Mindful Eating Course Information

Mindful Eating Subscription Class
Chocolate and Mindfulness!?
What is Mindful Eating?
What is the Mindful Eating Class?
Mindful Eating for Health Care Professionals - Certificate Program

For Mindful Eating Subscribers: Mindful eating offers you an opportunity to enjoy your food more, while experimenting with satisfying portion sizes. It's fun and a journey of self discovery I encourage you to undertake with us. You will find you learn new skills and habits while benefiting from the insights of other participants in your class. Mindful eating is not a silver-bullet weight loss program. It has been shown to be effective in reducing binge eating and is an approach to sane eating, choosing foods that you enjoy and that nourish you. You may never have to diet again. Our classes offer the possibility of personal growth and community with others struggling with many of the same issues. The classes are not therapy-, nutrition-, or counseling-based. For these valuable one-on-one services, please contact a psychologist, registered dietitian, or coach.

What is Mindful Eating?

• Being aware of food choices and choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you, and nourishing to your body, by using all your senses to explore, savor, and taste.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, neutral, or dislikes) without judgment.
• Learning to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin and stop eating.

A Person Who Eats Mindfully:

• Accepts that his or her eating experiences are unique.
• Is an individual who, by choice, directs his or her awareness to all aspects of food and eating on a moment-by-moment basis.
• Is an individual who looks at the immediate choices and direct experiences associated with food and eating: not to the distant health outcome of that choice. For example, "I can enjoy my life now..." not, "My life will be better when I lose 40 pounds..."
• Is aware of the effects caused by mindless eating.
• Experiences insight regarding how to achieve specific health goals as he or she becomes more attuned to the direct experience of eating and feelings of health.

What is the Mindful Eating Class?

• A step-by-step guide to creating a healthy relationship with food based on a program developed by Fred Burggraf, M.Ed. & Megrette Fletcher M.Ed., RD, CDE, LD.
• A key underlying goal of the course is to teach participants to treat themselves with kindness.
• In small increments, the course provides opportunities and workbook exercises to look at thoughts and moods -- and their impact on eating behaviors.
• The course promotes understanding, and allowing, of emotions as well as providing tools for working with these difficult feelings. . .
• Teaches short centering breathing exercises to help create balance and a window of opportunity for making good choices.
• An important goal of the class is to accept, and “live in”, rather than “what if...”
• Mindful Eating teaches staying involved in the process of making food choices and enjoying that process.
• Each week offers new concepts, themes, and activities to reinforce actual (rather than conceptual) understanding, and suggested workbook exercises for the week to develop mindful eating skills.
• The classes are taught by both psychologists and other professionals. We do not offer psychotherapy; however, teachers are trained in facilitating emotional and behavioral change.

Mindful Eating Class Descriptions:

Monthly Subscription to Mindful Eating - a new class and theme are offered each week. A minimum of four new classes per month are available. Each month we offer you the opportunity to attend a special workshop with a visiting teacher. Our periodic workshop, enVisioning Your Future, is led by Laura Friedland, CPCC, ORSC, RN, BSN. Laura is a graduate of The Coaches Training Institute, an internationally recognized coach-training school, accredited by the International Coaching Federation. Chef Michelle Sugiyama, the founder of Wellconnect, Inc., a wellness teaching service focusing on health and nutrition, will periodically offer her Chocolate and Mindfulness!? class. These very popular classes are included in the Mindful Eating subscription.

Chocolate and Mindfulness!? is taught by Chef Michelle Sugiyama. Michelle is a top honors graduate of Le Cordon Bleu and interned under a Master Chef in Avignon, France. Her class has been enormously popular in the Minneapolis area, and why not? It includes a secret taste test of 3 famous types of gourmet chocolate*. In this class, you will discover why you eat when you are not really hungry and ways to curb your cravings and indulgences.  The best part is that you will learn this while savoring and learning about chocolate.  This class
*Includes shipping of individually wrapped slices of chocolate marked "A", "B", and "C". You will find out about the chocolates you tasted at the end of class.

 CMEs are given out in cooperation with The Scottsdale Institute for Health and Medicine and sponsored by:

Sponsored by The University of Arizona College of Medicine
at the Arizona Health Sciences Center

To professionals: Mindful eating is an important skill set in the weight management toolbox used by your clients. Our live, online introductory classes to mindful eating are meant to provide information and techniques you may use in your practice. These classes are conducted in virtual classrooms where participants can see, hear, and interact with teachers and other students in real-time. Entering the virtual classroom is simple – and no software is required!  Even novice computer users have easily accessed and enjoyed the eMindful classes.

Mindful Eating for Healthcare Professionals - Certificate Program (24 Hours)

1. Mindful Eating for Health Care Professionals: Overview of basic mindful eating skills. (3 hours)
   • Mindfulness: An overview
   • Mindful versus mindless eating
   • Reactivity
   • Hunger and fullness: Physical vs non-physical hunger
   • Mindful eating: Taste-specific satiety
     
     
2. Stress and Eating (2 hours)
1. Introduction to stress & how mindfulness fits into the stress and reactivity cycle
2. Reactivity cycle of stress eating
3. Reactivity cycle of stress and sedentary behavior
4. Using mindfulness to break the cycle

3. Using Mindfulness to improve eating patterns (2 hours)
1. Discover hunger and non-hunger cues for eating
2. Learn about types of eating: Normal, overeating, compulsive eating
3. Strategies for stopping eating
4. How to change unhealthy patterns using mindfulness skills/practice
5. Stop, Breathe, Be

4. Getting Out of Your Mind and Into Your Body (2 hours)
1. Body scan
2. Exploring thoughts with counting
3. Stop, Breathe, Stretch
4. Experiencing body vs thinking about it

5. Separating Physical, Emotional, and Mental Hunger (2 hours)
1. Using mindfulness skills to identify different types of hunger
2. Identifying non-hunger eating habits & learning tools to shift habits
3. Applying mindfulness to emotional eating

6. Learning to manage the urge to engage in unhealthy behaviors/patterns (2 hours)
1. Using mindfulness to create a pause between urges and reactivity
2. Use mindfulness skills to disengage from urges
3. Using mindfulness skills to surf the urges

7. Using mindfulness practices anchored in acceptance to increase potential for lasting change (2 hours)
1. What happens when we have too many choices?
2. Using acceptance to limit choices
3. Using acceptance to enhance planning: Structured-flexibility
4. Accepting relapse as part of the lifetime process and resetting the course more quickly
5. Loving-kindness

8. Discovering how connection to purpose and values can positively influence health behaviors and serve as a strategy for interrupting unhealthy behaviors. (2 hours)
1. Practice values exercise
2. Connecting health to values
3. How to move forward with intention and foresight
4. Use mindfulness to motivate healthy action.

9. Using mindfulness for relapse prevention (2 hours)
1. Thought and behavior chaining
2. Forgiveness

10. Putting it all together: Mindful meal: Learn how to walk your clients through an entire meal mindfully. (2 hours)
1. Hunger-fullness tracking & the influence of different foods on hunger-fullness
2. Satiety tracking
3. Discerning hunger from thirst
4. Noticing other experiences regarding eating (taste, texture, temperature, natural pacing mechanisms…)
5. Mindfulness in restaurant dining

11. Special Populations (3 hours)
1. Identifying which mindful eating skills your clients will need and creating a individual program for each client.
2. Programs for specific health population
• Decreased appetite/nausea patients
• Medication induced hunger: Psych meds, steroids
• Bariatric
• Diabetes & Mindfulness: Learn the various mechanisms that mindfulness can influence and improve diabetes.

Please note: The classes and programs offered by eMindful  are intended to be educational and do not constitute any form of clinical treatment.

The eMindful classes and programs offered on this website do not constitute professional medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for medical diagnosis, advice or services.

Nursing CEUs are approved by the CA Board of Registered Nursing
Provider No. 11646
Scottsdale Institute for Health & Medicine

Authorized by CA Board of Behavioral Sciences (CABS)
Provider No. PCE4036
eMindful

Scottsdale Institute for Health and Medicine is approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a continuing education Approved Provider. Provider No. 450961-09

Click here for the "Mindful Eating" class schedule.