Local PA, Mercy Medical Center continue Eat for LifeDate: 8/25/2016 LONGMEADOW – The Mindful Awareness Practice Center and Leslie Smith Frank PA, in co-operation with Mercy Medical Center, announced the continuation of a groundbreaking program to end dieting forever, Eat for Life.
This educational, researched course leverages mindfulness, intuitive eating principles, and relevant research to bring about change in one’s relationship with food and the body. Among the goals of the program are to end reliance on diets, and to decrease body image distress.
Eat for Life offers an alternative to diets, which have been proven ineffective for sustained weight loss. In fact, diets often lead to weight gain and the phenomenon known as “yo-yo” dieting.
Frank, a physician assistant and faculty member of the University of Massachusetts Medical School Center for Mindfulness, will teach the 10 week course. Understanding the pressing need for such a program, Baystate Medical System is offering this course to its employees with a tuition rebate.
Currently, one in three U.S. adults is obese, contributing to disease states including high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Another third of Americans are overweight. The average adult weighs 26 pounds more than they did in the 1950’s, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Eat for Life addresses these statistics with sustainable, educational approaches to the mind-body connection.
For the epidemic of obesity and disordered eating, Eat for Life offers an effective alternative to diets. A study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion for July/August 2014, has shown that participants in Eat for Life demonstrate significant shifts in body appreciation, intuitive eating, mindfulness and decreases in disordered eating.
Can you lose weight by bringing mindfulness to cooking and eating?
“Yes,” said Michelle May MD, a mindful eating expert. “We don’t talk about that very often because we don't want to be associated with the diet industry that promotes restriction, deprivation and guilt.” Harvard Medical School recently published that “a small yet growing body of research suggests that a slower, more thoughtful way of eating could help with weight problems.”
Jan Chozen Bays, author of “Mindful Eating” said, “What you could lose is the weight of the mind’s unhappiness with eating and dissatisfaction with food. What you could gain are a simple joy with food and an easy pleasure in eating that are your birthright as a human being.”
Eat for Life has been developed to help individuals change their relationship to food, so it can become a source of pleasure rather than a source of conflict or shame.
Frank is working closely with the author of Eat for Life, Lynn Rossy, PhD, health psychologist, researcher and mindfulness teacher. Rossy has recently published a book, “The Mindfulness-based Eating Solution.”
An orientation/introduction session on Sept. 12 from 6 to 7:30 pm is free and required to register for the course. The location for the orientation is the Memorial House Auditorium, in the Memorial House on Mercy Medical Campus, 271 Carew St.
The class meets Sept. 26 to Nov. 21 on Mondays from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuition of $300 covers home practice materials, including guided audio files and individualized instruction.
The 90-minute weekly classes will meet at the Deliso Conference Center at Mercy Medical Center, 299 Carew St. For more information about Eat for Life and to register online at www.map-center.org/mindfuleating or you can register by emailing Leslie at mapcenter.org@gmail.com, or calling 237-6526.
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