Outsmarting Overeating

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.

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.

Thinking Fast and Slow meets The End of Overeating in this fascinating exploration of how the brain’s dual thinking processes regulate when, what, and how much we eat.

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.

Do you often lose control over food? Are you tired of obsessing over every bite? It has nothing to do with willpower or being addicted to food. The Binge Cure will teach you exactly how to create permanent, sustainable weight loss--no dieting necessary! Dr. Nina shares the successful tools she uses in her successful online program to help thousands of people heal their relationship with food. Learn how to crack the code of emotional eating, identify your binge triggers, express your feelings, and make lasting changes with powerful strategies that will help you stop bingeing, lose weight, and gain health. Discover which emotions you are feeling based on the types of foods you are bingeing with The Food-Mood Formula. If you mindlessly overeat to manage deeper, intolerable feelings, then you need to investigate what's leading you toward food, rather than fixating on what you're eating. There's only one way to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings you are trying to avoid: to feel them. Filled with illuminating case examples and concrete exercises, The Binge Cure will help you break through your emotional hunger to satisfy your real cravings and learn how to truly comfort yourself--without food. It's time to ditch your inner critic, lose the fat talk, and be a real friend to yourself. Instead of focusing on what you weigh, focus on what's weighing on you. If something is bothering you, you can't starve it away or stuff it down--and you cannot measure your true value on a bathroom scale. When you feel, you will heal. Get ready to break the diet habit and make peace with food--and yourself.

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.