By Dixie Brown, MS, ICAADC, CAP, LCAS, Executive Director of Willow Place for Women Occasional binge eating and binge drinking is somewhat expected. American culture tends to lend itself to overindulgence. Certain national holidays even seem to revolve around the concept of overdoing it – Christmas and Thanksgiving, to name a few. Christmas is a holiday characterized by compulsive over-shopping, while it is socially acceptable (and expected) that we gorge on stuffing and pumpkin pie to the point of physical illness once a year on Turkey Day. And certainly at one point or another during our young adult years, we drank to the point of black-out on one wild and crazy night on the town. But for the millions of Americans suffering from binge eating …
Eating Disorders – An Overview
; What exactly is an eating disorder? Simply put, these are very serious conditions where the sufferer is so preoccupied with food and weight that it takes over their lives. Someone with such a disorder is usually aware of what they are doing but feels powerless to stop themselves. The 3 most common types of eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder. Eating disorders can have serious ramifications both physically and emotionally and for many, can potentially be deadly. Women tend to be at the highest risk but anyone can potentially develop these disorders. Statistics show that binge-eating seems to affect both men and women equally. There are many approaches to treating eating disorders, including therapy, nutritional education, psychotherapy, family counseling, medications and sometimes…
What to Expect When Entering a Food Addiction Program
It’s not hard to see why someone might feel some sense of trepidation when committing to a food addiction treatment program. Any time we face the unknown or throw ourselves in to the deep end, it can seem very frightening, especially if we know that we will not come out of it the same. With this in mind, we want to shed a little light on the “mysteries” of a typical food addiction program in hopes to demystify the process just a little bit. ; We should establish upfront that food addiction programs follow a similar trajectory to most other addiction treatments. The idea is to help addicts get to the root cause of their disease. Through food addiction treatment help, a person comes to understand the role …
Mindful eating infographic
I was asked about true hunger and i thought i would post this infographic about mindful eating, and then answer the actual question with my own tips and advice in another post. But i thought this inforgraphic was rather good.Though it it us to you about how “mindful” you actually want to be, because sometimes in recovery its better to not be so mindful and to just eat… not be acutely aware of every bite you take and obsessively taking 30 chews each bite and taking an hour to finish a small meal. Mindful eating is usually a good thing to try to do if you struggle with binge eating or over eating, then it can be good to not get super distraced while eating but also …