Quotes from Mirror, Mirror on the Wall:
Breaking the “I Feel Fat” Spell

"Sometimes we feel like we are really different from others, and that being different is bad and makes us unloveable. It’s true that we have have things about us that make us different but it’s not true that we are unlovable because of our differences.”

"It’s Unfair to Compare because when we compare ourselves to others, we are looking at them on the outside and thinking they must be happy or perfect on the inside. But all people have problems and difficulties, no matter what they look like.”

"Feelings live in your body, and when you let them out they eventually calm down. So if you feel sad and you let yourself cry, the sadness will pass, and then you won’t feel sad anymore (until the next time you feel sad about something).”

"Many people find that when they don’t talk about their feelings, they end up thinking they are too big because their feelings are all stuffed inside of them. (They are having BIG feelings!)”

"Believing that negative thoughts are facts, is a big cause of unhappiness. When we are in our Unkind Mind, we can go from one negative thought to the next, and this makes us feel worse and worse. Especially when we believe everything we think.”

 

Quotes from The Don’t Diet Live-It Workbook

"It's O.K. to eat when you are hungry and to cry when you are sad. But ice cream won't ever alleviate sadness, and potato chips will not subdue anger."

"There is no food that will fill emotional hunger and no diet that will curb it."

"As you begin to stop over and under eating, you'll also begin to understand why you did so in the first place."

"Many people with food and weight problems have difficulty distinguishing between their emotional and their physical hunger. After all, if you’ve turned to food to handle your emotions in the past, it may now be hard to know whether you’re feeling physically hungry or feeling angry, sad, lonely or anxious. If you find yourself heading toward the refrigerator, you may indeed be hungry for food, but you could also be starving for attention, craving human comfort, or filled with intolerable emotions.”

"Safely expressing your feelings is the opposite of bingeing."

"Physical hunger is when your body needs nourishment. Emotional hunger is when your soul needs nourishment. Find out what it is you are truly hungry for."

 

Quotes from Getting Over Overeating for Teens

"Once you learn healthy ways to reveal, heal, and deal with what you feel, you will no longer need to use food like a drug, to try to make your feelings go away. You can eat what you really like, in healthy amounts, and you can deal with your feelings in healthy ways."

"What helps us the most when we are riding a wave of emotion is to be kind to ourselves (in our thoughts and our actions) and to treat ourselves the way we would treat someone else we really care about."

"Most people walk around lost in thought. It's pretty easy to spend our time thinking about the past (things that are totally over), or the future (stuff that hasn't even happened yet), and completely miss out on the present moment (also known as reality!)"

 

Quotes from Defeating Overeating Online Course

"If you’ve spent years eating every time you felt frightened, angry, hurt or sad, disappointed, lonely or bored, then you may, understandably, have hunger and feelings mixed up. The good news is that the desire to overeat can actually become a signal, like an alarm, alerting you to emotions that need attention."

"Overeating is a message from your soul. It is a sign that you are not truly fulfilled. It is a message from a deep and knowing part of you that knows something more is needed. This part must be heard in order for it to subside. When this happens you will no longer need excess food. If you look at it this way, you can view your overeating as an opportunity to discover what is missing for you, rather than a sign that something is wrong with you. It’s easy to become so busy trying to lose weight (and beating yourself up for not doing so), that you don’t spend enough time feeding your spirit.” 

 

Quotes from Andrea Wachter, LMFT

“It is possible to break free from the chains of food and weight obsession. It is possible to eat delicious, satisfying, moderate meals and not gain weight (unless you need to!)  It is possible to safely express difficult emotions and feel a sense of relief and peace afterwards. It is possible to feel a sense of connectedness and live more and more in the present moment. It is possible to change some of your internal rules and still be safe in the world.  It is possible to live a life that is about more than the size of your thighs or the amount of carbs in your day.” 

“Every binge is a cry for help. Whether that help is for rest, comfort, nourishment, expressing emotions, or a myriad of other possibilities that excess food attempts to fill. The mind gets busy and goes fast and may try to convince you that food is the solution. But once you slow down enough to inquire what you are truly hungry for- and then give it to yourself- food will take its proper place in your life again.”

 

Quotes from the Co-founders of InnerSolutions
(Marsea Marcus, LMFT and Andrea Wachter, LMFT)

“There are important reasons why you over or under eat.”

“Every single time you eat when you are not hungry, obsess about food or your body or don't eat when you are hungry, you are crying for help.”

“If diets worked most Americans would be thin and happy by now.”