Would it surprise you to learn that your relationships are a main cause of your emotional eating, especially when you have communication problems?

We’ll get back to that in a minute, but first I’ve got to share my weight loss progress with you because after all, that’s really the reason for healing your emotional eating, right?

If you’ve been following my weekly updates in my emotional eating experiment with the Shrink Yourself program, you know that the bulk of the first 4-5 weeks of the 12-week program has been about observation. I did a great job of maintaining my 12.5 weight loss during that time and I kept my focus on observing what triggered my emotional eating and emotional hunger.

UPDATE 2015: Hi, as you can see by the date on this article, I wrote this a LONG time ago, May 2008 which was over 7 years ago. At that time in 2008 I was not a professional, certified coach and professional certified Master NLP Pracitioner. I had not yet founded The Inner Self Dietâ„¢ which is my proven, proprietary, step-by-step personal coaching program for permanent weight loss. That’s right! I personally coach my clients to the end of their emotional eating, binge eating, self-sabotage, food obsessions, food addictions, low self-esteem and much more. Click here to read coaching client testimonials from my coaching client, click here to listen to audio testimonials, and watch videos of graduates of The Inner Self Dietâ„¢ in the sidebar of this page you’re on now.

Back in 2008 I did this Shrink Yourself Program and it was nice and all, but it didn’t heal the root of the problem like the binge eating coaching and emotional eating coaching I do with my clients does. I wish  you your Best Life…IN Your Ideal Body! ~ JoLynn Braley, Permanent Weight Loss Coach, Founder of The Inner Self Dietâ„¢

Now that I’ve made it through that stage, I’ve found myself motivated to put a more concerted effort back into losing weight instead of just observing myself. My result so far is that I’ve lost 3 pounds since Monday – yep, that’s right, 15.5 pounds gone! Now I only weighed in again today in order to give you this update, and I’ll stay off the scale until next Monday.

I stepped up my action plan when I wrote Monday’s post and put an added plan into action yesterday by declaring how I’m using Twitter to remain accountable. That’s right, for the next 6 weeks (that’s my initial goal), I’ll be twittering my accountability as an added incentive and motivation to stay the course with my 6-Week Body Makeover plan. This is also helping my emotional eating because Twitter is in real-time, which especially helps me out at night when my emotional hunger tends to crop up.

Why Step Up My Action Now?

I can only say that I must have led up to this through the work I’ve already done with Shrink Yourself. No, I cannot say that all urges to emotionally eat have dropped off yet, however I’m consistently remaining aware while at the same time taking consistent action to lose weight and get fit.

Week Six of Shrink Yourself

Week five started the process of looking at relationships because they are often a huge cause of triggering emotional eating and emotional hunger. Because of this, week six of the Shrink Yourself online guided program continues your work on healing your relationships. This is all about recovering your personal power, not about fixing other people.

Week six walks you through a process of learning how to communicate better with one person in your life, someone you currently have communication problems with. Week Six’s guided session answering different questions that help teach you better ways to communicate. As with all of the questions in the Shrink Yourself program, it’s best that you always answer completely honestly so that you will get the answers you need.

Why The Focus on Relationships?

The reason for the focus on your relationships is because emotional hunger is driven by feelings of powerlessness and relationships can definitely trigger feelings of powerlessness. Besides the 2 weeks of focus on your relationships, I think it’s important to remind you that Shrink Yourself doesn’t include any nutrition or exercise information. It’s not at all about teaching you how to diet or exercises.

Instead, the purpose of Shrink Yourself is the recover your own personal power, learn how to cope with your self-doubts, and overall learn how to deal with life’s ups and downs instead of using food as a coping mechanism. If you’re an emotional eater like I am, you understand exactly what I’m talking about, and I bet you already know that if you’re ever going to keep off the weight that you lose, you’ll need to heal that bottom-line cause of your overeating.

In my humble opinion, the only thing better than doing the Shrink Yourself online program is to go to therapy in person. Sure, you’ll pay a lot more for in-person therapy, but if that’s what you need to do, then that’s what you need to do.

I’m Liking This Program!

For me, I’m finding that the Shrink Yourself guided sessions are excellent because they are put together by Dr. Roger Gould, a psychiatrist who’s been practicing for over 35 years. It’s like having him there asking you questions, but it’s a whole lot cheaper. Instead of paying $100 – $150 per session or more, you’re only paying the price of one fast food meal per week ($10.00 a week)….how many times have you spent more than $10.00 in a week on fast food or other binge foods, including all of the little snacks and sugar-laden coffees throughout the day? I was at a minimum of $40.00 a week when I was eating that way, and often times spent a lot more.

I’ll be back next Wednesday with my update on my experience with week seven, and we’ll also see if I’ve lost any more weight (hope so!). I’ll also be writing a post at some time about all of the extras you get with Shrink Yourself, so watch for that!

Never heard of Shrink Yourself? Read my introductory post to learn all about it and get easy access to all of my emotional eating experiment updates.

2015: Do read my update near the top of this post. What I wrote here is over seven years old and the fact of the matter is that Shrink Yourself didn’t heal the root of the problem, nor did I get the results from SY that my coaching clients get from my proven, step-by-step coaching program to permanent weight loss, The Inner Self Dietâ„¢. All the best! ~ Permanent Weight Loss Coach JoLynn Braley, founder of The Inner Self Dietâ„¢.