Dr Sheila Forman psychologist

...she has the mind of a lawyer and the heart of a therapist ...

​Insight. Empowerment. Success.

                                                WHAT IS MINDFUL EATING?

Mindful eating is the middle ground between mindless eating (bingeing) and restricted eating (dieting). With mindful eating you will stop shifting between the two and instead find a powerful balance.

Your power will come from your choice of how you will satisfy your desire for pleasure, comfort, health and satisfaction. You will make informed decisions about whether to eat or not eat, how much to eat, and what to eat. When you choose to eat you will do so with delight rather shame or doubt.

When you become mindful you bring joy to every bite.

 

                                          The TAME Your Appetite Programs

My TAME Your Appetite – The Art of Mindful Eating programs are mindfulness-based eating awareness programs based on the research done by Jean Kristeller, PhD of Indiana State University. One is the complete 12-session MB-EAT program. The other is a shorter 5-Step Program. Both incorporate mindfulness practices designed to cultivate greater awareness of hunger (emotional and physical) and fullness, satiety and satisfaction, individualized food choices and emotional triggers for eating.

Mindfulness serves as the foundation for these programs. By focusing on self-care, self-regulation (listen to your body’s natural feedback systems that send out messages that your body needs food or has had enough), self-nourishment, self-acceptance, kindness and curiosity, you will learn to cultivate your inner gourmet, decrease excessive eating and improve emotional responses to stress and other causes of emotional overeating. These results come over time. With practice you will get there. The more you practice the better your results.

Through mindful eating practices, you will learn to pay attention to what your body really needs and why, how to experience the full pleasure and taste of food without overeating, and how to release the guilt and struggle so often associated with eating. Tools for Inner and Outer wisdom will be taught to help you make informed, balanced, healthy sustainable choices that can last a lifetime while being truly nourished by food and other aspects of your life.

Each program is limited to 10 participants for maximum comfort and learning. Or, if you prefer, you can do either program 1:1. Practices and topics included in both programs include mindfulness meditation, eating exercises, eating meditations, guided visualizations, loving kindness and self-compassion practices, didactic instruction, role playing, tools, weekly home practices, and self-reflection to cultivate mindful awareness and a more balanced and positive relationship to eating and weight.

The complete 12-session program is structured as 10 weekly 2 hour sessions, followed by two follow-up sessions each one month apart for integration of the material. It is held in the comfort and privacy of my office in Santa Monica or online.

The 5-Step program is also offered in person and online. 

For more information on both programs, contact Dr. Forman directly.

mindful vs. mindful eating

Are you tired of gaining and losing the same pounds over and over again? Are you weary of starting yet another diet? Would you like a chance to change your relationship with food using a new approach based on both science and age-old wisdom? If yes, it’s time for you to learn mindfulness and mindful eating.

After twenty years in the field of emotional overeating I was frustrated by the lack of progress some of my clients were making trying to differentiate physical and emotional hungers, identify feelings of fullness, and cope with their emotions without turning to food. When I learned about mindfulness I knew I had found the tool that would take these clients to their goals. Mindfulness and mindful eating are the missing pieces to successful weight management and peace with food.

Mindful eating does not focus on weight loss per se but rather on becoming more aware of patterns of inappropriate eating and provides tools for making sustainable changes in these patterns. It is designed to increase mindful awareness of experiences related to eating and to decrease mindlessness and unhealthy habits.

Based on a foundation of daily mindful meditation, mindfulness-based eating teaches you a new way of relating to yourself, your food, your eating and your body. You will learn to balance your eating and experience true culinary delight and satisfaction. You will find that you enjoy food more, eat less, and end the cycle of deprivation, overeating, and guilt.

This is a path to freedom as you gradually shift away from your current eating habits into healthy mindful ones. You go from policing yourself to honoring yourself. From mindlessly reacting to mindfully responding.

The degree to which you engage in mindful eating and meditation practices the greater your degree of overall improvement. So, make a commitment to yourself - learn mindfulness-based eating now.

                                                                   … Stop … Breathe… Be Mindful…