Use Life Skills, Not Willpower, to Stop Overeating The reason you turn to food when you’re stressed or distressed is that you don’t have better ways of managing life’s ups and downs. According to Karen R. Koenig, an expert on the psychology of eating, you can transform your eating habits — and your life — by developing effective life skills. When you have enhanced skills, you won’t need to turn to mindless eating to make it through the day and will get the best out of life rather than letting life get the best of you. With Koenig’s guidance, you’ll learn how to establish and maintain functional relationships, take care of yourself physically and emotionally, think rationally, and create a passionate, joyful, and meaningful life. When these behaviors take root and become automatic, food becomes what it is meant to be: nourishment and one of life’s many pleasures.

Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating, written by an eating disorder therapist and a physician, offers a new paradigm for doctors and health care providers who treat patients with eating and weight concerns. It describes how both parties are frustrated by weight-loss plans and programs that fail in the long term, and presents a science-based explanation for why diets fail and how they, in fact, may adversely impact patients’ mental and physical health. The authors illustrate how providers can truly help patients by using empathy, compassion, and motivational interviewing. They explain how helping patients strengthen skills related to self-awareness, emotional management, stress reduction, appetite attunement, perseverance and effective self-care can improve self-efficacy and support sustained motivation in improving health and wellness promoting behaviors. The issue of weight stigma is addressed, along with how professionals’ view of their own eating and weight affects the patient-provider relationship. This book introduces clinicians to tools from eating and success psychology, Intuitive Eating, Lifestyle Medicine, and Health and Wellness Coaching, within a weight-inclusive paradigm. It also details a collaborative model for working with ancillary disciplines to give patients and providers the comprehensive support needed for lasting success.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year From an obesity and neuroscience researcher with a knack for engaging, humorous storytelling, The Hungry Brain uses cutting-edge science to answer the questions: why do we overeat, and what can we do about it? No one wants to overeat. And certainly no one wants to overeat for years, become overweight, and end up with a high risk of diabetes or heart disease--yet two thirds of Americans do precisely that. Even though we know better, we often eat too much. Why does our behavior betray our own intentions to be lean and healthy? The problem, argues obesity and neuroscience researcher Stephan J. Guyenet, is not necessarily a lack of willpower or an incorrect understanding of what to eat. Rather, our appetites and food choices are led astray by ancient, instinctive brain circuits that play by the rules of a survival game that no longer exists. And these circuits don’t care about how you look in a bathing suit next summer. To make the case, The Hungry Brain takes readers on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge neuroscience that has never before been available to a general audience. The Hungry Brain delivers profound insights into why the brain undermines our weight goals and transforms these insights into practical guidelines for eating well and staying slim. Along the way, it explores how the human brain works, revealing how this mysterious organ makes us who we are.

February 2007, a landmark clinical study by researchers at Harvard University was published in Biological Psychiatry and was soon picked up widely by the media. A survey of 3,000 participants found that 2.8 percent of them suffered from binge eating disorder (BED); that women were twice as likely to report binge eating; and that BED occurs across the age span, from children to the elderly. By extrapolating the statistics to the general population, health professionals estimate 5,250,000 American women and 3,000,000 men suffer from binge eating. The same month the study was published Jane Brody revealed in the New York Times that when she was a 23 years old, her food binges were so extreme that "Many mornings I awakened to find partly chewed food still in my mouth...." Cynthia Bulik, director of the UNC Eating Disorders Progam, is a foremost authority on binge eating. BED can affect anyone, and can be caused by brain chemistry, genetic predisposition, psychology, and cultural pressures--but none of those triggers make giving in to food cravings inevitable. Crave helps readers understand why they crave specific foods, recognize their individual triggers, and modify their responses to those triggers. Binge eating disorder is highly treatable; 70% to 80% of patients at the UNC Eating Disorders Program triumph over their binge eating by using techniques to "curb the crave". Through the stories of some of these patients--men and women, young and old--and with the guidance of Bulik, readers will develop a variety of strategies to use in conquering their cravings and establishing healthy eating habits.

Help your clients achieve exactly what they want when it comes to emotional eating … you can eat to copeyou can learn to use food on occasion to feel betteryou can feel in control (and have a treat)you don’t have to feel bad or guilty about emotional eatingyou don’t need to completely eliminate emotional eating to be healthy In his new book, Mindful Emotional Eating, psychologist Pavel Somov has given a “cultural permission” to eat emotionally -- with mindfulness-based tools to do so in moderation and without self-judgment and self-loathing. Somov proposes that emotional eating is a legitimate form of self-care and teaches clients and clinicians how to “leverage more coping per calorie.” Numerous original exercises and meditative techniques will guide a more conscious alliance with food during moments of emotional distress.

An extraordinary, powerful connection exists between feeling and feeding that, if damaged, may lead to one relying on food for emotional support, rather than seeking authentic happiness. This unique workbook takes on the seven emotions that plague problem eaters - guilt, shame, helplessness, anxiety, disappointment, confusion, and loneliness - and shows readers how to embrace and learn from their feelings. Written with honesty and humor, the book explains how to identify and label a specific emotion, the function of that emotion, and why the emotion drives food and eating problems. Each chapter has two sets of exercises: experiential exercises that relate to emotions and eating, and questionnaires that provoke thinking about and understanding feelings and their purpose. Supplemental pages help readers identify emotions and chart emotional development. The final part of the workbook focuses on strategies for disconnecting feeling from food, discovering emotional triggers, and using one, s feelings to get what one wants out of life.

Starting Monday is based on the simple premise that when our behaviors don’t align with our expressed intentions, we’ve got a conflict going on, often outside of our awareness. The book helps readers dig deeply into their psyches to figure out what mistaken beliefs and needless fears are holding them back from achieving their health and fitness goals. The polarized feelings for disregulated eaters to identify and resolve fall within these 7 key areas: 1) create lasting change, 2) making conscious choices, 3) feel deserving, 4) how to comfort themselves, 5) know what's enough, 6) manage intimacy, and 7) developing a healthy identity. Starting Monday first helps readers unearth their mixed feelings in these seven areas, then teaches them how to change their beliefs and behaviors to resolve them. Using humor, plain talk, examples from her clinical experience, reflection exercises, case studies, and homework, Koenig lets troubled eaters know that their yo-yo patterns of eating and self care are due to conflicts. She shies away from easy answers and, instead, provides hope and concrete actions to developing a permanent, positive relationship with food.

A new, non-diet approach to adopting healthy eating habits! Drawing on the same evidence-based practices introduced in Intuitive Eating, this workbook for teens addresses the ten principles of intuitive eating to help you listen to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. Do you struggle with stress eating, overeating, emotional eating, or binge eating? You aren’t alone. Sometimes, when we’re not feeling so good, food can seem like a great comfort. The problem is that over time, overeating can lead to several physical health problems, as well as depression and lowered self-esteem. So, how can you put a stop to unhealthy eating behaviors before they become ingrained, lifelong habits? With this breakthrough workbook, you’ll learn to notice and respect your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals, find real eating satisfaction, cultivate body positivity, and build a profound connection to your mind and body for years to come. Each chapter includes an important principle of intuitive eating, and includes worksheets and activities to help you connect with and deepen your skills. Whether you’re a teen, a parent, a clinician, or a certified intuitive eating counselor, this proven-effective workbook is an essential resource.

A food psychologist identifies hidden factors, motivations, and cues that cause overeating and offers practical solutions to help avoid these hidden traps and enjoy food without putting on excess pounds.