Mindfulness And Acceptance For Treating Eating Disorders And Weight Concerns

Disordered eating, negative body image, and problems with weight have become an epidemic—and research shows that traditional treatments are not always effective. This professional resource offers proven-effective interventions using mindfulness and acceptance for treating clients with disordered eating, body image, or weight issues—and for whom other treatments have failed. Millions of people in the United States suffer from eating disorders, and dissatisfaction with weight and body type—even in individuals whose weight is considered normal—is similarly widespread. In addition, more than half of Americans could benefit from healthy weight loss. Unfortunately, not all people with eating disorders or weight concerns respond to traditional therapeutic interventions; many continue to suffer significant symptoms even after treatment. What these clients need is an integrated therapeutic approach that will prove effective in the long run—like the scientifically backed methods in this much-needed clinical guide. Edited by Ann F. Haynos, Jason Lillis, Evan M. Forman, and Meghan L. Butryn; and with contributors including Kay Segal, Debra Safer, and Hugo Alberts; Mindfulness and Acceptance for Treating Eating Disorders and Weight Concerns is the first professional resource to incorporate a variety of proven-effective acceptance- and mindfulness-based approaches—such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)—into the treatment of persistent disordered eating, body image issues, and weight problems. With these evidence-based interventions, you’ll be ready to help your clients move beyond their problems with disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and weight management once and for all.

A Process-Focused Guide to Treating Eating Disorders with ACT At some point in clinical practice, most therapists will encounter a client suffering with an eating disorder, but many are uncertain of how to treat these issues. Because eating disorders are rooted in secrecy and reinforced by our culture's dangerous obsession with thinness, sufferers are likely to experience significant health complications before they receive the help they need. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Eating Disorders presents a thorough conceptual foundation along with a complete protocol therapists can use to target the rigidity and perfectionism at the core of most eating disorders. Using this protocol, therapists can help clients overcome anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and other types of disordered eating. This professional guide offers a review of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as a theoretical orientation and presents case conceptualizations that illuminate the ACT process. Then, it provides session-by-session guidance for training and tracking present-moment focus, cognitive defusion, experiential acceptance, transcendent self-awareness, chosen values, and committed action-the six behavioral components that underlie ACT and allow clients to radically change their relationship to food and to their bodies. Both clinicians who already use ACT in their practices and those who have no prior familiarity with this revolutionary approach will find this resource essential to the effective assessment and treatment of all types of eating disorders.

A Process-Focused Guide to Treating Eating Disorders with ACT At some point in clinical practice, most therapists will encounter a client suffering with an eating disorder, but many are uncertain of how to treat these issues. Because eating disorders are rooted in secrecy and reinforced by our culture's dangerous obsession with thinness, sufferers are likely to experience significant health complications before they receive the help they need. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Eating Disorders presents a thorough conceptual foundation along with a complete protocol therapists can use to target the rigidity and perfectionism at the core of most eating disorders. Using this protocol, therapists can help clients overcome anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and other types of disordered eating. This professional guide offers a review of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as a theoretical orientation and presents case conceptualizations that illuminate the ACT process. Then, it provides session-by-session guidance for training and tracking present-moment focus, cognitive defusion, experiential acceptance, transcendent self-awareness, chosen values, and committed action-the six behavioral components that underlie ACT and allow clients to radically change their relationship to food and to their bodies. Both clinicians who already use ACT in their practices and those who have no prior familiarity with this revolutionary approach will find this resource essential to the effective assessment and treatment of all types of eating disorders.

Eastern spiritual traditions have long maintained that mindfulness meditation can improve well-being. More recently, mindfulness-based treatment approaches have been successfully utilized to treat anxiety, depressive relapse, eating disorders, psychosis, and borderline personality disorder. This book discusses the conceptual foundation, implementation, and evidence base for the four best-researched mindfulness treatments: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). All chapters were written by researchers with extensive clinical experience. Each chapter includes the conceptual rationale for using a mindfulness-based treatment and a review of the relevant evidence base. A detailed case study illustrates how the intervention is implemented in "real life," exploring the clinical and practical issues that may arise and how they can be managed. This book will be of use to clinicians and researchers interested in understanding and implementing mindfulness based treatments. * Comprehensive introduction to the best-researched mindfulness-based treatments * Covers wide range of problems & disorders (anxiety, depression, eating, psychosis, personality disorders, stress, pain, relationship problems, etc) * Discusses a wide range of populations (children, adolescents, older adults, couples) * Includes wide range of settings (outpatient, inpatient, medical, mental health, workplace) * Clinically rich, illustrative case study in every chapter * International perspectives represented (authors from US, Canada, Britain, Sweden)

Break the Bulimia Cycle with Mindfulness and Acceptance If you have bulimia, you know what it's like to be locked in a battle with your body-and you know that whether you're trying to lose weight or struggling to end the bingeing and purging cycle, the same old fears and self-doubts keep coming back. The approach to moving beyond bulimia in The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Bulimia is different than other treatments you may have tried. Instead of encouraging you to avoid or fight against the conflicted feelings you have about food and your body, this workbook invites you to welcome and accept your deepest fears, learn to live with them, and put the things that are really important in your life first. Easier said than done? Definitely. But with this plan based in acceptance and commitment therapy, a proven-effective therapeutic solution to bulimia and other conditions, you'll develop the powerful psychological skills you need to move past bulimia and toward a more fulfilling way of life. The worksheets, exercises, and questionnaires in this book will help you: • Determine the risks of continuing the bulimia cycle • Identify the experiences and relationships that matter to you most • Practice present-moment awareness • Learn to accept your thoughts, feelings, and experiences as they come • Recommit to living according to your deepest values

This book presents an overview of the latest psychological knowledge about the application of mindfulness-based interventions in the field of eating disorders. Increasingly, these interventions are used in therapeutic practice. They encourage clients to process their experience fully, as it arises, without judgement. Mindfulness-based approaches, in particular, emphasize the cultivation of moment to moment awareness of thoughts and feelings as well as bodily sensations. In so doing, eating disorders present an ideal context for the development of mindfulness. Indeed, it is in the body that the emotional and relational struggles of clients reveal themselves. The authors in this diverse volume share a belief in the utility of using mindfulness-based practices to address disordered eating. It features up to date research and theory regarding mindfulness and the full spectrum of eating disorders, from Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa to Binge Eating Disorder. In addition, it explores how professionals can utilize mindfulness in their own practices, in the context of both individual and group treatment. This book was originally published as a special issue of Eating Disorders: the Journal of Treatment and Prevention.

People with normal eating patterns eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. But people struggling with binge eating relate very differently to this most basic need, often risking depression, gastrointestinal problems, and even death because of their problems with food. The Appetite Awareness Workbook offers an eight-week, cognitively based program to help you learn to pay attention to hunger cues, keep track of your feelings about food, and develop an eating schedule that discourages binge eating. In a series of easy exercises, the book guides you toward taking control of eating habits. First, gradual changes help you eat only when hungry or when a mealtime is scheduled. Then, awareness exercises help you stop eating when moderately full. Finally, by using cognitive techniques to control the tendency to eat for emotional reasons and journaling exercises to stay motivated and on track, you'll learn how to retrain yourself to maintain normal and healthy eating habits for life.

Statistics suggests that as many as 2.5 percent of American women suffer from anorexia; of these, further research indicates that one in ten of these will die from the disorder. This is the only book available that addresses the particular needs of anorexics with the techniques of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a revolutionary new psychotherapy. The authors of this book are pioneering researchers in the field of ACT, with numerous research articles to their credit Despite ever-widening media attention and public awareness of the problem, American women continue to suffer from anorexia nervosa in greater numbers than ever before. This severe psychophysiological condition-characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, a persistent unwillingness to eat, and severe compulsion to lose weight-is particularly difficult to treat, often because the victims are unwilling to seek help. The Anorexia Workbook demonstrates that efforts to control and stop anorexia may do more harm than good. Instead of focusing efforts on judging impulses associated with the disorder as 'bad' or 'negative,' this approach encourages sufferers to mindfully observe these feelings without reacting to them in a self-destructive way. Guided by this more compassionate, more receptive frame of mind, the book coaches you to employ various acceptance-based coping strategies. Structured in a logical, step-by-step progression of exercises, the workbook first focuses on providing you with a new understanding of anorexia and the ways you might have already tried to control the problem. Then the book progresses through techniques that teach how to use mindfulness to deal with out-of-control thoughts and feelings, how to identify choices that lead to better heath and quality of life, and how to redirect the energy formerly spent on weight loss into actions that will heal the body and mind. Although this book is written specifically as self-help for anorexia sufferers, it includes a clear and informative chapter on when you need to seek professional treatment as well as advice on what to look for in a therapist.