End emotion-driven eating: he tuned out his bad habits

END EMOTION-DRIVEN EATING: HE TUNED OUT HIS BAD HABITS
After battling a weight problem for most of his life, Mark Maron tuned in to the surprising, binge-fighting power of music and successfully shed 25 pounds.
Mark first got serious about slimming down and staying healthy in 1997. That's when the then-34-year-old Clifton Park, New York, resident found out that his mother had breast cancer. "I realized that both my mother and I had to start eating smarter— me, to lose weight and avoid getting cancer; her, to possibly save her life," he explains.
Mark, who weighed 265 pounds at the time, read as much as possible about health, nutrition, and fitness and tried to incorporate all that he learned into his life. For him, that meant eating more vegetables and fruits, trying to steer clear of fatty foods, and working out at the gym at least three times a week.
Sure enough, the extra pounds melted away. But that wasn't the end of Mark's weight problem. It seemed that when he had some kind of emotional upset—a crisis at work, a fight with a loved one, or another problem that made him feel bad—he would binge on high-fat foods. "I would feed my emotions by eating things from fast-food drive-thrus and pizza houses, then go straight to bed when I got home," he recalls. Needless to say, overeating only made Mark feel worse, and he found himself trapped in a vicious cycle.
During a down moment one day, Mark found himself heading for one of his fast-food haunts. Then he remembered a song that he had heard on the radio just a few hours before and decided to make a stop at the nearest music store. "I picked out two CDs. One was by a band called Big Audio Dynamite, and the other was an assortment of 1970s tunes, including my favorite, 'Born to Be Alive,'" he recalls. "The music was very high energy and upbeat. It really pumped me up." He got so pumped up that he forgot about stuffing down his sorrows with food and headed for the gym instead.
It's a habit that has stuck with him ever since. Whenever he senses a slump coming on, Mark cranks up the tunes. Sometimes, he goes to the gym and works out; other times he just stays home and dances. "I danced a lot of my weight off," he says.
In fact, by fall 1998, those 25 unwanted pounds that Mark had carried around for so long finally disappeared. He maintained his weight at 240 for several months before enrolling in a personal coaching program. Now he's down to a muscular 230 pounds and
he hopes to lose a little more. "My mom is better now, and we're both living healthier than we ever have," he says. "We're feeling great about it!"
WINNING ACTION
Tune in to fun instead of food. Like Mark, we all hit speed bumps that can send our egos and self-esteem plummeting and trigger a binge. Keep a "fun list" around so that when you get knocked off your feet by something, you can turn to a positive source of consolation, rather than to a pint of ice cream.
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