Excess Matters

Category: Health

  • The Craving Cure by Julia Ross: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    The book in one sentence: A clinical psychologist and nutritional therapy pioneer argues that food cravings are caused by neurotransmitter deficiencies, and that targeted amino acid supplements can stop them, often within 24 hours.

    What Is The Craving Cure About?

    You’ve probably tried the willpower version. You white-knuckle through the afternoon, eat the sad salad, feel proud of yourself for exactly four hours, and then eat a sleeve of crackers at 9 PM. The next morning, you circle back to the same explanation you always land on: something is wrong with you.

    Julia Ross has a different theory. She spent more than thirty years running addiction and eating disorder clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area (over four thousand clients), and what she observed was consistent: cravings are not a failure of character. They are a symptom of measurable brain chemistry deficits. When five key neurotransmitter systems run low, the brain generates involuntary drives toward processed sugar and starch. Not because you’re weak. Because your brain is trying to self-medicate with the only fast-acting chemicals it has access to.

    Ross is also a psychotherapist, which matters for how she argues. She’s not dismissing the emotional dimension of eating. She’s saying that until the brain’s depleted chemistry is restored, no amount of insight, therapy, or resolve will reliably stop the cravings. The sequence she proposes is: fix the brain first, then everything else becomes possible. The Craving Cure is her 432-page clinical manual for how to do that.

    Why Do You Crave? The Neurotransmitter Deficiency Model

    Picture the brain’s appetite regulation as a five-instrument orchestra. When all five are playing well, you eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and don’t think much about food otherwise. When any one instrument falls out of tune, the result is cravings.

    Ross calls those five systems “the Fabulous Five”: serotonin, blood glucose stability, endorphins, GABA, and the catecholamines (dopamine and norepinephrine). Each system, when depleted, generates a specific and predictable craving pattern. The mechanism isn’t mysterious. Serotonin drops in the afternoon as daylight fades, so Type 1 cravers reliably want carbs at 4 PM. GABA depletes under chronic stress, so Type 4 cravers reach for salty, crunchy foods when they’re overwhelmed. The cravings aren’t random. They’re the brain’s precise, involuntary attempt to restore what’s missing.

    The deeper problem is how processed foods made this worse. Starting in the 1970s, Ross identifies three dietary shifts that simultaneously depleted neurotransmitter-building nutrients and flooded the food supply with substances that exploit the brain’s reward systems: the replacement of animal fats with processed vegetable oils, the explosion of refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, and the cultural slide away from animal protein. Before 1970, fewer than a third of Americans were overweight. That’s not nostalgia for Ross. It’s evidence that the current epidemic is caused, not inevitable.

    “Knowing more, willing more, eating less — these strategies are simply no match for the avalanche of pleasure that our Techno-Karbz can trigger in the brain. What else could regularly overwhelm the good intentions of 230 million adults?”

    If 230 million people keep failing at the same task using the same strategies, the strategies are wrong. That’s the whole argument in one move.

    The 5 Craving Types: Which One Are You?

    The Craving-Type Questionnaire (developed over thirty years and twenty thousand amino acid trials) takes about ten minutes and maps your symptom patterns to specific neurotransmitter deficiencies. Most people have more than one type. Here’s what each looks like in practice:

    Type 1: The Depressed Craver (Low Serotonin)

    Cravings hit hardest in the afternoon, evening, and winter. Mood symptoms tag along: negativity, anxiety, worry, perfectionism, insomnia, a low-grade irritability that gets worse as the day goes on. The late-night cereal, the 4 PM chocolate, the “I just need something sweet before I can sleep” (all serotonin). The brain is reaching for carbohydrates because carbs temporarily boost tryptophan’s access to the brain. The amino acid fix is tryptophan or 5-HTP, taken as needed.

    Type 2: The Crashed Craver (Blood Sugar Instability)

    Skip breakfast, feel fine until 10 AM, then raid the office candy bowl like your life depends on it. Or go too long between meals, get shaky and foggy, and make a fast-food decision you’ll regret. This type isn’t technically a neurotransmitter deficiency. It’s a fuel crisis. The brain has no stored glucose and demands a continuous supply. L-glutamine dissolved under the tongue can substitute for glucose in the brain and stop the crash-and-crave episode within minutes.

    Type 3: The Comfort Craver (Low Endorphins)

    This one is about chocolate, creamy textures, doughy foods, and sometimes alcohol. Endorphins are the brain’s endogenous opiates (thousands of times more powerful than morphine at their peak). A University study found M&Ms raised enkephalin activity by 150%, comparable to opium. Ross is not using “addiction” loosely here. The person who says “it’s my one pleasure” and genuinely means it, who feels a small grief at the thought of giving up chocolate, is describing an endorphin deficit. DPA and DLPA work by slowing the enzymes that break down natural endorphins, raising their levels without adding external opioids, without tolerance, without dependence.

    Type 4: The Stressed Craver (Low GABA)

    Chips at the desk. Crackers by the handful. GABA is the brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, the biochemical antidote to adrenaline. It’s what lets you decompress after a hard day. When it’s depleted by chronic stress and a protein-poor diet, salty, crunchy, starchy foods provide a brief, unsatisfying simulation of the calm the brain is missing. GABA is the fastest-acting of all the interventions: chewed in tablet form (Ross recommends 125 mg), it can produce visible neck and shoulder relaxation within seconds.

    Type 5: The Fatigued Craver (Low Catecholamines)

    Triple espresso people. Energy drink people. “I cannot function without coffee” people. Dopamine and norepinephrine are the brain’s natural stimulants, and when they’re low, food becomes a stimulant delivery system (not comfort or pleasure, but energy). Tyrosine, the direct precursor to the catecholamine family, typically restores energy and focus within five to ten minutes. Ross includes a detailed caffeine withdrawal protocol built around tyrosine replacing the energy effect cup by cup.

    How Amino Acid Therapy Works (and How Fast)

    The protocol has two phases, and the order matters.

    Phase one is the amino acids. You identify your craving type, start the indicated supplements, and within one to seven days (often within hours) the cravings diminish. Ross’s clients consistently report the same thing after their first day: “Amazing. My cravings disappeared.” The mechanism isn’t magic. Amino acids are precursors to neurotransmitters, and the brain can upregulate production relatively quickly once the raw material is available. The speed of response also functions as a diagnostic tool: if the amino doesn’t help, you’ve identified the wrong type.

    Phase two is the food plan. Ross calls it the Primal Plate, a return to pre-1970s eating built around adequate animal protein (the primary dietary source of all five key amino precursors), traditional fats, and the elimination of processed sugar and flour. The food plan is not calorie-restricted. Low-calorie dieting, she argues, starves the brain of protein and deepens neurotransmitter depletion, making cravings worse. Typically, after two to twelve months on the protocol, clients can stop the supplements entirely. The food becomes the chemistry.

    The reason the phases can’t be reversed matters. Attempting to change your diet while your brain chemistry remains depleted guarantees failure. The depleted brain generates cravings stronger than dietary resolve. The amino acids buy time and demonstrate what craving-free life feels like (experientially, not just conceptually). When someone who has blamed themselves for decades feels their food compulsion dissolve within twenty minutes of the right amino acid, the reframe from “willpower failure” to “brain chemistry” becomes something they’ve lived, not just read.

    One honest note on evidence: the amino acid protocols are primarily supported by Ross’s thirty years of clinical observation and the broader neuroscience literature on neurotransmitters, not randomized controlled trials. The clinical mechanism is solid; the RCT base is thin. This is worth knowing before you build a supplement stack around her recommendations.

    Is The Craving Cure Worth Reading?

    Read this if you have cravings that feel genuinely compulsive (not “I’d enjoy a cookie” but “I cannot get through the afternoon without this”), if your cravings follow distinct patterns tied to time of day, season, stress level, or skipped meals, or if you’ve done real psychological work on your relationship with food and found it clarifying but insufficient. The neurotransmitter framework applies to mood and eating simultaneously, which makes it useful for anyone with depression, anxiety, or chronic fatigue sitting alongside their food difficulties.

    Skip it if you have a history of restrictive eating disorders. The elimination of processed foods and the firm categorization of what’s permissible can amplify restriction patterns in ways the book doesn’t adequately address. Ross’s intended audience is compulsive overeaters, not restrictors, and the book doesn’t make that distinction clearly enough. Also skip it if you’re currently working within an intuitive eating framework — food rules and rebuilding interoceptive trust don’t mix well.

    One caveat: the book is 432 pages, and roughly half of that is the dietary framework and recipes rather than the amino acid protocol. The core clinical protocol is in the first 150 pages. The rest is useful if you’re going all-in on the Primal Plate, but don’t let the length put you off the material that matters.

    Books Like The Craving Cure

    BookAuthorBest For
    The End of OvereatingDavid KesslerUnderstanding how the food industry engineered your vulnerability — the external mechanism Ross’s book treats
    The Mood CureJulia RossSame amino acid framework applied to depression, anxiety, and trauma rather than food cravings
    The Hunger HabitJudson BrewerMindfulness-based approach to cravings — different mechanism (reward-based learning), complementary goal
    Bright Line EatingSusan Peirce ThompsonArrives at similar dietary conclusions (eliminate sugar and flour) through behavioral architecture instead of amino acid repair
    The End of CravingMark SchatzkerNutritive mismatch theory — processed food trains the brain to decouple taste from nutrition, creating endless craving

  • Healthy Hormones by Belinda Kirkpatrick: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A naturopath with a Master of Reproductive Health walks women through the hormonal root causes of period pain, PCOS, endometriosis, and weight resistance, then gives them a practical diet-and-lifestyle toolkit to actually do something about it.

    What Is Healthy Hormones About?

    You’ve probably been told your painful periods are just part of being a woman. Maybe a doctor ran basic bloodwork, told you everything looked normal, and sent you home with an NSAID prescription. Belinda Kirkpatrick’s opening argument is worth hearing out: period pain is common, but common is not the same as normal. “A menstrual cycle should ideally be free of negative symptoms,” she writes, and the rest of the book is built around proving that’s achievable.

    Kirkpatrick is an Australian naturopath and nutritionist with a Bachelor of Health Science and a Master of Reproductive Health, and she’s been in clinical practice specializing in women’s health for over a decade. She’s not writing theory here. The book reads like a detailed intake session with someone who has heard these questions a thousand times and knows exactly which levers to pull. She covers PCOS, endometriosis, PMS, thyroid health, and fertility, using the same organizing principle throughout: symptoms are downstream of mechanisms, and mechanisms respond to targeted interventions.

    Where this book fits in the crowded hormone-health shelf: less clinically dense than Aviva Romm’s Hormone Intelligence, more mechanistically grounded than Angelique Vermeulen’s Happy Hormones. It lands in a genuinely useful middle range for women who want to understand what’s happening in their bodies without needing a medical degree to follow along.

    Why Your Hormones Are Driving Your Weight

    Here’s something that almost never comes up in weight loss conversations: hormones are not a separate problem from weight. They’re woven into the same system.

    Kirkpatrick maps out three specific connections worth understanding. First, oestrogen excess changes how the body distributes fat (hips, thighs), drives water retention, and creates the kind of persistent bloat that looks like weight gain on the scale. Second, insulin resistance (the most common root cause of PCOS, in her framework) works both directions: excess body fat raises androgen production and worsens insulin sensitivity, while insulin resistance makes fat loss measurably harder. The cycle reinforces itself. Third, cortisol drives visceral fat accumulation and carbohydrate cravings directly, not as a side effect of stress but as a core metabolic function.

    The practical implication isn’t “fix your hormones to lose weight” as some kind of magic shortcut. It’s that if your appetite and weight feel disconnected from your actual effort, the hormonal picture is worth examining. Systems respond better to targeted interventions than to willpower applied to one variable in isolation.

    For women with PCOS especially, this reframe matters. Kirkpatrick’s position (consistent with current endocrinology) is that PCOS is primarily a metabolic condition driven by insulin resistance that happens to express itself through hormonal symptoms. The ovaries, under the influence of excess insulin, produce more testosterone. That disrupts ovulation. Addressing the blood sugar upstream often does more than any hormonal treatment downstream.

    How Does Kirkpatrick Explain the Main Hormonal Conditions?

    Oestrogen Dominance

    The liver clears oestrogen by converting it into excretable forms. The gut then binds those forms to fibre and eliminates them. When either pathway fails (overburdened liver, low-fibre diet, disrupted gut microbiome), oestrogen gets reabsorbed rather than excreted, creating relative oestrogen excess even when the ovaries are producing normal amounts.

    The downstream symptoms of this are recognizable: heavy or painful periods, breast tenderness before the period, fluid retention, mood shifts around ovulation, and difficulty losing weight around the hips. These are not random or mysterious. They’re the predictable output of a specific physiological process.

    What supports oestrogen clearance, according to Kirkpatrick:

    • Cruciferous vegetables daily (broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts) provide compounds (I3C and DIM) that drive the liver’s oestrogen metabolism pathways
    • 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseeds daily for gut fibre and mild anti-oestrogenic lignans
    • Probiotic foods or supplements to maintain the gut bacteria that prevent oestrogen reactivation in the bowel
    • Reducing alcohol, since the liver prioritizes alcohol metabolism and deprioritizes oestrogen clearance

    PCOS

    Kirkpatrick draws a distinction that a lot of women have never heard: a polycystic ovary on ultrasound is not the same as a PCOS diagnosis. The syndrome requires a combination of clinical, hormonal, and imaging criteria. Many women are told they have PCOS based on imaging alone, which is both inaccurate and unnecessary.

    For women who do have PCOS (the syndrome), her framework is direct:

    “The fastest way to regulate your cycle and promote ovulation is by addressing insulin resistance in the ovaries. A low-sugar and low-carbohydrate diet is recommended for women with PCOS.”

    The supporting protocol includes spearmint tea (2-3 cups daily, supported by clinical trials for reducing free testosterone), cinnamon tea (2-3 cups daily for insulin sensitization), strength training as the exercise priority, and practitioner-supervised supplementation with inositol, zinc, magnesium, and chromium.

    Endometriosis

    Endometriosis is oestrogen-dependent: the tissue that grows outside the uterus responds to oestrogen the same way the uterine lining does. Reducing oestrogen load is structural management of the condition, not a lifestyle preference. Kirkpatrick stacks the oestrogen-clearance protocol above with anti-inflammatory nutrition: eliminating dairy, gluten, corn, soy, and sugar; limiting red meat to roughly one serving per week (arachidonic acid feeds inflammatory prostaglandins); and replacing coffee with green tea.

    She’s explicit that this works alongside medical management, not instead of it. Surgery, when indicated, should happen. The dietary approach shapes the hormonal environment that surgery is operating in.

    Stress and the Cortisol-Progesterone Relationship

    Both cortisol and progesterone are synthesized from the same precursor molecule. Under chronic stress, the body preferentially makes cortisol, leaving less substrate available for progesterone. The result: short luteal phases, premenstrual spotting, heightened PMS, suppressed ovulation. This explains why cycles get worse during high-stress periods. Most women have noticed the pattern without ever having a name for the mechanism.

    “High cortisol levels can decrease the production of progesterone and result in a relative progesterone deficiency or relative oestrogen excess. This may exacerbate negative menstrual symptoms and, in cases of severe or chronic stress, even delay ovulation.”

    Kirkpatrick’s response is specific rather than vague. For heavy exercisers especially: reducing high-intensity exercise frequency (bootcamp, running) to no more than 2-3 times per week, because intense exercise raises cortisol acutely and can suppress ovulation. This is counterintuitive and often resisted. She states it directly and explains why.

    What Does the Naturopathic Toolkit Actually Look Like?

    Kirkpatrick’s core nutrition framework is almost aggressively simple: every meal should contain protein, good fats, and something fresh. That’s it. No calorie counting, no macronutrient math. The formula ensures blood sugar stays stable (protein and fat slow glucose absorption), inflammation is managed, and micronutrient needs are met through fresh produce. Carbohydrates exist but they’re accompaniments, not foundations.

    Beyond food, the toolkit has three practical layers:

    Herbal teas as daily protocol. Kirkpatrick organizes teas by mechanism rather than vague “wellness” claims. Spearmint for androgen reduction. Cinnamon for insulin sensitization. Dandelion root and St Mary’s Thistle for liver support. Licorice root for adrenal recovery (contraindicated with high blood pressure). These are low-risk, self-prescribable, and supported by at least some clinical evidence for each use.

    Pathology testing literacy. Most women who go to a GP with cycle symptoms receive a single blood draw without context. Kirkpatrick explains what a useful baseline looks like: Day 3 hormonal panel (FSH, LH, oestrogen, progesterone, androgens), mid-luteal progesterone timed to 7 days before the period (not necessarily day 21), and a full thyroid panel including antibodies. Her key point:

    “Optimal health is what we are aiming for, not just absence of ill health.”

    Falling within standard reference ranges is not the same as functioning at an optimal level. A mid-luteal progesterone of 6 nmol/L confirms ovulation happened; it does not confirm a luteal phase capable of sustaining early pregnancy, which ideally sits above 30 nmol/L.

    Environmental oestrogen reduction. Kirkpatrick treats this as structural, not optional. BPA from plastic food containers, synthetic fragrances in personal care products, pesticide residues concentrated in animal fats: these add to the body’s total oestrogen processing load. She recommends implementing changes gradually over months (swap plastic containers for glass, choose fragrance-free cleaning products, go organic on animal products first) rather than attempting an overwhelming overhaul.

    Is Healthy Hormones Worth Reading?

    Read this if you have cycle symptoms you’ve normalized (painful periods, PMS, irregular cycles, persistent bloating), if you’ve been given a PCOS or endometriosis diagnosis and want to understand the dietary and lifestyle picture, or if your appetite and weight feel disconnected from your effort and you haven’t looked at the hormonal layer yet.

    Skip it if you’re looking for a clinical textbook with systematic review citations (try Aviva Romm’s Hormone Intelligence instead), or if you need a structured weight loss plan rather than a hormonal health framework.

    One caveat: This is a 2017 book from an Australian naturopath, and some of the supplement dosing ranges are wide enough that self-implementing without a practitioner is genuinely tricky. Kirkpatrick is consistent about directing readers toward naturopath supervision for complex cases, which is the right call. The book is strongest as a primer that gives you enough clinical literacy to ask better questions, not as a standalone treatment protocol.

    Books Like Healthy Hormones

    BookAuthorBest For
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva RommDeeper clinical coverage with stronger research citations; better for complex cases
    Happy HormonesAngelique VermeulenLighter and more accessible; less mechanistic detail than Kirkpatrick
    The Happy Hormone GuideShannon LeparskiPlant-based lens on cycle syncing and hormonal nutrition
    The Hormone ShiftTasneem BhatiaPerimenopause and midlife hormonal transition; picks up where Kirkpatrick leaves off
    Women Food and HormonesSara GottfriedHarvard-trained OB/GYN with stronger research backing on oestrogen, cortisol, and weight

  • Moving on Mountains

    Hello, friends. It’s me and my unruly hair, coming to you live from my favorite mountaintop across the Bay. Most of you know that hiking has become an important part of my life, especially since moving to San Francisco three years ago. I didn’t always enjoy moving my body, but in 2012 when I began to build a daily walking habit, I realized the mental benefits far outweighed the calorie deficit.

    I’ve been overweight most of my life and if you share my experience, you know how uncomfortable it can be to move, much less exercise, when carrying excess weight. The rewards of fitness accumulate over time, but it’s difficult to build a consistent habit when its negatively reinforced by discomfort. I think this is a big part of why so many of us struggle to get and stay active.

    New workout clothes always give me a confidence boost, so when I got more serious about exercise, it was clear I needed to trade in my cheap thigh-rubbed yoga pants for something more technical. At almost 300 pounds, my apparel choices were limited, especially if I wanted something of quality from a brand with integrity. While I hesitated to make the investment, I knew it was important to reward my hard work. Athleta’s plus size options and “Give-It-A-Workout” guarantee gave me the confidence to take the plunge into performance activewear.

    My first Athleta purchase was the Be Free Knicker, perfect for daily walks and hiking the paved trails of Los Angeles. The pockets were a game-changer and a feature that I now seek in all activewear. The convenience of having a place to stash your phone and keys should not be underestimated. Even when carrying a backpack on the trail, it’s nice to have quick access to pull out my phone for photo or peek at the trail map.

    As my fitness increased and I began looking for low-impact ways to increase my calorie burn, I stumbled into hiking. I had no idea what I was getting into, but the more time I spent in nature, the better I felt. Not just physically, but mentally — and the research backs my experience. Spending time among trees has numerous healing benefits including reduced anxiety and depression, decreased cortisol production, and increased immunity.

    After relocating to the cooler weather of the Bay Area, I found a new favorite in the Metro Drifter. I have several pairs in both regular and high-waist styles and these quickly became my go-to pants for everything from brunch to hitting the trail.

    Athleta makes amazing pants for everything, but it wasn’t until this year that I decided to try their hike-specific line. I’ve found my new holy grail in the Wander Utility Pant. Designed not only for trail adventures, but everyday life in the city. The pants are made with trek tech fabric that is water-and-abrasion-resistant on the outside with a cozy, brushed interior. They are stylish and versatile with a super comfortable waistband and tons of pockets, and they even fit my iPhone+!

    This weekend, I paired the Wander Utility pant with Cityscape Sweatshirt while hiking Cataract Falls trail on Mount Tamalpais. The Modern Mantra fabric is cozy and breathable with side zips for a little extra ventilation. I’m also partial to the Sunlover UPF Top, which is a lightweight, breathable semi-fitted long-sleeve top rated UPF 50+ and made from sustainable recycled nylon. Both pieces are perfect for layering — a must when exploring outdoors. Finally, I like to wear the lightweight Ahnu Sugarpine boots because they’re extremely comfortable, waterproof, and provide ankle support for more challenging terrain. It’s just a bonus that they come in beautiful, fun colors.

    If you’ve been thinking about heading out on your own adventure, it’s easier to start hiking than you might think. Here are a few beginner tips:

    • Start small. Navigating through the trees and varying terrain can be more tiring that you might imagine. A few miles on a trail will be more difficult than a few miles on a paved road. Start out hiking few miles and gradually build up to longer treks.
    • Dress appropriately. Wear comfortable clothes that offer protection and allow you to move. Make sure you wear appropriate shoes to keep your feet dry and supported.
    • Be prepared. Always carry plenty of water and extra snacks. Even on short hikes, carry a small first aid kit with blister treatment, bug spray, and sunscreen.
    • Plan your timing. Hiking can take longer than expected. It’s better to plan for it to take a longer than you expect, especially if you are hiking in the afternoon or evening. Depending on your fitness and the elevation gain, you can expect to cover about two miles per hour.
    • Explore your city. You don’t have to live in the Bay Area to enjoy quality trail time. Cities, counties and states all have parks or natural areas to get started hiking.
    • Tell someone where you’re going. While it’s great to hike with a buddy, solo hiking can also be very rewarding. It’s important to tell someone where you are going and when you are expected home.

    I want to know if you share my love for Athleta, hiking, or both. Would you like to see some of my favorite Bay Area hikes? Tips for solo or destination hiking? What about more of my clothes or try-ons from Athleta and other brands I love? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

    Thank you to Athleta for sponsoring this post. As a long-time consumer of Athleta, I have always felt included no matter my size or fitness level. I respect and support their mission to ignite a community of active, healthy, confident women and girls who empower each other to realize their limitless potential. Of course, all opinions are my own, and I’m grateful to work with a brand I truly believe in.

     

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  • The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook by Carolyn Coker Ross: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    The book in one sentence: Out-of-control eating is a biologically grounded condition rooted in brain chemistry, childhood trauma, and attachment history, and recovering from it requires working through five sequential layers that most programs never reach.

    What Is The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook About?

    Picture someone who knows every reason not to eat the whole bag. She has read the books, completed the programs, understands the psychology. She is not confused about what she should do. She does it anyway, repeatedly, in a way that leaves her feeling ashamed and genuinely baffled by her own behavior.

    Carolyn Coker Ross wrote this workbook for that person. Ross is an integrative medicine physician who has spent decades treating eating disorders and addiction, and her premise is clinical rather than motivational: food addiction is a real, biologically grounded condition with identifiable roots in genetics, brain chemistry, childhood trauma, and attachment history. It is not a moral failure. It requires an approach that is as multilayered as the problem itself.

    What sets this book apart from most of its neighbors on the shelf is a refusal to choose between the neuroscience framing and the emotional eating framing. Most books go one direction or the other. Ross holds both simultaneously, which is exactly what the clinical picture requires. She then adds body, belief, and community as additional layers that most frameworks ignore entirely.

    The workbook format is not decorative. This is a guided therapeutic journey with self-assessments, journaling exercises, and step-by-step protocols. You are meant to write in it. That structure is well-suited to people who have tried passive reading-based approaches and found them insufficient.

    Is Food Addiction Real? What the Science Actually Says

    The most common objection to the food addiction concept is also the most reasonable one: you cannot abstain from food the way you abstain from alcohol. Ross addresses this directly. Food addiction is a process addiction, meaning the problem is in how food is used, not in the food itself. Unlike heroin, sugar is not pharmacologically addictive. But the behavioral and neurological pattern, including loss of control, compulsive preoccupation, continued behavior despite negative consequences, and failed attempts to stop, maps closely onto substance use disorders.

    The neurobiological anchor for this is Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS), developed by researcher Kenneth Blum. The mechanism: dopamine is the brain’s pleasure and reward signal, but some people, due to genetics, childhood trauma, or chronic stress, have abnormally low levels of dopamine D2 receptors. Their brains are poorly calibrated to detect the reward signal. They need more stimulation to feel normal levels of satisfaction.

    This explains several things that would otherwise seem inexplicable:

    • Why hyperpalatable foods feel compulsive to some people and merely pleasant to others
    • Why one person eats two cookies and stops while another cannot
    • Why dieting reliably fails for this population (restriction deepens the dopamine deficit by amplifying cravings)
    • Why addiction-switching happens after bariatric surgery or sobriety, with binge eating replacing alcohol or gambling because the underlying deficit was never addressed

    Yale University has developed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) to identify food addiction using the same criteria as substance use disorders. Roughly 5 to 10 percent of the general population test positive. Among people seeking bariatric surgery or obese individuals with binge eating disorder, that figure rises to 30 to 50 percent. Fifty-seven percent of people diagnosed with binge eating disorder also meet criteria for food addiction on the scale.

    “Food addiction could be called eating addiction because it’s really about how you use food, and the very real consequences associated with how you use it.”

    Understanding RDS is not an invitation to fatalism. It is a reframe that removes the willpower narrative and points toward interventions that actually address the biology rather than fighting against it with shame and restriction.

    What Are the Five Levels of Healing?

    Most conventional approaches to food addiction work at a single level and stop. They address the behavior (here are your food rules) and then express confusion when people relapse. Ross’s central clinical contribution is explaining why that happens and mapping what comes next.

    The Five Levels of Healing move from the most accessible layer inward to the most transformative:

    Level 1: Stop the Addictive Behaviors

    Interrupt the patterns of bingeing, secretive eating, and obsessive food thoughts. Not through external food rules, but through personal behavioral commitments calibrated to your specific patterns. Ross distinguishes “personal abstinence” from dieting, which is a meaningful distinction: one emerges from self-knowledge and the other from external authority.

    Level 2: Emerge from the Emotional Soup

    Name the emotions driving the eating, trace them to their triggers, and build the capacity to tolerate them without food as a suppressor. People who have used food to manage emotions for years often have no working vocabulary for what they feel in a given moment. This level builds that vocabulary from the ground up.

    Level 3: Reconnect with Body Wisdom

    Reconnect with the body as a source of information rather than a problem to be managed. Learn to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger. For most people with food addiction, the relationship with the body is one of active hostility, and you cannot recover from within a war zone. This level asks for a ceasefire as a precondition, not as a reward.

    Level 4: Revise Core Beliefs

    Beneath emotional patterns sits almost always a core belief, something like “I am weak,” “I am unlovable,” or “I am unsafe,” that has been operating in the background since childhood. Surfacing it does not immediately dissolve it. Removing it from the unconscious, where it has been running the show, creates the conditions under which it can finally be examined.

    Level 5: Find Soul Satisfaction

    Food has been providing dopamine, comfort, and numbing. For lasting recovery, those functions need genuine replacements. Building a life with enough real meaning, connection, and pleasure, through community, creative expression, movement, and time in nature, restores the reward system through natural reinforcers that do not trigger the addiction cycle.

    The framework’s power is not in any single level but in the insistence that all five must be addressed. Most programs work at Level 1 and wonder why people relapse. The relapse happens because Levels 2 through 5 remain untouched, ready to pull behavior back the moment stress or shame intensifies.

    How Do Childhood Trauma and Attachment Drive Food Addiction?

    The pattern Ross sees most often in clinical practice is not someone who randomly developed a problematic relationship with food in adulthood. The roots are almost always older.

    Attachment theory explains the mechanism. A primary caregiver is a child’s first emotional regulation system. When that caregiver is warm and consistent, children develop internal self-soothing capacities. When the caregiver is cold, inconsistent, or frightening, children are left without an internal source of comfort and no reliable way to regulate distress. Food, reliably available and requiring no relationship to access, steps into that gap early.

    The attachment style formed with early caregivers tends to be replicated in the relationship with food. A client whose caregiver was emotionally unavailable often develops an on-again, off-again, chaotic relationship with food that mirrors what they learned at home. A client whose caregiver was frightening often shows severely disrupted eating patterns, because the capacity to be present in the body at all was compromised early by the need for hypervigilance.

    Ross uses adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) research to add a biological layer to this. Childhood trauma physically alters the developing brain, elevating cortisol and adrenaline, impairing prefrontal cortex development, and leaving a stress-response system that remains hyperactivated into adulthood. The resulting neurological profile, impulsive, poorly regulated, prone to seeking immediate relief, is exactly the one in which food addiction flourishes.

    Two important clinical notes follow from this. First, understanding the developmental roots of eating behavior is not an excuse. It is the prerequisite for choosing the right intervention. Second, secure attachment can be formed in adulthood, through therapy, healthy relationships, and community. The deficit created in childhood is not permanent. The recovery work at Levels 4 and 5 is, in part, the work of building that security with other people.

    One frequently overlooked piece of the biology: food sensitivities (delayed immune reactions, not immediate allergies) increase inflammation, alter mood, and paradoxically intensify cravings for the exact foods causing the reaction. Ross describes a patient whose joint pain, sinus infections, prediabetes, and compulsive eating all resolved after identifying and eliminating gluten. No dieting, no caloric restriction, just removing the biological amplifier. The psychology and the biology must be addressed together.

    Is The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook Worth Reading?

    Read this if you recognize yourself in the food addiction description: unable to stop once you start, obsessive food thoughts, repeated cycles of restriction and binge, genuine confusion about your own behavior. This is especially useful if you have already tried behavioral approaches, food plans, and traditional diets without lasting results. The workbook format makes it genuinely usable as a self-guided tool, and the exercises are structured clinical tools adapted for independent use, not filler.

    Skip it if your primary pattern is restriction-based or involves dietary perfectionism as a form of control. Ross focuses on overeating and bingeing; the framework applies less directly to restrictive presentations. People who want a prescriptive food plan will also find this frustrating. Ross explicitly avoids food prescriptions, which is clinically sound, but it means there is no protocol to follow, only a map of the territory.

    One caveat: The Five Levels framework is more fully developed at Levels 1, 2, and 3 than at 4 and 5. The core beliefs work and the soul satisfaction work receive less depth than their importance warrants. Readers who reach those levels and want more should look to schema therapy resources, Byron Katie’s work on the inquiry process, or a trained therapist.

    The book’s honest limitation is that it is a starting point, not a destination. For its intended audience, a well-chosen starting point is exactly what has been missing.

    Books Like The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook

    BookAuthorBest For
    The End of OvereatingDavid KesslerThe neuroscience of food reward and conditioned eating, without the workbook format
    In the Realm of Hungry GhostsGabor MateThe deepest treatment of trauma and addiction; natural companion to Ross’s attachment framework
    Bright Line EatingSusan Peirce ThompsonAbstinence-based protocol for readers who need clear behavioral containment before emotional work
    The Binge Eating and Compulsive Overeating WorkbookCarolyn Coker RossRoss’s earlier workbook, more focused on binge eating specifically
    The Emotional Eating WorkbookCarolyn Coker RossCompanion volume with deeper focus on the emotional layer (Level 2)
  • Yosemite

    Yosemite

    Earlier this month I took some time off-the-grid at Yosemite National Park with some girlfriends – Aimee, Lisha, and Shikha. This adventure had been on my calendar since December, but I was having mixed feelings. You may have noticed I have been mostly MIA this year. In January, I joined a nonprofit as Executive Director and have been logging long hours as I ramp up. I have a lot of new responsibilities and I was worried about taking time away from work. Although I felt like I didn’t have the time to get away, I knew I needed to step back and recharge in order to move forward.

    Lucky for me,  Lisha took over the planning and ensured we were well-prepared for the trip. She rented us a super fun 4×4 Jeep Wrangler from GetAround, a local peer-to-peer car sharing service. Given the record snow this year, we wanted to be prepared with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. We lucked out with near perfect weather, but the Jeep was still the way to go. It fit all four of us and our gear comfortably – plus it just made the whole trip more fun!

    We arrived to Yosemite after dark and checked into our tent cabin at Half Dome Village. For those of you familiar with the park, this area was previously called Curry Village. You could probably call it glamping, but I think it was the way to go – our cabin had beds, fresh linens, and a heater!

    Saturday morning, we woke up early to hike Snow Creek Trail – a strenuous 10-mile hike with 2700 ft gain in elevation. We started out bundled up for a leisurely walk past mirror lake, but once we hit the switchbacks, we stripped off the layers for a relentlessly steep ascent criss-crossing a snow-melted creek with plenty of waterfalls. At the top we were rewarded with fields of snow and incredible views of Half Dome.

    I’ve worn and loved Athleta apparel for years, but up until this past year, I had only worn trail running shoes for hiking. Last summer,  I took a pair of Ahnu hiking boots to Europe for Tour du Mont Blanc and never looked back – I even wear them in San Francisco when it’s rainy. They’re super lightweight, waterproof, comfortable, and require zero breaking in. The best part is they are designed for women, by women, and come in fun colors.

    Once we made it back to camp, we pulled off our boots and got ready for dinner. The only thing better than s’mores after a long day of hiking, are s’mores made from Dandelion Chocolate. I don’t normally eat sugar, but there is no better situation to make an exception than kicking back after a long day of hiking.

    Lisha and I dreamed up this trip when I asked her to coffee to talk about shooting some photos for me. I’ve shared on social media about my body image issues and discomfort being in front of a camera. I’ve come a long way from the girl who refused to have a profile photo on Facebook, but I still struggle with this. I’m still self conscious, but I’m growing and learning to be more and more comfortable in my skin.

    I am excited to share these photos and video with you because they are evidence of my growth, proof that change is possible, and a celebration of how far I’ve come while embracing where I am today. Thanks for allowing me to share my journey with you.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFxpumtskhg

  • Hi New Friends…

    Hello! Welcome 🙂 I was not expecting you, but I’m glad you’re here. My story was reposted to Yahoo and MSN so I’ve been receiving a lot of traffic the past few days. I’ve taken a step back from blogging/social as I started a new job in January. I have been trying to figure out how to combine this new role with my work here. Things are very exciting and I can’t wait to start sharing more with y’all. My life’s work and mission is to reverse the obesity epidemic and I feel so many steps closer to that than ever before. If you aren’t already, please subscribe to my mailing list. I have a lot to update you about in the next week or so, part of that being a detailed log of my food and exercise alongside detailed 3D body scans. I wish I could have it ready for you now, but it is what it is. I hope you’ll stick around, things are about to get really good around here!

  • The Hormone Myth by Robyn Stein DeLuca: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A health psychologist dismantles fifty years of flawed PMS research, pharmaceutical manipulation, and cultural mythology to argue that hormones are not, for most women, the cause of emotional instability, and that believing they are has real costs.

    What Is The Hormone Myth About?

    Picture the last time you felt frustrated, tired, or short-tempered around someone. Now imagine the response was: “Are you on your period?” The conversation stops. Your point goes unheard. The biology explanation short-circuits everything else, and nothing you were actually responding to gets addressed.

    Robyn Stein DeLuca, a clinical health psychologist at Stony Brook University, spent years in the research literature on exactly this dynamic. What she found was a significant gap between what the science says and what most people believe. Psychologists have known since the early 1990s that women’s emotional stability, measured rigorously over time, is comparable to men’s. That finding has been replicated. It is not obscure. And almost no one knows it.

    The Hormone Myth covers the full arc of women’s reproductive life: menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause. At each stage, DeLuca traces the myth’s origins, examines what the actual research shows, and follows the money. Her argument is not that hormonal conditions don’t exist. It is that the real conditions affect a minority of women, and the culture has been applying that minority’s experience to everyone, for reasons that have more to do with profit and ideology than with science.

    What Does the Science Actually Say About PMS?

    The short version: the founding PMS research was built on methods that would not survive peer review today. Five specific failures show up repeatedly across the studies that established PMS as a widespread condition.

    Retrospective reporting. Women were asked to recall past symptoms instead of tracking them in real time. Memory is systematically inflated by expectation. When you prime someone to look for symptoms, they find more of them on recall than they documented at the time.

    No diagnostic standardization. Researchers eventually catalogued over 150 possible PMS symptoms, with no agreed severity threshold and no standard timing window. When your criteria include 150 possibilities, finding the condition “everywhere” is not a discovery. The resulting prevalence estimates ranged from 5% to 97% of all menstruating women (a range that wide is functionally useless).

    No control groups. Most foundational studies recruited women who already identified as having PMS, then confirmed they had PMS symptoms. Without a comparison group, you cannot establish that the symptom rate is elevated. You don’t know the baseline.

    Homogeneous samples. The research was conducted almost entirely on white, middle-class, Western women, then applied universally. PMS symptom reporting varies across cultures in ways that a purely biological condition should not.

    Single-cycle measurement. A genuine syndrome requires cyclical recurrence. Most founding studies assessed one cycle.

    When researchers applied rigorous standards (prospective daily tracking, standardized criteria, multi-cycle confirmation, functional impairment thresholds), the condition refined to PMDD: a real diagnosis affecting 3-8% of menstruating women. Not 50%. Not everyone. A specific minority. The myth applies the minority’s experience to the whole population, and that universalization is where the harm concentrates.

    “A large body of scientific research says that fluctuating reproductive hormones don’t play a major role in women’s mental health, because when women’s emotional stability is measured by the frequency and severity of mood swings they experience over time, it is in fact similar to the stability of men. Surprised? Here’s the kicker: psychologists have known that since the early 1990s but it is probably news to you.” — Robyn Stein DeLuca

    Why Do We Still Believe Hormones Control Women’s Moods?

    A finding this significant should have reshaped the cultural narrative by now. It has not. DeLuca’s most interesting chapter asks why, and the answer involves three separate mechanisms working together.

    The nocebo effect. The nocebo effect is the clinical term for what happens when expecting a negative experience makes it more likely and more severe. Girls are primed to expect menstrual misery before they ever menstruate, through tampon company pamphlets distributed in elementary school, puberty books that describe menstruation as an emotional rollercoaster, and jokes treating menstruating women as irrational. By first period, a girl has absorbed hundreds of messages, from authoritative sources, that she should feel terrible. Research confirms this priming has measurable effects. Expectation of a symptom generates some portion of the symptom. The aggressive negative framing of every stage of women’s reproductive life is not neutral information. It is partly a self-fulfilling loop.

    The pharmaceutical industry. DeLuca documents the manipulation in detail, and the details are not flattering. Robert Wilson’s 1966 book Feminine Forever argued that menopause is an estrogen-deficiency disease and all women should take manufactured estrogen for life. Widely read, excerpted in Vogue, and influential enough to shape a generation of medical practice. What readers did not know: Wilson’s research was funded by Ayerst Laboratories (maker of Premarin), who helped write the book, funded his promotional tour, and secretly purchased enough copies to maintain its bestseller status. The narrative that menopause is a disease was not a scientific finding. It was a marketing campaign. When Eli Lilly’s patent on Prozac expired, they rebranded the same drug as Sarafem in pink-and-lavender packaging for PMDD, then marketed it to the general PMS population (far larger than the 3-8% for whom clinical justification existed). The company that defined the disorder funded the approval research and sold the treatment.

    Social utility. The myth also serves a function for individual women, which makes it harder to discard. Invoking PMS provides a socially acceptable explanation for anger or frustration that would otherwise draw social sanction. “I’m sorry, I’m PMSing” allows a woman to express an emotion without threatening the cultural expectation of perpetual pleasantness. It is a rational adaptation to an irrational environment. The cost is reinforcing the myth that enables the limitation.

    What This Means If You’re Trying to Fix Your Eating

    This is the counterpoint that earns The Hormone Myth a place on this list alongside the hormone-optimization books. A significant portion of the weight and eating advice aimed at women is built on a hormone-first premise: fix your hormones and fix your eating. DeLuca’s work complicates that premise in ways worth sitting with.

    Take postpartum depression, where the hormonal framing is especially pervasive. Health websites and pregnancy guides almost universally attribute postpartum depression to the drop in reproductive hormones after delivery. DeLuca examines the research: comprehensive reviews over twenty years fail to show a clear causal link between hormonal changes and postpartum depression. The actual evidence-based predictors are social and structural:

    • Prior history of depression or mental illness (the strongest single predictor)
    • Inadequate social support
    • Unequal distribution of childcare and domestic labor
    • Relationship conflict
    • Financial stress
    • Inadequate maternity leave
    • The “motherhood mystique” (the belief that motherhood is natural and easy, which makes difficulty feel like personal failure)

    Hormones are not on that list as primary drivers. Telling a struggling new mother to balance her hormones is sending her toward an intervention the research does not support, while the actually modifiable factors go unaddressed. The same logic applies to eating. If what looks like a hormonal problem is actually a stress problem, a sleep problem, or a life-circumstances problem, no hormone protocol fixes it.

    DeLuca’s menopause research tells a similar story. Studies that gave women symptom checklists found symptoms (because that is what you measure when you only measure negative outcomes). Studies using open-ended methods found a consistent set of positive themes: relief from menstruation and contraception anxiety, increased assertiveness, clarity about what matters, a renewed sense of self-permission. Population-level data consistently shows that most menopausal women report good mental health and life satisfaction. Only 10-15% have symptoms severe enough to warrant treatment. The dominant narrative of menopause as catastrophic decline does not describe most women’s experience. It describes a minority’s experience and a pharmaceutical industry’s business model.

    None of this means hormonal conditions are not real or that no woman needs treatment. It means the relationship between hormones, mood, and eating behavior is considerably more nuanced than the hormone-optimization genre suggests. Reading DeLuca alongside books like Hormone Intelligence is the honest approach: take the real biology seriously without outsourcing the full explanation to biology.

    “Much of our cultural perception about menopause and aging in women was established, promoted, and maintained in order to make a profit. This is the ultimate abuse of our capacity for myth-making.” — Robyn Stein DeLuca

    Is The Hormone Myth Worth Reading?

    Read this if you have been consuming a lot of hormone-optimization content and want the skeptic’s counterpoint. If you have ever had your anger, exhaustion, or dissatisfaction attributed to your cycle when the person saying it was not interested in what you were actually responding to. If you are approaching perimenopause and the content you’re finding is alarming you in ways that feel disproportionate.

    Skip it if you are looking for treatment guidance. DeLuca tells you what to think about hormone claims, not what to do about your hormones. Those are different books, and this is firmly the former.

    One caveat: The book is a corrective argument, which means it sometimes leans hard in one direction to counter the weight on the other side. Readers with clinically significant PMDD or severe perimenopausal symptoms may occasionally feel their experience is being minimized rather than correctly contextualized. DeLuca is careful about this distinction in most chapters (PMDD is real, she says repeatedly; it affects a minority), but not always. Treat it as a calibration tool, not a verdict on your own experience.

    At 272 pages, it moves fast. The appendix on spotting junk science is worth the read on its own terms, a practical checklist for evaluating any health claim you encounter.

    Books Like The Hormone Myth

    BookAuthorBest For
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva RommThe affirmative counterpart: integrative medicine approach to actual hormone optimization
    It’s Your HormonesGeoffrey RedmondEndocrinologist’s clinical take on when hormone problems are genuinely the cause
    The Science of MenopauseJen Gunter & OthersEvidence-based menopause guidance that holds both the real biology and the cultural mythology
    Is It Me or My HormonesMarcelle PickIntegrative approach; useful to read alongside DeLuca for a fuller picture
    The Menopause ManifestoJen GunterOB/GYN takes apart menopause myths while honoring real symptoms; closest in spirit to DeLuca

  • Super Woman Rx by Tasneem Bhatia: Summary, Key Ideas & Review

    Book in one sentence: A board-certified integrative physician argues that women cluster into five distinct health archetypes, and that matching your eating, exercise, and supplement plan to your “Power Type” gets better results than any generic protocol.

    What Is Super Woman Rx About?

    You follow the same clean-eating plan as your friend. She loses weight, gets her energy back, clears her skin. You feel exhausted, foggy, and mildly cheated. The standard explanation is willpower. Dr. Tasneem Bhatia’s explanation is something more useful: it’s a matching problem.

    Bhatia (known clinically as “Dr. Taz”) is a board-certified integrative physician who built a practice in Atlanta, CentreSpring MD, around the observation that women don’t all respond to health interventions the same way. After treating more than 10,000 patients across two decades, she noticed that her patients clustered into recognizable patterns. Thin, anxious women with hair loss had different lab findings, different gut patterns, and different responses to diet than calm, heavier women with sluggish metabolisms. Achievement-driven women with gut problems needed different food strategies than mission-driven women with depleted immune systems.

    She named these patterns Power Types and built a quiz to identify them. The book is organized around those five types: a description of each, a set of predictive lab markers, and a three-week protocol tailored to that type’s specific vulnerabilities. It pulls from Western functional medicine, Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine simultaneously, which is messier academically than it sounds, but the practical output is coherent enough to be genuinely useful.

    What Are the Five Power Types?

    The quiz is 51 questions across eight categories (physical appearance, symptoms, mood, hormones, digestion, emotions, relationships, and work). Most women are dominant in one type with traits from a second. Here’s what each type actually looks like in practice.

    1. Gypsy Girl

    Thin, creative, anxious, frequently forgets to eat. She lives in her head and feels it in her body: hair loss, irregular cycles, low ferritin, borderline thyroid, anxiety that gets worse under stress. In Ayurvedic terms, she’s high vata. In TCM terms, her kidney meridian is depleted.

    Her protocol is about grounding. Protein and fat within 30 minutes of waking, a strict 10 p.m. bedtime, B-complex and omega-3 daily. Movement should connect mind to body (yoga, Pilates, gentle strength training) rather than the depleting HIIT she may be pushing herself through in hopes of fixing things.

    2. Boss Lady

    Medium-built, intense, achievement-driven, runs hot. She gets things done until her gut rebels. IBS, acid reflux, chin acne, and joint inflammation are her calling cards. The liver meridian governs detoxification and hormone metabolism; under constant cortisol pressure, it overheats.

    Her protocol focuses on cooling. Anti-inflammatory foods (cucumber, fermented dairy, whole grains), digestive enzymes with heavy meals, liver-supportive herbs. The hardest ask: stop treating her workout as another metric to win.

    3. Savvy Chick

    The vata-pitta hybrid. Creative like the Gypsy Girl, commanding like the Boss Lady, burning at both ends. She carries the anxious edge of one type and the inflammatory heat of the other, which makes her a visionary on a good week and a hormonal wreck on a bad one. PCOS, thyroid-adrenal imbalance, and cycling anxiety-anger are her risk profile.

    Her protocol asks her to do two things at once: ground and cool. Creative work in morning hours, decision-making and execution in midday, protected evenings for nervous system recovery.

    4. Earth Mama

    The nurturer. Large-framed, deeply caring, motivated by service. In TCM terms, her spleen meridian deficiency creates “dampness” in the system: water retention, sluggish digestion, abdominal weight gain, and insulin resistance. She has likely been told, repeatedly, to eat less and move more. That advice has not worked because it addresses the wrong system.

    Her protocol targets the insulin-microbiome axis directly. Eliminate refined carbohydrates and sugar, restore gut flora with a high-CFU probiotic (20+ billion, at least five strains), move consistently throughout the day rather than in sporadic intense sessions, eat at consistent times and stop three hours before bed.

    5. Nightingale

    The broadest nurturer of the group, driven by global mission rather than immediate family. Healthcare workers, educators, social justice advocates. She cannot say no, and her immune system pays for it steadily. The trajectory, unchecked: occasional colds, then chronic infections, then autoimmune disease.

    Her protocol prioritizes immune restoration before anything else. High-dose vitamin D (targeting 60-70 ng/ml), zinc, elderberry, quercetin for histamine reactivity, bone broth and L-glutamine for gut repair. The hardest prescription of all: say no to one request per day.

    How Does the Power Type System Actually Work?

    The underlying idea is that three medical traditions (Western functional medicine, Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine) converge on similar constitutional categories, even though they developed independently and use different terminology. A thin, anxious woman with low B vitamins looks like “kidney meridian deficiency” in TCM, “vata imbalance” in Ayurveda, and “adrenal-thyroid-ferritin cluster” in functional medicine. Bhatia uses the convergence as clinical shorthand, not metaphysical truth.

    One genuinely useful contribution is the book’s insistence on optimal versus normal lab ranges. Standard reference ranges are population averages, including people who feel terrible. A TSH of 2.8 is “normal” by most lab reports, but Bhatia targets 1-2 for women with symptoms. Vitamin D at 30 ng/ml is technically sufficient, but she targets 50-70. The distinction matters because many symptomatic women fall in the gap between “technically fine” and “actually functional,” and most conventional workups never find them.

    The exercise prescription is where the book earns some of its more counterintuitive credibility. The same workout can be health-promoting for one type and actively damaging for another. Gypsy Girls and Nightingales running on adrenal fumes get a net cortisol deficit from HIIT, not a health gain. Earth Mamas need consistent low-impact daily movement, not sedentary weeks interrupted by intense effort. This runs against most fitness culture advice and is well-supported by the emerging literature on female exercise physiology.

    There’s also a full chapter on what Bhatia calls the Fortress of Solitude: the deliberate design of rest architecture as a clinical intervention, not a soft add-on. The origin story is her own hair growing back during a three-week Hawaii honeymoon after months of supplements had failed to move the needle. Complete removal from stress inputs did in three weeks what nutritional intervention had not. Her prescriptions (blackout curtains, consistent sleep windows, daily mindfulness anchor, no screens after 9 p.m.) are framed as preconditions for everything else to work, not rewards for getting everything right.

    What Does This Have to Do With Weight?

    Bhatia doesn’t frame this as a weight loss book, but the Power Type framework has direct implications for why different women struggle with different metabolic patterns. The Earth Mama section is the most directly relevant. Her insulin-microbiome axis explanation for why the eat-less-move-more model consistently fails certain women is medically coherent and meaningfully different from the usual narrative.

    The reframe is significant. If your metabolism runs on a kapha-spleen-dampness pattern, the problem isn’t discipline or effort. The inputs your metabolism responds to are just different. Refined carbs and sugar are the primary lever; consistent movement (not intense movement) is the secondary one; gut restoration is the foundation under both. That’s a different starting point than calorie restriction, and for a specific subset of women, it explains a lot of history.

    “The reason that the majority of health solutions fail is that they are given as a blanket prescription… These solutions assume that we are all alike, and that we just need to manage our symptoms or conditions.”

    The Gypsy Girl pattern is also relevant for anyone who has tracked food carefully, exercised consistently, and still felt like her body wasn’t cooperating, but for different reasons. Low ferritin, borderline thyroid, and depleted cortisol all affect metabolism in ways that don’t show up on a standard panel. The typing approach makes those patterns visible in a way that generic advice doesn’t.

    One honest caveat: the three-week protocol structure is both the book’s most practical feature and its most significant limitation. Three weeks is useful for habit formation, but real microbiome restoration, adrenal recovery, and thyroid optimization take months. Readers who complete the protocol and see partial results (which is most likely) won’t find clear guidance on what to do next.

    Is Super Woman Rx Worth Reading?

    Read this if you’ve tried clean eating, consistent exercise, and standard wellness protocols and found them inconsistent or unhelpful. If you feel like you’re doing everything right and still feel terrible, the type-matching framework offers a more useful explanation than willpower. The Earth Mama chapter alone is worth the read for anyone with a history of weight struggles that didn’t respond to conventional advice.

    Skip it if you want strong clinical evidence for every claim. This is observational and traditional-medicine-adjacent. The three-tradition integration is presented as more seamlessly unified than the underlying traditions actually support, and references throughout are sparse. Readers used to RCT-level evidence will find the confidence of the claims exceeds the citations.

    One caveat: the five Power Types are Bhatia’s clinical categories, built from patient observation over two decades, not validated research constructs. Think of them as useful diagnostic starting points, not medical archetypes. The quiz is genuinely fun and often surprisingly accurate. Just hold the labels loosely.

    Books Like Super Woman Rx

    BookAuthorBest For
    The Hormone ShiftTasneem BhatiaBhatia’s follow-up, focused specifically on perimenopause and the hormonal transition
    Hormone IntelligenceAviva Romm, MDSimilar integrative framework with a stronger evidence base and deeper focus on cycle health
    The Hormone FixAnna Cabeca, DOKeto-green approach to hormonal balance, especially useful for perimenopausal readers
    Unlock Your Menopause TypeHeather Hirsch, MDEvidence-based typology for the menopause transition, conventional medicine perspective
    Women Food and HormonesSara Gottfried, MDKetogenic protocol specifically mapped to female hormonal patterns, stronger mechanistic depth

  • 2016 Review

    As 2016 comes to a close, I have been reflecting on the year, the experiences I have had, and the ways in which I have grown.

    For as long as I can remember, my number one goal/resolution/desire/priority has been to lose weight. Every year, I would make resolutions around losing weight, and every year, I would fail. Apparently I’m not alone in this – only 8% of people actually achieve their resolutions and weight loss goals are cited more than anything else.

    This year, I took a different approach when setting goals for the year. I didn’t focus on weight loss and instead challenged myself to step outside of my comfort zone. I wanted to run a 5k, learn to hip hop dance, and go to the banya with friends. I also decided to give up alcohol for the entire year as an experiment to see how it’s absence would effect my mental health and productivity.

    In hindsight, these resolutions were ways for me to take care of and honor my body – an unfamiliar concept when weight loss was the end-goal. I am grateful to have stopped chasing perfection or a number on the scale, but I want my BMI to be in the healthy range, and I really expected that it would get there in 2016. It didn’t, and that’s disappointing, but I am very proud of all that I actually did do this year.

    For the first time ever, I achieved all of my resolutions. 

    After a lifetime of hating my body, I have finally started to feel comfortable in my own skin. It happened almost unexpectedly, quietly, and without fanfare. At some point acceptance turned into love, and now I find awe in my body, it’s resilience and it’s strength. What matters to me now is really taking care of myself – physically, emotionally, and mentally. Cultivating not just self-love, but self-compassion and allowing myself to let go of the idea that I must always be who I have always been.

    2016 has also been filled with new adventures and new friends.

    A year ago, I was watching the sunrise over Angkor Wat preparing to spend 7 days cycling through Cambodia with some of my closest friends. I would have never biked 10 miles voluntarily, so covering 186 miles on two wheels is a true testament to our my love for them and our camaraderie.

    Happy New Year from Cambodia! Woke up early to catch the first sunrise of 2016 over Angkor Wat.

    A photo posted by 100+ Pound Weightloss ✧ BROOKE (@excessmatters) on

    I lost 100 pounds!

    When I returned from Cambodia, I hit a pretty big milestone of losing 100 pounds.

    I met so many new friends through social media! 

    One of the most incredible things about social media is it’s ability to brings people together in real life. I have met hundreds of people this year as a result of my blog and Instagram, many of who I now consider close friends. I am constantly inspired by the communities we create for ourselves, both online and locally. As an introvert, I used to be painfully shy and enjoy spending time alone. Learning to connect with others has been a huge catalyst for my personal growth. This year I led, organized, and hosted events that I would have been too uncomfortable to even attend. That is surely a result of surrounding myself with kind and supportive people and I am so grateful for every person who I have met this year.

    I taught a Binge Eating Workshop & 12-week Course!

    I created my first course on overcoming binge and emotional eating through habit change. I spent the better part of a year creating this course and putting it out into the world imperfectly was a huge step for me. This work is obviously very personal, which makes it exceptionally challenging, but I am dedicated to helping those who share my struggle with obesity, binge eating, emotional eating, and body issues. I have continued to refine the course based on feedback from my students and I am looking forward to opening it up again in 2017.

    I hiked 100 miles around Mont Blanc!

    In September, I set out on the trip which felt like the culmination of my transformation. I’ve written about how I slowly worked my way up from walking a block to 10k steps per day, and then pushed myself to start hiking. This 100-mile multi-day hike through the French Alps was one of the best experiences of my life. My full review is long overdue, but make no mistake, this was a highlight of 2016.

    My 2016 Fitbit Stats:

    • 3,606,549 steps
    • 10856 floors
    • 1,650.06 miles

  • The Emotional Eating Workbook by Carolyn Coker Ross: Summary, Key Ideas & Notable Quotes

    Why This Book Matters

    There is a version of this book you might expect: a workbook that teaches you to pause before eating, identify what you’re feeling, and make a better choice. Journaling prompts, hunger scales, a list of non-food coping strategies. Mindfulness exercises framed as the antidote to mindless eating. That version exists on many shelves, and it helps some people — people for whom emotional eating is mostly a habit and an attention problem, not a symptom of something larger.

    Carolyn Coker Ross, a physician with a master’s in public health who ran clinical treatment programs for eating disorders and addiction for decades, is not writing for that version of the problem. She is writing for the people for whom that version has already failed. The chronic dieters who have lost the same forty pounds four times. The bariatric surgery patients who regained everything within three years. The people who know exactly why they’re reaching for food at 11pm — loneliness, stress, boredom, grief — and reach for it anyway because knowing isn’t enough.

    Her position is blunter than most authors in this space are willing to be: emotional eating is a trauma symptom. Not a bad habit. Not a character defect. Not a problem of insufficient mindfulness. A symptom — of unresolved adverse childhood experiences, insecure attachment, unconscious core beliefs that make weight feel protective, and soul-level needs that food has been substituting for because nothing else was available. Until you address those underlying layers, behavioral change is a surface intervention applied to a structural problem. It will produce temporary results at best.

    This workbook, built around Ross’s Anchor Program, takes that claim seriously and then does the clinical work of actually addressing it.

    Core Framework: The Five Levels of the Anchor Program

    Ross organizes her framework as an iceberg. What everyone sees — the bingeing, the emotional eating, the dieting, the body dissatisfaction — is above the waterline. Everything that’s actually driving it is below.

    The Anchor Program descends through five levels:

    Level 1: Surface Behaviors — identifying the eating patterns and interrupting the cycle enough to create space for the deeper work.

    Level 2: The Emotional Soup — developing emotional literacy: the ability to name, locate in the body, express, and regulate emotions. Many emotional eaters have significant difficulty with this — a condition called alexithymia, which research shows is more prevalent in people with binge-eating disorder.

    Level 3: Body Wisdom — rebuilding the connection to hunger, fullness, and body sensation signals that chronic dieting and trauma have disrupted. This is where somatic grounding practices live.

    Level 4: Core Beliefs — surfacing the unconscious beliefs formed during childhood adversity that silently govern how the person uses food and whether they allow themselves to recover. (“Bigger is safer.” “I don’t deserve to take up less space.”)

    Level 5: Soul Satisfaction — identifying and directly addressing the soul-level needs — for love, belonging, authentic expression, meaning — that food has been substituting for.

    Part II of the book adds practical daily skills: a simplified eating structure (the SIMPLE Plan), joyful body movement, stress management tools, spiritual nourishment practices, and a narrative framework (the Hero’s Journey) for making meaning out of the entire struggle.

    What makes this framework distinct is not any single element — emotional literacy, trauma, somatic awareness, core beliefs — but the insistence that all five levels must be addressed together, in sequence, for change to last. Addressing only one or two is what produces the revolving door of temporary progress and relapse that most people with chronic emotional eating know intimately.

    Key Ideas

    Diets Don’t Work — and Here’s Why

    Ross cites the research without hedging: two-thirds of dieters in studies regain more weight than they lost. Focusing on the number on the scale does not improve health markers — but focusing on behavior change does. The “health at every size” framing (Bacon and Aphramor, 2011) is referenced with data: when people shift focus from weight to health, outcomes for heart disease risk, self-esteem, and body image actually improve.

    The deeper argument is about what diets are really treating. A diet treats the surface behavior — the eating — while leaving the emotional, relational, belief, and soul-level drivers completely untouched. This is why bariatric surgery, in the absence of deeper psychological work, has a high rate of relapse. Billy, the first case study in the book, had gastric bypass surgery at age seventeen after his mother died and he used food to manage grief. The surgery addressed the surface. Within two years, he had regained all the weight because the grief — and the habit of managing it with food — had never been touched.

    The postponed dreams exercise early in the book is one of the most clinically useful moments: what have you been putting on hold until you reach your goal weight? The list tends to be things like intimacy, social confidence, career ambition, the permission to take up space and be fully present. Ross’s point is that waiting for the number on the scale to unlock your life is a self-defeating trap — and that living toward those dreams at your current weight is not giving up on health goals, it is participating in them.

    The ACE Finding: Obesity as an Unconscious Solution

    The most important idea in the book, and the one least well-known to general readers, is the link between adverse childhood experiences and weight.

    The ACE Study (Felitti et al., 1998; Brown et al., 2009) found that individuals with high ACE scores — who experienced verbal, physical, or sexual abuse; parental addiction or mental illness; domestic violence; parental incarceration or divorce; or neglect — have a 46% higher risk of obesity (BMI ≥ 35). Childhood neglect and abuse increase overweight risk by 50%.

    One of the original researchers made a discovery that reframes everything: many of his obese patients had been unconsciously using their body size as a shield against unwanted sexual attention or as a defense against physical attack. The obesity, in other words, was not the problem. It was the unconscious solution to problems that had never been named.

    The mechanism is toxic stress. Adverse childhood experiences produce chronic overproduction of cortisol and other stress hormones, cause physical changes in the developing brain, and keep the nervous system in a sustained fight-flight-freeze activation state. Food — calorie-dense, dopaminergically rewarding, reliably available — becomes the primary self-regulation tool in an environment where the nervous system cannot find safety any other way. The eating is adaptive. The weight serves a function. Until that function is understood and addressed, no dietary intervention will hold.

    This is not a soft clinical claim. It is an epidemiological finding from one of the largest health studies ever conducted, replicated across decades. For anyone who has ever asked themselves “why can’t I just stop?” — the ACE research provides the most honest answer.

    Attachment Style Predicts Emotional Eating Pattern

    Ross brings in attachment theory to explain why different people eat emotionally in different ways — and why the same standard intervention doesn’t work equally well for everyone.

    Avoidant attachment, formed when a caregiver is emotionally unavailable or dismissive, produces what Ross calls an “emotional desert.” Adults with avoidant attachment suppress emotions and disconnect from body signals — including hunger and fullness cues. They overeat from lack of awareness, not from overwhelm. Standard hunger/fullness training doesn’t work for this group because the body-awareness capacity was suppressed as an infant survival strategy. Teaching mindful eating to someone with avoidant attachment before doing the underlying relational healing is like trying to tune a radio that has no antenna.

    Ambivalent attachment, formed when a caregiver is inconsistent or unpredictable, produces an “emotional fog.” Adults are flooded by emotions they cannot regulate and use food to numb or soothe states that feel unbearable.

    Disorganized attachment — formed when the caregiver was both the source of comfort and the source of fear — produces the most severe picture: dissociated eating episodes (eating an entire box of food with no awareness of doing it), hypervigilant stress response, and complete body disconnection.

    The practical implication is significant. If you have avoidant attachment and you keep trying to “get more in touch with your hunger and fullness,” you are asking yourself to do something your attachment history made very difficult. The intervention needs to happen at the level of the attachment wound before the body-awareness skills can take root.

    Core Beliefs: The Invisible Ceiling on Recovery

    Many people lose weight and then regain it not because they lack commitment, but because losing weight triggers an unconscious belief that makes weight feel protective. If your body size has been — consciously or unconsciously — a defense against unwanted attention, against being hurt, against a threat that felt real at some point in your life, then losing that body size will feel dangerous. The anxiety that arises as weight comes off is the protective belief doing its job.

    Ross uses an “if-then-fear cascade” to help readers surface these beliefs: three rounds of asking “if this situation, then my biggest fear would be ___” and “if that’s true, what does that mean about me?” until you arrive at a primal belief about safety, love, or belonging. The cascade typically ends somewhere like: “I am not safe.” “I don’t deserve love.” “I need to stay big to stay protected.”

    The important step is what Ross calls perception shifting: recognizing that the belief was adaptive — it formed in a childhood context where it served a real protective function — but that the adult self has resources the child self didn’t have, and that the belief is no longer accurate in the present. Writing a new guiding principle to replace it is the practical tool.

    This is schema therapy adapted for a workbook format, and it works — with the caveat that people with significant trauma histories may find this level of the work destabilizing without professional support.

    Cravings as Encoded Soul Needs

    The soul satisfaction framework is the most distinctive part of the Anchor Program and the part that separates it from every conventional emotional eating approach.

    Ross proposes that specific craving foods are not random preferences — they are encoded with the memory of a relational experience. Strawberry shortcake might carry the memory of a grandmother who loved unconditionally. Chips at the end of the day might encode the experience of being allowed to stop performing and relax. Chocolate late at night might carry the experience of being comforted in private.

    When the soul’s real need — for unconditional love, for companionship, for permission to rest, for belonging — goes unmet, the person reaches unconsciously for the food that historically represented that need. The food cannot deliver the need. So the craving doesn’t resolve after eating; it returns. Often intensified by shame.

    The craving-to-soul-need mapping exercise is practical: list the foods you tend to binge on, describe what each one feels like to eat and what it reminds you of, and then complete the sentence: “My soul need for [this food] is a need for ___.” The answers — love, companionship, safety, being valued, permission to rest — are almost never surprising once they surface. What is surprising is how clearly the food was encoding something real all along.

    The corollary is the body image fantasy exercise: “If I had my fantasy body, my life would be different in the following ways.” The list invariably reveals that what the person actually wants is not a smaller body — it is to be loved, to be seen, to be free, to feel safe in the world. Weight loss cannot deliver those things. Which is why achieving it so often fails to produce the expected relief.

    Notable Quotes

    On the core problem:

    “Weight and food issues are just signs of the bigger problem. For this reason, only addressing the weight or eating problem does not affect the deeper issues of emotions that may be out of control and cause you to overeat, of beliefs that are unconscious but are driving the eating behaviors, and of a lack of connection with your body’s innate wisdom.”

    The thesis of the entire book in one sentence. The surface behavior is a sign, not the source. Treating the sign without treating the source produces temporary results.

    On the ACE finding:

    “Many of his patients had been unconsciously using obesity as a shield against unwanted sexual attention or as a form of defense against physical attack… although obesity was conventionally viewed as the problem, it was often found to be the unconscious solution to other, far more concealed, problems.”

    Citing one of the original ACE researchers (Anda and Felitti, 2003). The reframe that changes everything. The weight is not the enemy. It is the protection. Treating it as the problem, without asking what it is protecting against, is why treatment fails.

    On toxic stress:

    “That is why overeating and obesity are not about food or about weight. Rather, the weight and overeating are a solution that you used when you were younger and didn’t have the skills you have now, but they are not the problem. The problem has to do with toxic stress and what caused it.”

    The compassionate version of the clinical reframe. Not: you are broken. But: you are someone who solved a difficult problem with the tools available, and now you have more tools.

    On emotions suppressed:

    “It is not your emotions themselves that cause problems in your life. Rather it is your attempt to suppress or avoid your emotions that leads to problems. When emotions are not acknowledged, they find expression in the foods you eat, in the size and shape of your body, and in the need to eat foods that may be soothing momentarily but don’t quench the soul’s hunger for expression.”

    The reason awareness alone isn’t enough. The emotional eating isn’t happening because you feel things — it’s happening because you’ve learned you can’t express them. The food is what happens when emotions have nowhere else to go.

    On diet culture:

    “In our fat-phobic, diet-obsessed culture, we have come to confuse being thin with being happy. We have been conditioned to believe that we have to look a certain way in order to deserve the life we want.”

    The cultural context that shapes the individual problem. Emotional eating is not only a personal psychology story. It is a response to a culture that has systematically conditioned people to defer their lives until they achieve a body.

    On postponed dreams:

    “Whenever you put your dreams on hold, waiting for a certain thing to happen, you are saying (sometimes unconsciously) that they won’t matter unless they show up in a certain package. You are essentially saying that you don’t matter enough to have the life you deserve.”

    The cost of the thin fantasy — not just the waiting, but the implicit self-judgment underneath it.

    On what joyful eating is actually about:

    “Satisfaction is different from satiation or being full. You may feel that if you eat until you’re full, that’s all you need to do at a meal. But as you know, when you eat ‘rabbit food’ or ‘diet food’ or feel compelled to eat foods that you don’t really want, you never feel satisfied. You may have a full belly, but your spirit is longing for something else — so you keep overeating.”

    The practical explanation for why “clean eating” often doesn’t stop emotional eating. A full stomach is not the same as a satisfied soul.

    Who Should Read This

    This book is for you if:

    • You have done multiple rounds of weight loss — including possibly bariatric surgery — and regained the weight, and you are ready to examine what the weight has been managing.
    • You recognize that your eating is emotional but the standard “pause and identify your feeling” advice hasn’t moved the needle, and you want a more structural explanation for why.
    • You had a difficult childhood and have always suspected that your food and weight history is connected to it, but you’ve never had a framework that made that connection explicit.
    • You want a workbook — structured exercises, real clinical frameworks, a sequenced program — rather than an inspirational narrative.
    • You are a therapist or coach working with clients whose eating does not respond to behavioral interventions.

    This book is not the right fit if:

    • You are in acute crisis with an eating disorder (anorexia nervosa, severe bulimia nervosa) and need medically supervised treatment. This workbook is for emotional and binge eating, not restrictive disorders requiring clinical stabilization.
    • You are looking for a meal plan or nutrition protocol. The SIMPLE Plan is a loose structure, not a prescribed diet. The book does not tell you what to eat.
    • You have significant unprocessed trauma and no therapeutic support. Ross recommends professional help for high ACE scorers, and that recommendation is worth taking seriously. Some of the exercises in this book can be activating without a skilled clinician to help you process what comes up.

    Related Books

    [In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts — Gabor Mate] — The deepest available account of addiction and compulsive behavior as a trauma response, with the neuroscience and compassion that underlie Ross’s clinical framework. If this book’s ACE material resonates, Mate is the next step.

    [Breaking Free from Emotional Eating — Geneen Roth] — The foundational narrative text on the same core insight (it’s not about the food). Roth’s approach is entirely experiential where Ross’s is structured and clinical — but the two books complement each other well.

    [Eat Q — Susan Albers] — A more accessible emotional eating workbook with an explicit emotional intelligence framework. Less trauma-focused, and a gentler entry point for readers who aren’t ready for the ACE and attachment material.

    [Hunger — Roxane Gay] — A memoir that maps the lived experience of Ross’s clinical ACE framework from the inside, tracing the relationship between childhood sexual abuse, body size as protection, and identity. The book that makes the theory human.

    [The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk] — For anyone whose emotional eating is clearly trauma-driven, van der Kolk maps the somatic territory that Ross’s body wisdom chapters draw on, in far greater depth and with the full research base.