Normal Eating

What is normal eating?

It's time to stop dieting and bingeing and learn the skills that normal eaters use instinctively every day to enjoy food and maintain a healthy body weight.

When you give up obsessing about calories, fat grams, and what you weigh and focus, instead, on what, when, and how much to eat, your natural mechanisms for feeding yourself will gradually kick in. Over time, you'll learn to trust your body and depend on your appetite to tell you when to say yes and no to food in just the right balance. Through trial and error, with awareness and practice, your appetite will guide you toward a comfortable, satisfying, pleasurable relationship with food and your body.

Using food appropriately will also free you up to connect to your feelings and create a life that embraces joy, success, wisdom, and meaning. As you learn to manage stress and bear distress without obsessing about food and weight, your self-esteem and self-confidence will grow and you'll find yourself going after--and getting--what you really want out of life.

Nice girls take care of others with their warm hearts and generous natures, pile too much on their plates literally and figuratively, and don't know how to be the right kind of selfish that keeps them sane and balanced. NICE GIRLS FINISH FAT--PUT YOURSELF FIRST AND CHANGE YOUR EATING FOREVER, Karen Koenig's new book, teaches kind, caring, other-oriented women how to break their unhealthy connection with food by not trying to be perfect and fix everyone's problems, by saying no more often and sticking to it, and by nurturing themselves in ways that keep their batteries charged. NICE GIRLS FINISH FAT will make you laugh and cry, as you recognize that the woman Karen is talking about is you! To be published by Simon & Schuster on June 2, 2009. Look for it in bookstores and online!

Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed., is a psychotherapist, educator, eating coach, international author, and motivational speaker--an expert in the psychology of eating--who has worked in the field of compulsive, emotional, and restrictive eating for 30 years.

She is a co-founder of the Greater Boston Collaborative for Body Image and Eating Disorders and a former member of the Professional Advisory Committee of the Massachusetts Eating Disorder Association.

Using a simple, cognitive-behavioral treatment approach to changing beliefs, feelings, and behavior, Karen is on a mission to teach people who are food challenged how to stop struggling with food and weight issues and get on with life.

During the past three decades, she has counseled and provided "Quit Fighting with Food" workshops to hundreds of over- and undereaters.

She has conducted professional trainings for institutions and organizations such as the Sarasota Adult and Community Education Program, the Massachusetts Eating Disorder Association, Bayside Center for Behavioral Health, the National Association of Social Workers, the Massachusetts Dietetic Association, the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Simmons College and Boston University Schools of Social Work, and TWICE Educational Services to teach therapists and nutritionists how to help their clients overcome their eating problems.

Her essays and articles have appeared in Positive Change, Attitudes, Social Work Focus, Social Work Today, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The West Roxbury Transcript, Equal Times, Single Living, and The Newsletter for the Society for Family Therapy and Research.

She received a B.A. from Boston University, an M.Ed. from Antioch College, and an M.S.W. from Simmons College School of Social Work. She currently lives, teaches, and practices in Sarasota, Florida.

Circle one answer in each section:
___________________________________________

HUNGER

1. I often eat when I'm not hungry, but just want to stuff something into my mouth.

2. I try to deny my hunger and hope it goes away.

3. I usually eat whenever I'm moderately hungry.

CHOOSING FOODS

1. I go for high-calorie, high-fat, high-carb, "bad" foods.

2. I eat only low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, "good" foods.

3. I eat a combination of foods based on my hunger level and what I enjoy.

ENJOYING EATING

1. I eat so fast, feel so guilty, or am so tuned out when I eat that I rarely enjoy food.

2. I don't think about food as enjoyable or nourishing, only how it will affect my weight.

3. I generally find eating a pleasurable experience.

FULLNESS AND SATISFACTION

1. I often eat way past full and/or satisfied and end up eating too much.

2. I eat as little as possible and rarely feel satisfied after eating.

3. I usually stop eating when I am pleasantly full or satisfied.
___________________________________________________

Evaluate Your Answers:

If you most often checked off the first box in each section, it's likely that you're an emotional, compulsive overeater.

If you most often checked off the second box in each section, it's likely that you're a chronic dieter or restrictive undereater.

If you most often checked off the third box in each section, it's likely that you're a "normal" eater.

If you checked off a mixture of first and second boxes, it's likely that you yo-yo between dieting and binge-eating.

My mission in life is to help people overcome their eating problems.

One way I do this is through telephone consultation sessions. Whether you're looking to get unstuck from unhealthy eating patterns or want to understand the underlying causes of your dysfunctional eating, I'll give you the attention and decades of experience I bring to my therapy practice, workshops, and books.

With day and evening times available, I'll even pay for the 60-minute call anywhere within the continental United States, and provide you with a post-session, comprehensive treatment plan to help you keep moving forward. You pay only my standard session fee.

Call (941) 379-9849 or contact me by email.

Do you live in the Sarasota area? We can do face-to-face therapy.

Call (941) 379-9849 or contact me by email.

1. I am not responsible for any ads on this lens and do ignore the ones having anything to do with dieting.

2. The information found on this lens is meant for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for receiving professional help for an eating disorder.

ABC-TV7, Healthsmart: http://www.mysuncoast.com/Global/story.asp?S=10589583

ABC-TV7, Healthsmart: http://www.mysuncoast.com/Global/story.asp?S=10511882

Relationships 101 with Dr. Beth Erickson: http://webtalkradio.net/index.php/show-podcasts/88-relationships-101-with-dr.-beth-erickson?format=feed&type=rss

Cliff Roles - http://cliffroles.dreamhosters.com/, radio interview 6/21/09