Navigating food choices during the holiday season often presents challenges, especially if you’re trying to lose weight. Delicious holiday treats are hard to resist. Decisions about what to eat and not eat at holiday parties can induce anxiety, shame, frustration and guilt. Studies show that depriving ourselves of the foods we love can lead to cravings and binging; and that diets don’t work over 90% of the time – making food decisions confusing and stressful.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative approach to weight management with no food restrictions or dietary rules. HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT WITHOUT DIETING, offered at the Morris Psychological Group, trains you to overcome mindless eating habits by using mindful eating techniques that focus on how to eat, NOT what to eat. Mindful eating succeeds because it targets the underlying causes of overeating; it changes your relationship with food; and it’s based on evidence from scientific research.
Studies show that mindful eating can help you:
- Reduce overeating and binge eating
- Lose weight and decrease your BMI (Body Mass Index)
- Cope with chronic eating problems and reduce anxious thoughts about food and body image
- Improve the symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes
Mindful eating helps you learn how to:
- Differentiate between true physical hunger (i.e. stomach rumbling when it’s empty), and emotional hunger. Research indicates that 75% of overeating is due to emotions, not physical hunger.
- Develop alternative coping strategies to soothe stress and emotions without food.
- Slow down to savor each mouthful of food, and tune in to your body’s natural cues to determine when physical hunger has been satisfied, which helps reduce overeating.
- Decrease negative thoughts and increase self-compassion, which helps inhibit stress related eating and binging.
Neuroscientist and author of Why Diets Make Us Fat, Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D., writes, “If diets worked, we’d all be thin by now. Instead, we have enlisted hundreds of millions of people into a war we can’t win.” After struggling herself with dieting for thirty years, Dr. Aamodt has found that mindful eating, “allows people to enjoy a relaxed relationship with food – one that doesn’t require a constant struggle between willpower and temptation.”
For further information and registration for HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT WITHOUT DIETING, contact Dr. Joanne R. VanNest at 973-257-9000, ext. 204 or jvannest@morrispsych.com. Individual and group sessions are available. Groups are forming now. Limited space is available. Sessions are eligible for insurance reimbursement.
