Are you looking for a different way to heal your relationship with food and your body?
Tired of yo-yo dieting?
Want to learn how to tune-in to the internal wisdom of your body?
Mindful eating is the practice of bringing your full awareness–with an intention of nonjudgemental acceptance, curious observation, and self-compassion–to your eating experiences and the innate wisdom of your body.
It is a way to heal cycles of disordered eating, binge eating disorder, diet-binge patterns, yo-yo dieting, guilt and shame around eating, and more. Mindful eating is based on mindfulness meditation and has been shown in research studies to be an effective treatment for binge eating disorder and is associated with improvements in eating behaviors, body image, health markers, and more.
Do you:
Struggle with binge eating disorder or disordered eating?
Experience guilt, shame, and/or self-criticism after eating?
Find that you are always on or off a diet?
Feel out of control around food?
Feel frustrated that you can’t just stick to a diet?
Use external rules that tell you when and what to eat? This may include following a specific diet plan or a more general “diet mentality” of labeling foods as “good” and “bad,” “permitted” and “restricted,” “healthy” and “unhealthy,” or “clean” and “toxic.”
Find it hard to make a choice without looking at the nutrition content of your food?
Eat by the clock; waiting until it’s an “appropriate” time for lunch or when you are “allowed to eat again?”
Listen more to diet-mentality than your own body?
Feel like your body can’t be trusted to accurately guide your eating?
Find yourself falling off the dieting wagon and throwing all your diet rules out the window? Do you then eat all the foods that weren’t allowed when you were “being good?”
Consistently feel uncomfortably full or not satisfied after eating?
Find it hard to tell when you are hungry or full?
Do you think mindful eating or intuitive eating sounds good in theory but would never work for you?
what is mindful eating?
Mindful eating is a way to reconnect with the internal guidance hardwired into all of us. It separates nourishing ourselves from trying to change or control the size and/or shapes of our bodies. Mindful eating isn’t a new concept, but rather a return to what we knew when we were babies and toddlers, before “food rules” came in and separated us from our ability to eat to satisfaction.
Despite what you may have heard recently, mindful eating is not a diet tool. Mindful eating is an inherently weight inclusive and anti-diet practice, rooted in accepting our bodies as they currently are and working to nourish ourselves according to our internal signals of hunger, fullness, cravings, taste preferences, and how different foods make our bodies feel. Diet culture teaches us that we have to control our food, or else we will eat “too much” or “the wrong kinds” of food; in actuality, it is the restriction of what we want to eat and how much that leads to choosing types or quantities of food that make us feel unwell.
Mindfulness, a fundamental element of mindful eating, can also have widespread benefits in many aspects of life including improving mood, mitigating stress, and improving overall wellness and happiness. With mindful eating, many people experience improvements not just in their relationship with food and their body, but in other aspects of their lives as well.
We’re here to help you
Conason Psychological Services offers mindful eating therapy for binge eating disorder, disordered eating, chronic dieting, yo-yo dieting, and other eating concerns. We are trauma-informed, weight-inclusive therapists who value body diversity!
If you are dealing with disordered eating, binge eating disorder, or yo-yo dieting, you may have been relying on external rules to determine when, what, and how much to eat.
Because of this, you may have also experienced periods of time in which you ate beyond comfortable fullness, and determined that you “can’t trust yourself” to stop eating unless you’re on a diet. Mindful Eating actually subverts the binge that follows restriction by eliminating restriction.
Allowing yourself access to all foods may sound scary,
and that’s okay.
This is why it is helpful to have a trained mental health professional to guide you through mindfulness practices, and help you unpack and process the feelings that arise as you embark upon mindful eating.
All of our therapists are informed by a weight-inclusive approach to health. This means that we understand that mindful eating, and physical and mental wellness, will look different on different people. In fact, we celebrate this fact!
Mindful eating therapy can help you:
Treat binge eating disorder and disordered eating
Improve body image
Increase body acceptance
Recognize and reject “diet culture”
Enjoy food without guilt, shame, or self-criticism
Expand your toolbox to cope with emotional experiences
Develop a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with food and your body
Are you wondering if mindful eating is right for you?
Schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if Conason Psychological Services can be a good fit for you.