MIRA KIRSHENBAUM

Mira Kirshenbaum has an international reputation as a therapist for individuals, couples, and families. She is co-founder and clinical director of The Chestnut Hill Institute. A sought-after speaker, Mira is the author of nine award-winning books, some national and international bestsellers. She has appeared many times on the Today Show and has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey.

When you fall off the wagon

First, an update.  Lost another pound last week.  Right on target.  And I feel particularly good about it because I had to negotiate the massive Super Bowl hurdle.  But it wasn’t really all that hard.  It ain’t rocket science.  Here’s what got me through it.  Tips:  Don’t buy food you’re gonna regret eating.  Eat your vegetables (I had some guacamole but ate it with baby carrots.)  Control your portions.  Eat food you enjoy (I had some sautéed mushrooms which I like a lot.)

OK, now for this last blog (for now) on Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet.  Got an email from someone a few days ago: “I ate 6 Oreos last night at midnight—I am scared old habits are returning.  Must re-focus.”  And the question in front of us is, What do you do if you slip?  Read the rest of this entry. »

Personal and life-style issues

OK, here we are, close to the last stop on Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet train.  Today we’re going to work on overcoming the personal and life-style issues that get in the way of losing weight.  We’ve already talked about getting support and making yourself accountable as I launched my own diet right on live TV, about figuring out just how to get on track and stay on track for optimal weight loss, about motivation, the emotion fuel to keep you going with your weight-loss program, and about the emotional issues that prevent you from losing weight.   

The person and life-style issues I want to talk about are all over the place, from skipping breakfast in the morning, to eating in the car, to snacking late at night.  So let me get to the bottom line right away.  Read the rest of this entry. »

Emotional issues

People who are overweight often have an emotional connection with food.  It would be so easy to lose weight if we ate only when we were hungry and stopped eating as soon as we started to stop feeling hungry.  But in fact every single emotion can be an eating trigger.  I have eaten when sad, anxious, stressed out, bored, happy, angry, you name it.  And I’m not alone.  But this is actually good news.  It means that if you can identify your emotions you can stop the automatic emotional eating.  Here’s how you do it, and it’s an essential part of Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet.  Read the rest of this entry. »

Staying motivated

OK, motivation: the next step in laying out Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet.  It’s simple, really,  Motivation is made up of just three things:

First, success.  They say motivation leads to success.  And it does.  But success leads to motivation too.  What this means is that to stay motivated you need to have successes.  This is why, for example, some weight-loss programs try to get you to lose a lot of weight right off the bat. 

But here’s the thing.  Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint.  So here’s how to keep having the successes you need to keep you motivated. Read the rest of this entry. »

The perfect diet for you

 OK, so today I talk about how to get on track with Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet and stay on track.  This is the key.

But first, let me get you up to date.  I lost another pound since yesterday.  Five now since the beginning of January.  But it is still a mystery how I can lose on a day when I didn’t eat all that well Read the rest of this entry. »

Getting started, getting support

Today I [Charles Foster] like an idiot went on TV and in my weekly Fostering Change segment on New England Cable News announced that I’d started a diet on Jan. 1 and had a goal to lose a pound a week for the entire coming year.  Yikes!  What was I thinking?!?!?!  Now I’ve got to do it! 

But the fact is I want to do it.  What’s more, I need to do it.  My doctor just told me I was slightly pre-diabetic, so if I don’t lose weight I could get diabetes, which sucks.  What’s more, I could die (which sucks even more) and not get to see my grandson graduate from college.  Plus I know that if I turned out to eat myself into an early grave my wife (that would be the wonderful Mira) would be really pissed, and maybe a little sad too, although on the plus side she would gain control of the remote and be freed from my snoring. 

Plus I really hate being fat.  It’s not me.  Well, OK, it has been me.  That’s true.  But it’s not the real me.  I have photos of the real me and I look trim and fit.  I’m not a fat man; I’m a temporarily fat man, a hopefully soon-to-be-no-longer-fat man. 

But why would I embarrass myself and go public with all this?  First of all, it makes me accountable.  And that’s the first of many weight-loss tips you’ll find here as I lay out Dr. Foster’s damn-good diet.  Read the rest of this entry. »

Our dreams of romance are haunted by nightmares of romance gone bad.  The question we all face is, How do we make our dreams come true and avoid the nightmares?  Well, as a start, here are answers to the questions I most often get from people when Valentine’s Day is approaching:

Q:  “Have you looked at the calendar?  Valentine’s Day will soon be here.  Do you know how busy we are?  How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you don’t have time to celebrate?” Read the rest of this entry. »

When we look at how Elizabeth Edwards, Elin Woods, Jennie Sanford, Silda Spitzer, and Hillary Clinton responded to their husband’s infidelity, a mystery emerges.  Why do some people respond one way to being betrayed and other’s respond very differently?  Read the rest of this entry. »

To listen to a free audio sample of the audio version of Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, go here and click on “Listen to an AUDIO SAMPLE.”

Valentine’s day is looming.  Now V-day may be an unmixed blessing for people who happen to have just fallen madly in love, but for many of us there is a lot of dread.  V-day can be depressing if you’re not in a relationship, anxiety producing if you’ve just started going out with someone, and BOTH depressing AND anxiety producing if you’re in a well established relationship with some tread wear.  And that’s because V-day demands a level of romantic levitation that’s a challenge for people whose relationships have long since come down to earth (in some case, with a thud).  So how do you deal with this challenge?  Read the rest of this entry. »