Who doesn't want to feel better? Isn't that why we monitor our food and manipulate our weight? How many times have I heard a client say they they don't like themselves and will be happy when they reach that certain weight.

In January, I wrote about the importance of connection. But disconnection is also necessary for creating a healthy, happy life, and to be able to successfully manage food and weight. Check out these real life tips on how to disconnect.

Our culture encourages us to believe that if we get enough, we will be enough. So we keep trying to get more-- more love, more attention, more success, more weight loss. But it never seems to be enough to make us feel better.

Cross-culturally, conditions and situations that are outside the norm are often viewed as social problems, and social control is often seen as the solution. These days, our culture views fat individuals as not normal, not okay. Medicalization was the inevitable result.

We treat height/weight tables as if they are truth. We believe they are based on sound science. But, in fact, most height/weight tables are based on questionable research which began in the early 1900's.

You want to feel better, and every weight loss ad promises you will feel better, and be happy, when you lose weight. And you probably do feel happier when you start your new eating program. But when you’ve lost your resolve, the good feelings go away, so you figure if you just lost a bit more weight, you’d feel better. But then it goes away yet again! How can you sustain that “better” feeling?

The “change your body” approach to joy and happiness fosters the very disconnection that is causing the distress. The combination of connection and gratitude is the key to feeling happy and joyful. Here's why.

But there is another aspect of the body that most of us do not pay attention to—when you focus on what your body LOOKS like, you’re not paying attention to what your body DOES.

Last weekend, I watched a 12 foot omelette being made in Abbeville, Louisiana. In fact, I drove 20 hours round trip to see it. And I learned something very important along the way. 

Be very careful the next time you look over a restaurant menu. Your food choices may not be your own. The menu layout can determine how satisfied we are at the end of the meal! Are we really that malleable? Apparently. And the big chains take advantage of it. 

We all know the roller coaster Oprah has been on. I was there when she rolled that wheel barrow of 67 pounds of fat onto her stage.  I watched in stunned silence as Oprah carted that fat onto the stage, wondering how she was going to handle the inevitable regain. 

Do you ever have the sense that you just can't quit eating? That there is never enough? That you are a bottomless pit? These experiences are an opportunity to look deeper, to find out what may be going on behind it. 

More and more people are going gluten-free, which has seemed to get rid of symptoms like bloating, gas and diarrhea. But what if the culprit is not actually gluten? New research suggests that the offending substance may actually be fructan.