How Can Eating Issues Affect Our Lives?

Whether it is anorexia, bulimia, food addictions, or simply having a relationship with food that we regard as less than healthy, countless numbers of us struggle with eating issues.

The website www.about.com - focusing on women's issues, body image and dieting statistics-displays some very telling numbers. Seven million U.S. girls and women and 1 million U.S. boys and men have an eating disorder.

The greater prevalence in females mirrors societal messages. For instance, the website also points out that most fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women, 80% of whom are unhappy with how they look.

What's more, these trends start young. Forty-two percent of elementary school students between the first and third grades want to be thinner, and a full 80% of children who are 10 years old are afraid of being fat. Fifty-one percent of 9 and 10 year-old girls feel better about themselves if they are on a diet. It is important to note that 35% of "normal dieters" progress to pathological dieting.

These disorders can have serious health consequences. In fact, 20% of those with eating disorders may die without treatment.

And this just outlines the most acute situations. Many more of us struggle with overeating and other challenging relationships with food that don't technically fall under a specific disorder name.

Many times, the programs designed to help those of us with eating issues focus on changing behavior. Certainly changing behavior is important, but attempting to change behaviors without changing the beliefs that fuel them becomes an uphill battle fraught with backsliding.

We have found that, for a large number of people, their relationship to food is a microcosm of their relationship to their entire lives. When someone believes that their life is out of their control, for instance, they may seek to regain it by attempting to control their world; and one of the ways they might do this is by strictly limiting what and how much they eat. When someone feels that their life is empty, and they are a victim to the emptiness, they may endeavor to fill the void with food.

How Can The Option Institute Help?

We can help you to uncover the beliefs you hold which fuel your relationship with food. We do this in a very nonjudgmental manner, and we don't try to convince you to change how you eat. We simply give you the opportunity to decide what type of relationship you'd like to have with food, and then we give you tools and assistance with dropping the often undiscovered beliefs in your way. Then, we can help you learn to construct a new set of beliefs to set you on the long-term track you desire.

Indeed, we have had participants in the past who have moved beyond their overeating, anorexia or bulimia.

If you have decided that it's finally time to leave your eating issue by the wayside and forge a new relationship with food, we can provide you with a kind of assistance you have probably never received before.