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Sporting a svelte figure, one would never guess that professional chef Carol Birch* knows what it’s like to struggle with weight problems.
Her life’s journey started out as “Carol the Barrel”, a fat child who later became an anorexic teen. Bad eating habits as a child set the stage for what she later became: a diet-enslaved adult.
At a Natural & Organic Products Exhibition in Cape Town (12 – 14 October 2007), Carol shared her story on how, all her life, she was obsessed with food – eating to make her feel better about herself and then dieting to reverse the negative effects.
Forced to eat more healthily
This routine of yo-yo dieting eventually took its toll on her health. After falling gravely ill with a heart condition more than three years ago, she realised that a serious lifestyle change was inevitable.
Carol’s cardiologist knew this and, in a slightly off-beat approach, he put her on a very strict cleansing diet. The focus was on raw, organic food, lots of fruit and vegetables, and water. And as she stopped counting calories, her body started to restore itself.
“For the first time in my life, I focused on healing – and not on weight loss,” she says. “I felt remarkable.”
She also dropped two dress sizes and managed to keep the weight off ever since.
Victims of emotional eating
Carol came to the realisation that her past pattern of losing and gaining weight wasn’t unique. She learnt that 95% of diets fail – not only because it’s hard to stick to them in the first place, but because food is very often associated with our emotions.
Now a lobbyist for a healthy approach to weight loss, Carol explains that emotional eating, of which many of us are victims, starts at a young age.
Toddlers forced to eat their food, food used as part of a rewards system and associating food with love (think birthday parties and Christmas celebrations) can set dangerous patterns for life.
The good news is that this emotional response can be reversed. “You just need to change your attitude,” Carol says. And if you’re an emotional eater, “it’s important to understand why you’re self-medicating with food.”
Once you understand this process, it’s crucial to eat only when you’re hungry and not when you’re angry, depressed or bored.
Setting new patterns
Carol gives the following tips on how to avoid emotional eating:
- Before you eat, always ask yourself, “Would I eat an apple right now?” If the answer is “Yes”, you’re really hungry. If the answer is “No”, you need to do something else that is spiritually and emotionally satisfying. It could help to get some exercise or to take up a hobby.
- Try to always eat at a table – even if you’re on your own. Make eating a celebration: add a few candles, use pretty cutlery etc. Avoid eating on the run.
- Savour every bite and chew your food properly – aim to chew every mouthful at least 35 times.
- If you eat when you’re stressed, it’s important to find other ways to relieve the tension. Also don’t eat heavy meals when you’re under stress as this will lead to indigestion. Rather opt for foods that will digest easily, e.g. a healthy fruit smoothie.
- And drink enough water, as it often happens that we eat when we’re actually just thirsty.
*Carol Birch is the South African representative for Jordan Rubin, founder of Garden of Life. She appeared on Jordan’s show ‘The Great Physician’s Prescription for Health and Wellness’, that aired on TBN in the USA, and on South African TV with cooking segments entitled ‘Eat to Live’.
- (Carine van Rooyen, updated January 2010)
