The Normal Eating Support Group is a vibrant and active online community that was founded in 2002 and is still going strong. As of this writing the message base contains over 45,000 posts, with more than 3,600 of these from me. It's a great place to ask questions, receive support, and learn how Normal Eating has helped others.
Support is important when you're working on Normal Eating since this is the road less traveled. People can make it very hard to stay on the path to recovery. With the Normal Eating Support Group, you always have that support.
The camaraderie and acceptance you'll find in the forum also is very healing. Many people who struggle with compulsive eating and excess weight are filled with self-loathing, and feel completely alone in their struggle. It's a revelation and a relief to learn that others feel exactly as you do. Your forum friendships can help you to accept and love yourself, crucial elements of the Normal Eating process.
Normal Eating involves working through the issues you eat over, and these can be hard to uncover. Reading posts from others can help you to make connections in your own life that you might not see otherwise. There's also nothing more encouraging than seeing someone just like you succeed. You'll read many success stories in the forum.
The Normal Eating book addresses the most common questions people have, but you'll find much more in the forum message base - sleep eating and night eating, sexuality, diet soda, and much more. There's an excellent search engine for locating posts on any topic. Or if you have a question that hasn't been addressed, just ask!
You can learn a lot just by reading, but the best way to use the forum is to actively participate. Ask questions; share your struggles and successes. The people who post the most tend to make the fastest progress in Normal Eating. There is no such thing as posting too much!
This is an excerpt from the book Normal Eating for Normal Weight: The Path to Freedom from Weight Obsession and Food Cravings by Sheryl Canter. There are now over 112,000 posts, with over 7,600 of these from me.
