For the general therapist who treats clients with weight and food problems such as binge-eating, restrictive eating and overeating, this book offers insights about assessment and treatment options.
Therapists often encounter clients with mild to moderately troubling eating and weight issues, less severe than anorexia or bulimia. These problems emerge as minor themes that lurk behind major presenting problems such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteeem, trauma, and family discord. Therapists who aren't looking for eating problems may miss opportunities to address and treat them. Koenig provides practitioners with clinical strategies and therapeutic techniques to help explore clients' feelings about food and their bodies in order to get at the root of their food disturbances. Packed with insights, reflective exercises, and practical tips, this unique book teaches clinicians how to help clients make peace with food and the scale and balance nutrition and exercise to create a healthy lifestyle.
Excerpt
Table of Contents:
1 A Comprehensive Approach to Treating Eating, Weight, and Body Image Issues
2 How Clients Express Themselves Through Food
3 The Biology of Eating and Weight
4 Health and Medical Problems
5 Personality Traits and Family Dynamics
6 Assessment
7 Clinical Disorders
8 Life-cycle Issues
9 Nutrition and Fitness
10 Transference and Countertransference
11 Treatment Options
Professional Reviews
Enlightening
As a psychotherapist who has not personally experienced the difficulties of eating disorders and weight management issues, I am greatly enlightened by this book. Koenig addresses the entire gamut of interactions between food and all aspects of life including family relationships, medical issues, and individual struggles with food and normal eating. The structure of the book with the "thinking points" following each concept is an interesting technique for focusing the clinician on the important factors in each section. This is a most informative resource book for non-specialist clinicians and specialists as well. Sandra Z. Zellick, Ph.D.
A comprehensive guide
As an expert in bridging the chasm between the emotional and physical aspects of eating and weight issues, Koenig gives us a comprehensive guide to understanding and addressing these concerns that are interwoven into every part of our clients' lives. I love this book and have not seen anything like it out there. Lynn Eldridge, MD
Invaluable resources
This book is an invaluable resource for the practitioner who is not a specialist in nutrition, anorexia, or behavioral neuroscience, but who needs a better understanding of food and weight issues so often linked to the life problems and clinical diagnoses they are asked to treat. Written in a lively, accessible style, this terrific book belongs on every clinician's desk.
Emily Fox-Kales, Ph.D.
