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"I have enjoyed each and every one of the Teleconferences so much that I am now trying to schedule patients around them. I feel that the TCME is extremely valuable and am planning to join as a member this week."
-Danielle Paciera, LDN, RD, Tulane University

From tele-conference participant (The call) "it was great! I appreciated how you modeled these skills for us as you facilitated the group! I also loved hearing the experiences of others and learning about different resources. " Cathy C

"The entire concept of 'curiosity' was new to me with respect to nutrition counseling. It seemed like a very unlikely word to include. I came to understand, however, how it can increase our awareness of our/client's behaviors when taking a more curious stance (I wonder how much food It will take to fill me up/satisfy me?) rather than a more judgmental, negative stance such as "I'm not supposed to eat more than this for lunch, but I seem extra hungry today!". Judy T

 
 
 
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Published Articles
Articles & Books  |  Professionals  |  Patients

April 2008, The No-Diet diet.  By Meredith Janson, published in Family Circle, pg 146-153.  This article interviews TCME President Jean Kristeller, PhD and Executive Director, Megrette Fletcher, MEd, RD, CDE

Excerpt

"I have tried it all: sugar busting, protein loading, cabbage soup guzzling -- even fruit juice detoxing. Sure, weight came off, but my food issues always remained. I grew accustomed to the cycle of dieting, weight loss, overeating to compensate for the deprivation, and then gaining it all back again.
Finally, I decided to say goodbye to fat-burning fads. I was still struggling with my "emotional eating" habit when I discovered a promising new tool in weight management: mindfulness. It all boils down to focusing on the present moment and paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Studies under way, funded by the National Institutes of Health, are showing that mindfulness training can help you lose weight by regulating eating patterns, decreasing binges, and increasing insulin sensitivity (which helps you metabolize your food faster)."

3/18/08 Anne Fletcher MS RD, excerpted from: Part of this was used in the mindful eating section of her most recent book, Weight Loss Confidential: How Teens Lose Weight and Keep It Off – And What They Wish Parents Knew.


"Although it intuitively makes sense that teaching people to tune in to their hunger signals helps them with weight control, there's not much research in this area. However, a fascinating study on the subject, published in Pediatrics, involved a small group of preschoolers who ranged from being underweight to overweight. Some of them were overeaters, some didn't eat enough, and others ate appropriate amounts of food for their weight. At the outset, it was also found that heavier kids and kids whose mothers were dieters and impulsive eaters were less likely to eat according to their bodies' needs than were children of mothers without these tendencies.

For the study, the children went through a 6-week program in which researchers performed skits with themes centering on rumbling in the stomach (to represent hunger), eating until full, and signals associated with overeating such as stomach discomfort. The kids also watched the videotape, “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Jar” as a point of discussion. And there was play with specially made dolls having tummies of varying degrees of fill to help them identify cues of hunger and fullness.

After the program, both under eaters and overeaters had improved ability to focus on internal cues of hunger and satisfaction, and they subsequently ate more according to their bodies' needs. Furthermore, the children's eating was no longer related to their mothers' eating habits. After several weeks, during snack time-when the researchers would prompt kids to tune in and see how hungry or full they were-children spontaneously began saying things like, “I'm not hungry any more so I'm going to stop eating” or “My stomach's getting full.” The researchers concluded that the program helped both finicky eaters who previously didn't eat enough in response to hunger cues and heavier children who tended to eat more than their bodies needed learn how to eat more appropriate amounts of food for their weight.

Susan Johnson, Ph.D., the author of the study, who's at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, is often asked whether older children and teenagers have this same potential to respond to internal cues to regulate their eating. Her answer: “Why not? I can't imagine that there are many people out there who do not have the physiological capacity to feel hunger and fullness. That said, there are any number of teenagers and adults who don't consciously tune in to these sensations and for whom hunger and fullness have little to do with eating or not eating. Having conversations with children of all ages about what hunger and fullness feel like should help them maintain healthy body weights and a healthy relationship with food and eating.”

Johnson, Susan L. "Improving Preschoolers' Self-Regularion of Energy Intake." Pediatrics 106, no.6 (2000): 1429-35.

 

3/13/08 Surviving Girl Scout Cookie Season
Article explores ways to not over eat a 'loved' food. Writen by Elaine Magee, RD and WebMD nutrition Expert, this article cites TCME and interviewed Ex Director M. Fletcher.

Surviving Girl Scout Cookie Season

9/14/07 3 Tactics to Prevent Overeating
When it comes to our favorite treat foods, is it out of sight, out of mind -- or does absence make the stomach grow fonder? Or does the answer lie somewhere in the middle? Elaine Magee, RD wrote a review article that quoted TCME. The link is below.

WebMD article that quoted TCME

The Principles of Mindful Eating (PDF, 110kb)

Suggested reading list, by Donald Altman, M.A. (PDF, 21kb)