We often hear from readers who use Thinking Anew: Harnessing the Power of Belief as a food journal to help them better focus on their weight loss program.   While I was doing research to accommodate them with diet specific mantras, I came across a fabulous book that explains and provides guidance for people who have lost control of their diet.  I have come to learn that there’s a sweet spot after achieving your weight goals where you need to avoid rebound weight gain while not creating an eating disorder.  If you restrict, binge, purge, excessively diet or weigh yourself, exercise compulsively, or engage routinely and obsessively in any other food or weight-related behavior you must read 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder: Effective Strategies from Therapeutic Practice and Personal Experience (8 Keys to Mental Health) by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb.

Costin and Grabb also encourage their clients to keep a journal while in recovery.  They believe and many others have told of similar experiences, that client outcomes are often improved by keeping a journal during recovery.  Here’s a quote from their book:

“Writing in a journal is useful for clarifying your thoughts and feelings, getting to

know yourself better, and managing overwhelming emotion associated with

an experience.  We know that writing down your account of an emotional

situation can help you lower your reactivity to it even if you don’t share your

writing with anyone else.  Recording your thoughts and feelings allows you to

get them out and return to them later.  You will be able to see your own progress

or places where you are stuck.  Sharing your journal with someone can also help

you get feedback, clarification, and support.  Finally, journaling is one of three

things that most of our clients who have recovered have in common.  The other

two are not weighing and reaching out at the first sign of a problem.”

Here’s the review I posted on Amazon.com and Goodreads.

Eating Disorders: When Your Best Thinking isn’t Enough

When a diet no longer serves you and a demeaning voice inside you takes control of your life, you need Carolyn Costin and Gwen Grabb.  They are eating disorder therapists who know how to empower people to change their destructive eating habits.  This book is a journey through the twisted food thoughts that make people think they’re in control when they’re not.  It’s all there: thin commandments, food rules, hunger games, food journals, conscious eating, scale addicts, exercise addicts, overeaters, undereaters, binge eaters, emotional eaters, rigid beliefs, emotional reasoning, perfectionism, privacy delusions, bulimia, anorexia and purging.  These are tough issues to deal with, but with this book, a journal and the right help, there is a way out.