I have something very exciting to tell you today - I’m starting another experiment on myself. Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve done one. You might remember some of the other experiments I’ve done: mono dieting to cleanse the lymph nodes, an experiment in being 100% free of refined sugar for 30 days, and my detailed 6-Week Body Makeover experiment.

Well I have another one that I’m doing now and it’s going to run for the next 12 weeks. Each Wednesday for the next 12 weeks I’ll bring you an update on my progress on (guess what) - healing my emotional eating!

You’ve heard me go on and on about how wonderful the 6-Week Body Makeover is. Not only does it teach you how to eat, what to eat, how much to eat, when to eat, how, when, and how much to exercise, but when you follow the plan, you will see marvelous results.

Many of you have also done my 31 Days of Loving Yourself Thin exercises and learned about my beliefs of how loving the self and releasing self-criticism, you can move beyond the self-incrimination that often accompanies overeating; which as you already know, doesn’t help you make positive changes.

You’ve also heard me say that there are many pieces to the puzzle of weight loss and fitness, many of those pieces outlined in my last post about roadblocks. And you know what one definite truth is? There are many different people on this planet and one way doesn’t necessarily work for all people (although I’d argue that love is the most powerful force on Earth - you really can’t top the miracles you can work when you love yourself fully).

So, I’ve been introduced to a tool that from what I’ve learned already, appears to be a powerful course to help you work through your emotional eating issues. What I’m talking about is a program created by Dr. Roger Gould, M.D., called Shrink Yourself.

This is something new to me but after trying Emotional Eating 101 (a free, 4-day series on emotional eating, food addiction, binge eating, and overeating), I resonated with many of the same thoughts that I’ve been sharing with you here. For example, I think that in order to lose weight permanently, you must discover (and heal) what is motivating your overeating. Using a diet to solve the symptom of overweight without looking at what caused the weight gain is like putting a band aid on a tumor - it’s not healing the underlying problem. The Shrink Yourself program is on the same wavelength - very exciting.

**If you haven’t heard of emotional eating, it is when you use food for reasons other than physical hunger. If you eat because you feel bored, stressed, angry, happy, sad, anxious, depressed, insecure, confused, indecisive, or for any other emotional reason, that is emotional eating.

So what is this program? The Shrink Yourself program is a 12-week, online program developed by Dr. Roger Gould, M.D. Dr. Gould is a psychiatrist (practicing for 35 years) who received his medical degree at Northwestern University in Chicago and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. In his Shrink Yourself program, Dr. Gould helps you break the cycle of emotional eating and/or binging once and for all (that’s what I want!). He has already helped 1,000’s of people break their emotional eating patterns, stick to their healthy eating plans, and lose weight for good.

The online Shrink Yourself program is like virtual therapy for emotional eating but costs pennies compared to live therapy. Here’s an interview with Dr. Gould on ABC News that gives you a good feel for the Shrink Yourself program:

I’m really excited about the Shrink Yourself program and am grateful to have been offered an invitation to go through the process. This does not mean that the program gets an automatic thumbs up from me - just like everything else that I blog about here at The Fit Shack, I give you my own opinions, likes, and dislikes. Even though I have high expectations of the Shrink Yourself program, I feel like I should hold back and reserve some judgment instead of getting over-excited about it.

You know if I wanted to, I could just write today’s post and say, “hey, this looks good (it does), I suggest you do this”, but I like to experiment on myself. It makes me accountable, and then I’m not just doing something for me, but also keeping an open mind to report my findings. And while your results could be different, you’ll be getting my real life experience of working this program. Clearly I have emotional eating issues to work on that are a part of my weight problem.

Be sure to tune in next Wednesday for my first update on my emotional eating experiment. And of course if you don’t want to wait and would like to sign up now and do this with me (they have a forum for members and a bunch of other extras, too), then by all means head on over there and check out the Shrink Yourself program now.

The 12-week series:

• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week One
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Two
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Three
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Four
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Five
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Six
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Seven
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Eight
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Nine
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Ten
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Eleven
  
• Shrink Yourself Emotional Eating Experiment - Week Twelve