as our word to explore this month. Read more

Check out this video I made for you about one of the sneaki­est types of lim­it­ing beliefs. I bet you’ll rec­og­nize a few ways you’ve been lim­it­ing your­self, and hope­fully see how you can make a pow­er­ful shift that will help you get more of what you’re after! Read more

Yesterday, I woke up feel­ing great. I started my day respond­ing to emails while lis­ten­ing to music on Pandora. Suddenly, a song came on that just made me wanna dance, so I did. I put my com­puter aside and danced around my liv­ing room. I felt so free. So con­fi­dent. So vibrant. I was own­ing my power in that moment, and I decided to make some break­fast and take it out­side, along with a fun book, and enjoy the cool morn­ing air for an hour or so before dig­ging into some cre­ative projects and meet­ing with a client later in the day. A deli­cious day stretched out before me. ALL MINE! Read more

You know what’s worse than neg­a­tive thinking?

Beating your­self up for neg­a­tive thinking.

It’s actu­ally pretty com­i­cal, when you think about it, to deal with neg­a­tive think­ing by think­ing neg­a­tively about your neg­a­tive think­ing. Read more

Golly, peo­ple sure are stressed out these days. Have you noticed? Are you one of them? It seems like every­one I encounter is stressed out about some­thing… or every­thing. And I’ll admit that I often fall into the oh-so-comfortable and famil­iar arms of stress. So here’s some straight talk about stress for all of us. Read more

Have you ever asked your­self that ques­tion? When I was in the throes of my bat­tle with food and weight, I asked it all the time. It seemed to me that a nor­mal per­son wouldn’t eat food out of the garbage can. A nor­mal per­son wouldn’t grab at the fat around her stom­ach so hard she leaves marks. A nor­mal per­son wouldn’t keep eat­ing even when she felt like her stom­ach would explode. These behav­iors seemed shame­ful and out of con­trol. So, I thought there was some­thing hor­ri­bly wrong with me. Read more

During my first year of teach­ing, I vividly remem­ber get­ting so frus­trated with my study hall class (because they were basi­cally hav­ing a big old party in the mid­dle of my class­room) that I slammed a metal file cab­i­net drawer shut as hard as I could to get everyone’s atten­tion. Then I yelled at them. A lot. My face was red and hot. My arms were wav­ing wildly. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. This, my friends, is the lizard brain in action. The stu­dents were quiet for the next ten min­utes. And then they started par­ty­ing again. Effective, huh? Read more