The Appetite Awareness Workbook: How to Listen to Your Body and Overcome Bingeing, Overeating, and Obsession with Food

by Linda W. Craighead

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1572243988
• ISBN13: 9781572243989
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 2.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 10.9"

Customer Reviews

A great system of guide posts

Dr. Craighead has set up a system that you can tailor to your own individual needs based on your own disordered eating. We don't all eat the same way and we do not all share the same concerns about eating. Not all overeaters are bingers. Not all people who obsess over food overeat. A forewarning: this is not a book you sit down and work through week by week. She tells you in the beginning of the book which chapters to address based on your individual concerns with food. It will require a little extra work on your part in that matter, but it'd be impossible to create a linear workbook that would work for all of us, so there's no getting around it. Her techniques and advice are stellar. It's not easy and she acknowledges it's not going to happen overnight. But overeating and bingeing patterns don't develop overnight and correcting them won't happen overnight either.

Innovative, Compassionate, Field-Tested, Clinically-Proven Program - Pure Substance!

Linda Craighead's Appetite Awareness Workbook - in my opinion - is an absolute must for anyone struggling with binge-eating and overeating. Dr. Craighead offers a compassionate yet no-nonsense innovative clinically-proven treatment program. Moreover, in the opinion of this reviewer, Dr. Craighead offers the Best Opening Paragraph of a self-help-for-overeating book that I have so far come across. Unlike most self-help books, Dr. Craighead's intro offers no cheer-leading feel-good fireworks - but it offers a sobering truth, a truth that a psychological Do-It-Yourselfer cannot afford to be without. More about it below, but, first, who is Linda W. Craighead? Dr. Craighead is a professor of psychology and a director of clinical training at the U. of Colorado in Boulder, CO, and a clinical director at La Luna, an outpatient eating disorders clinic in Boulder. But most importantly, Dr. Craighead is a scientist-practitioner. Her Appetite Awareness Training program (AAT) evolved out years of research. In particular, to provide scientific/empirical support for AAT, Dr. Craighead and her research team conducted and reported on several studies of the AAT protocol. Dr. Craighead writes that their 2002 evaluation of AAT-based individual treatment for women with binge-eating disorder revealed that 80% stopped the pattern of binge-eating by the end of treatment. 80% success rate! Now, that's not just clinical lore or anecdotal data. We are not talking about a book of insights and epiphanies from clinical battle-fields. We are talking about outcome studies that satisfy the methodological rigor of the peer-reviewed scientific journals! Now: about the Best Opening Paragraph of a self-help-for-overeating book... Here it is: "If you picked up this book, you are probably concerned about the way you eat, how much you weigh, and how you look. In today's world, most women are dissatisfied with some part of their body. You may even blame a lot of your life's problems on you weight and shape. You may think, "If I were thinner or had a better shape, I would be happier. Learning to eat in a way that feels natural and comfortable is very valuable; it is the goal of this book and it may allow you to change your weight or shape to a degree. But you are not likely to ever be completely satisfied with how you look, and solving your eating problems is not going to make all your other problems go away. The reality is that changing your weight may make less of a difference than you anticipate. Fortunately, once you start feeling better about the way you eat, you will have more time and energy to focus on changing those aspects of your life that have greater potential to make you a happier and more fulfilled human being." So... what am I "drooling" over here? You might be wondering: what is really here to applaud? A lot, actually. In comparison to your typical bombastic cheer-leading, this first introductory paragraph might feel like a bucket of ice

must have for overeaters

This is one of the best books I have ever read about changing eating and the way you think about food. It really teaches you to listen to your body and not all the fad diets out there today. I would recommend this book to anyone with a weight problem that stems from disorderly eating.

The Appetite Awareness Workbook

Newborn babies are the picture of perfection when it comes to eating. They eat until they are full and even when nursing to comfort themselves they never binge. If they do happen to consume a little too much, they bubble up the result. Somewhere between that perfect eating start and now, some of us have gone a little astray. Often we eat not for sustenance but to calm difficult emotions, because others expect us to clean our plate, or something tastes good. We then make things even worse by stuffing ourselves. The Appetite Awareness Workbook serves as a guide to understanding your own eating issues. Instead of looking at counting calories and other forms of self esteem harming deprivation, this book encourages the reader to learn his or her natural appetite signals. The reader can then easily change his or her eating routines and serving amounts to suit their own nutritional needs completely eliminating the need for counting calories, binging behaviours, and self deprivation.

I highly recommend this book!

I find this book to be just what I was hoping for! The whole purpose is to help all of us become more aware of our appetites and how we can use that awareness to become healthy eaters. Dr. Craighead and her associates have spent years researching and using this method--not only with their clients, but with themselves as well. As with any attempt at healthy eating, there is work involved. Just reading this book (or any other book) will not help us lose weight or eat in a more healthy manner. I found this book to be very informative, well laid out and tuned in to the root of the problem for many of us. As I read this book, I realize that I really do not know when I am moderately hungry and when I am moderately full. I also tend to eat while I do other tasks. Therefore the food is not satisfying. The workbook pages are easy to use if we read the directions carefully. We DO NOT start off keeping a record of the food we eat. We start off learning how to tell if we are moderately hungry and moderately full. What a revelation! The chapters are set up as weekly activities with a specific focus. Each week, the form adds another item to focus on. Each week builds on the one before it. If we try to do it all at once, it won't work. The key word is PROCESS, not instant success. If we expect instant and total success, we are just setting ourselves up for failure again. And if we are looking for a magic weight loss miracle that takes little or no effort, this book is not what you are looking for. I love the weight and body mass index chart and all the related information about healthy weight. This book will benefit those with severe eating disorders as well as those of us who just want to get a better handle on how and why we eat. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about how your own body signals you that it is hungry--both biological hunger and psychological hunger. Do I hope to lose weight? Absolutely! But I know from personal experience that "diets" don't work for the long haul. I am tired of all that. My goal is to learn to listen to my body and take it a step at a time. I truly believe that by following the guidelines in this book, all of us can learn to be aware of our appetites and benefit immensely! Dr. Craighead, her colleagues and clients have laid the groundwork for all of us to have healthier bodies. Get this book, and go for it!