Contact: Victoria Russell
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Four Intuitive Eating workshops being offered at Mississippi State during October are designed to help interested individuals combat unhealthy diet mentalities and promote consistency for a healthier lifestyle.
Free to all, the 7-8:30 p.m. sessions taking place Oct. 7, 14, 21 and 28 in 324 Colvard Student Union are based on "Intuitive Eating" by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (St. Martin's Griffin, third edition, 2012).
The workshops can help participants improve their approach to food and get back in touch with their bodies' needs, said certified Intuitive Eating counselor Mandy Conrad of the university's health education and wellness department.
Advanced registration may be completed at www.health.msstate.edu/health/index.htm.
"What I, as a registered dietician nutritionist, see are bad food relationships that are not going to allow people to see the results they are looking for," she said. "These restrictive diets set people up for failure."
Through the Intuitive Eating process, participants are less likely to internalize modern culture's "thin ideal" or deal with emotional eating or disordered eating issues, she explained. They also are more likely to eat a variety of foods, have improved self-esteem and gain satisfaction and pleasure from eating, she added.
According to Conrad, the workshops focus on several common issues. Among them are struggles with self-acceptance and body image, guilt feelings about foods consumed and self-restrictions or -depravations of certain foods that lead to overeating or binging.
Conrad said she is hopeful future workshops will be offered each semester.
For more information, contact Mandy Conrad at mconrad@saffairs.msstate.edu.