Contemporary Authors

1.  Helping patients outsmart overeating : psychological strategies for doctors and health care providers LCCN 2016025052 Type of material Book Personal name Koenig, Karen R., 1947- author. Main title Helping patients outsmart overeating : psychological strategies for doctors and health care providers / Karen R. Koenig and Paige O'Mahoney. Published/Produced Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2017] Projected pub date 1701 Description pages cm ISBN 9781442266629 (cloth : alk. paper) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available.

• Deliberate Life Wellness - http://www.deliberatelifewellness.com/

  Our Mission
  To help clients end overeating, using powerful, life-changing tools and methods from eating, success, and coaching psychology.
  To provide skills and strategies that enable clients to create a deliberate, satisfying, self-directed life.
  To create curricula and continuing medical and health education materials that empower health care providers to have maximum positive impact in guiding patients toward their healthiest lives.
  To promote compassionate care, highlight resources and experts, and change the conversation about weight and wellness among individuals, clinicians, and policy makers worldwide.

  About Dr. Paige
  As a licensed, board certified (and now retired) pediatrician, I practiced medicine (both in private practice and as a NICU hospitalist) and worked in medical student education prior to taking a break to raise my children. During that hiatus, I devoted a great deal of time to furthering my professional education. I studied the psychology of eating, coaching and success psychology, and Lifestyle Medicine strategies for success in overcoming the eating and weight struggles that had plagued many of my young patients (and their parents). This research was deeply personal to me, both as an advocate for children and as a person who endured 30-plus years of yo-yo dieting and food-and-eating-related misery, starting before age 10.
  When I returned to professional activity, I decided to devote myself full-time to coaching and educational pursuits, hoping to help large numbers of patients by providing training and support to the physicians and health care providers who care for them. I received my training and certification in coaching psychology and evidence-based coaching practices with the amazing people at Wellcoaches®. I was also incredibly fortunate to train with Evelyn Tribole, M.S., R.D., co-author of the book, Intuitive Eating, on how to help clients overcome overeating and restrictive dieting, heal their relationship with food, and end their weight struggles. Deliberate Life Wellness LLC, is my coaching and medical education initiative, whose mission is to promote compassionate care, highlight resources and experts, and change the conversation about weight and wellness among individuals, clinicians, and policy makers worldwide.
  My favorite part of practicing medicine was the mutual respect and collaboration that I shared with my patients and their families. My favorite part about teaching medical students and residents was seeing their confidence and enthusiasm grow as they learned skills and techniques that would make them more effective in helping their patients heal and thrive.  Wellness coaching combined with medical education is my dream job, because it is based upon those values. As a coach, I know that each client’s vision for his or her best life is possible through deliberate, individualized design and strategic implementation of that design. I love the collaborative energy and the upward spiral of growth and confidence that great coaching facilitates with motivated clients. As an educator, I know that by extending their clinical training to include proven success strategies, specifically focused on wellness behaviors, clinicians enhance their ability to empower their patients toward sustainable, improved health outcomes. If you feel that my background and skill set could be a good fit for you or your institution, please contact me today by clicking the link below or
  you may email me directly at paige@deliberatelifewellness.com.

  Welcome to Deliberate Life Wellness’ Health Care Professionals’ page. I am delighted you’re here. The purpose of this site is to provide support, information, and resources to doctors, nurses, medical assistants, therapists, coaches, dieticians, technicians and other health care professionals who dedicate their careers to helping patients care for themselves well.
   
  If you would like to learn more or join the conversation, sign up here. You’ll receive 3 master recipes that make adding more nutrient-rich veggies to your diet both simple and delicious.

  You can find out more about me on the About page. To summarize, I am a retired pediatrician, now working full-time as a Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Intuitive Eating Counselor, Lifestyle Medicine educator and champion, and author. My new book, co-authored with respected eating disorders therapist and author Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed.), is entitled Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers. The book’s mission is to inform providers about success strategies for overcoming overeating, negative body image, and weight concerns, and to help you educate and support your patients.
  Regardless of a patient’s current state of health, he or she looks to you for understanding, acceptance, and advice on how to live well and make the most of his or her situation. Your impact is tremendous, and although you may not hear it often enough, your presence in the lives of your patients makes a difference every single day. I hope that this website will provide you with useful perspective, inspiring ideas, and access to empowering resources that will enhance your life as you care for your patients.
  I am passionate about supporting health care professionals who care for patients with overeating and weight concerns. As you well know, stigma related to weight concerns abounds in our culture, and particularly in the medical community. Hospital-based health care providers are confronted with the consequences of and risks related to patients’ weight-related struggles every day. A significant percentage of us also live with overeating and weight-related concerns ourselves, and we know from experience that the commonly held belief that people with high weights or high BMI's are lazy or unmotivated is dead wrong. The truth is that the vast majority of higher-weight patients have tried repeatedly to lose weight in the interest of better health. Many are frustrated that their sacrifices and best efforts do not yield lasting results. These same patients often feel a deep sense of failure and shame, which can damage self-esteem and undermine ongoing efforts to stay active, eat well, and manage stress. Our patients are often caught in a vicious cycle of deprivation, frustration, and shame, and this does nothing to improve their health.
  Those of us who have experienced the suffering of chronic dieting understand that very often weight problems are actually eating problems, and that eating problems often represent our well-intentioned efforts to care for ourselves and maintain balance in our busy lives. By starting from a place of empathy and compassion for our patients who suffer with eating, weight, body image, and self-care struggles, we can help them to see things differently. By knowing how to approach uncomfortable topics, how to refer to experts who have the time to work on the skills that our patients may need to cultivate, and how to serve as a resource along the way, we empower both our patients and ourselves, enhancing their quality of life and ours.
  As this site evolves, it will contain blog posts on topics related to eating and success psychology, Lifestyle Medicine, and strategic meal planning. Additional topics will include useful relational skills for you to consider incorporating into your practice, book reviews, interviews with experts, meal planning strategies and great recipes for busy people who want to eat delicious, nourishing food amidst the hustle and bustle of careers, family, and other responsibilities. You can join the list by subscribing here.
  It is my sincere hope that this site will be useful and empowering for you as your care for your patients, yourselves, and your families. If there are topics that you would like to see covered in the blog, or if you would like to organize a workshop or have me speak to your practice or organization, feel free to email me at paige@deliberatelifewellness.com.
  Best wishes to you, and thank you for your dedication to helping patients live well!
  Sincerely,
  Paige O’Mahoney, M.D., CHWC

  An Interview with
  Paige O'Mahoney, M.D., CHWC

  Why did you write Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers? 
  Karen and I decided to collaborate on this book to help doctors and health care professionals understand three things:  why patients overeat, why our “diet and exercise” advice fails to deliver either permanent weight loss or lasting health improvement, and how eating and success psychology can help patients overcome dysregulated eating and achieve lasting, self-directed wellness. We also wanted to highlight resources and experts that health care providers can leverage to improve patient care in this area. 

  What is dysregulated eating, and why is it important for doctors and health care professionals to understand?   
  Dysregulated eating refers to eating for reasons unrelated to hunger and satiety signals. Patients with eating dysregulation will eat when not hungry or continue to eat past physiologic satisfaction or fullness. They may use food to cope, avoid or suppress feelings, distract themselves from unwanted thoughts or tasks, or simply to try to manage life. This is important for several reasons. First, patients with eating dysregulation are often living above their bodies’ preferred set point, or natural weight. Second the dieting mentality and behaviors that health care professionals are trained to prescribe for patients with “weight problems” exacerbate this pattern, putting patients at risk of restrained eating, bingeing and weight-cycling. These behaviors can promote suffering and compromise patient well-being, rather than helping patients to become healthier and improve their eating habits long-term. 

  What is weight stigma and why does it matter when it comes to patient care? 
  Weight stigma refers to negative assumptions, attitudes and/or behaviors toward a person based upon his or her weight. Weight stigma is damaging to patients and health care professionals for several reasons. First, it can prevent providers from taking a holistic view of a given patient’s health picture. For example, if the provider starts by making a negative judgment about a patient’s level of motivation or interest in his or her health based upon the patient’s size, weight or BMI, that judgment may interfere with curiosity about what is really going on with a patient, and thus appropriate evaluation and treatment. Weight stigma can also reduce every patient complaint to an issue of weight or BMI and prevent providers from searching for other possible causes. For example, shortness of breath can be attributed to excess weight, rather than being viewed as a symptom with a variety of possible causes that must be considered and investigated in order to reach an appropriate diagnosis and treatment plan. Finally, research demonstrates that patients may delay or avoid seeking needed medical care as a result of experiencing weight stigma in the health care setting. This experience is, unfortunately, all too common, for reasons that we discuss in the book. 

  Do some patients experience weight stigma toward themselves as well? 
  Yes! This is called “internalized weight stigma,” and it is particularly harmful because it undermines patients’ self-worth and self-confidence and can lead to despair. If patients attribute their weight problems to personal shortcomings, such as laziness or lack of motivation, they are less likely to consider other treatable causes, such as dysregulated eating, unexamined irrational beliefs about food, eating, weight, health and life, and inadequate self-care and life skills. This lack of awareness of important, valid contributors to their eating problems leads to stagnation, rather than progress, sometimes for decades or even a lifetime. Once internalized weight stigma is addressed in a constructive way, patients can choose a more constructive, empowered course of action, acquire learnable self-care and life skills and develop the increased self-efficacy needed for lasting change. 

  What 5 lessons from the book would you like patients and health care professionals to know? 
  That weight and BMI are not necessarily reliable or complete indicators of health or fitness. Plenty of normal and lower weight people suffer from metabolic dysfunction, dysregulated eating and compromised health related to genetics, a poor diet, stress, or sedentary lifestyles, and many higher weight people enjoy an excellent level of fitness and health. There are many factors, besides weight and BMI, that contribute to overall health, and much that patients can do to improve their own wellness, with or without weight-loss.
  That dysregulated eating is an important, largely unrecognized contributor to weight concerns in the medical community, including “overweight,” “obesity,” and yo-yo dieting. Many eating disorders therapists and intuitive eating counselors are trained to help patients who struggle with dysregulated eating learn “normal” eating (Koenig, The Rules of Normal Eating, Gürze Books, 2005). Doctors and other health care providers can help patients by seeking out appropriately trained medical and mental health providers to work with these patients between office visits. 
  That there are learnable life skills that can help patients radically and permanently improve the way they approach their health and care for themselves. These learnable skills can not only improve a patient’s level of wellness, they can also spill over into other areas of a patient’s life, leading to greater happiness and life satisfaction.
  That a weight-inclusive approach promotes health and wellness, much more than a judgmental, weight-focused approach. For more information on the Weight-Inclusive approach to Health, refer to Tracy L. Tylka, Rachel A. Annunziato, Deb Burgard, et al., “The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss,” Journal of Obesity, vol. 2014, Article ID 983495, 18 pages, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/983495
  That health care professionals’ own food issues and weight struggles can impact patient care, and that understanding their own struggles can make professionals more effective when taking care of and advocating for patients within the medical system.

  What are some of the personality traits and skills deficits of dysregulated eaters? 
  The most common personality traits include perfectionism, all-or-nothing thinking, and people-pleasing. We discuss these and others in the book, as does Karen in her prior books. 
  Interestingly, some of these traits are common to both dysregulated eaters and high achievers, including many health professionals. This may explain why some patients who struggle with overeating, higher-than-comfortable weights, and yo-yo dieting report that this seems to be the only area of their lives where they “can’t seem to reach their goals.” 

  How can doctors and health care professionals help? 
  First, doctors and health care professionals can help by being aware that weight problems are often eating problems, and that eating problems often reflect a patient’s well-intentioned attempt to cope with life or manage internal conflict. By practicing non-judgmental awareness, seeking understanding, and expressing empathy, health care professionals encourage patients to be curious and self-compassionate, which can start to move them toward healing. Taking a weight-inclusive approach (see Tylka, et. al. citation above), where the focus is on promoting overall health, rather than on a specific weight outcome, can be a great way to empower patients toward improved wellness. And, of course, referring patients to eating disorders therapists, Intuitive Eating Counselors, or appropriately trained health and wellness coaches, depending upon the patient’s individual situation and needs, can help patients make progress between medical appointments through a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach. 

  How can doctors and health care professionals get additional help for their patients? 
  By reading the book, including the Resources section at the end of the book
  By learning about and referring patients, as appropriate, to Karen’s prior books and the other books, articles and websites in our resource list at the back of “Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating.”
  By visiting Karen’s website at www.karenrkoenig.com and Paige’s website (including the Health Care Professionals’ page, including the “Resources” section) at www.deliberatelifewellness.com.

• Amazon -

  Paige O’Mahoney, M.D. is a health and wellness coach and Intuitive Eating counselor who specializes in helping men and women overcome overeating. She and Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed., wrote Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers in order to help patients and health care professionals understand why patients overeat and how to help. A retired pediatrician, Dr. O'Mahoney is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) and the Lifestyle Medicine Education Collaborative (LMEd). She is the founder of Deliberate Life Wellness LLC, a collaborative coaching and medical education initiative whose mission is to promote compassionate care, highlight resources and experts, and change the conversation about weight and wellness among patients, health care professionals, and policy makers. Information about her coaching practice, training seminars and workshops may be found at www.deliberatelifewellness.com.

  More information and links to other books may be found on Karen R. Koenig's Author Central page at https://www.amazon.com/Karen-R.-Koenig/e/B001JS3E28

Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers

Candace Smith
113.7 (Dec. 1, 2016): p20.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers.
By Karen R. Koenig and Paige O'Mahoney.
Jan. 2017. 236p. Rowman & Littlefield, $36 (9781442266629); e-book, $35.99 (9781442266636). 616.85.
According to the savvy pediatric-eating disorder clinician team of Koenig and O'Mahoney, the focus should be on how and why rather than what we eat, and the goal should be improved health rather than weight loss. The authors begin by comparing doctors' and patients' complaints and challenges when discussing issues of high weight. Doctors, they claim, may be dealing with issues of weight bias and can be frustrated with a patient's seeming noncompliance. Patients are often oversensitive to lectures and shamed by their failure to get control of their eating. Diets can kill motivation, and self-care may be the key to help "dysregulated" eaters, who eat when not hungry or already full, to become normal eaters. Each chapter lists specific strategies and has occasional sidebars, called brain food, that list open-ended questions for additional discussion. Although technically aimed at health providers, these insightful suggestions will help both patients and doctors to collaborate more successfully on these issues.--Candace Smith
Smith, Candace
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Candace. "Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 20+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474717374&it=r&asid=9d141471b94ed091df5b49d7c8197b9e. Accessed 10 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A474717374

Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychoiogical Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers

263.47 (Nov. 21, 2016): p103.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychoiogical Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers
Karen R. Koenig and Paige O'Mahoney. Rowman & Littlefield, $36 (236p) ISBN 978-14422-6662-9
In a caring manner, psychotherapist Koenig and physician O'Mahoney provide insights into the psychological and physiological barriers to weight loss faced by both doctors and patients. This introductory work begins by acknowledging the frustration that medical providers feel about their often limited success in this field. One key issue, according to the authors, is that medical students are seldom trained in how to compassionately approach patients who are struggling to lose weight. A listing of common patient complaints about the medical system's failings, presented in a balanced manner, will help medical professionals understand that this is more than a matter of patient noncompliance. Discussions of the process of weight loss, insights into the psychological issues behind dysregulated eating habits, and the dangers of yo-yo dieting are supported with cited research. Care is taken to acknowledge that medical providers need support in helping their patients resolve issues that interfere with healthy living. The authors carefully lay out the information (in text that can feel repetitive) and end most chapters with useful tips. Health professionals will find this a solid guide; the material is also accessible to non-professionals. (Jan.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychoiogical Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 103. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471274006&it=r&asid=e668f1e718603b2b233dccf16b575b11. Accessed 10 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A471274006

Smith, Candace. "Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychological Strategies for Doctors and Health Care Providers." Booklist, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 20+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA474717374&asid=9d141471b94ed091df5b49d7c8197b9e. Accessed 10 Aug. 2017. "Helping Patients Outsmart Overeating: Psychoiogical Strategies for Doctors and Healthcare Providers." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 103. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA471274006&asid=e668f1e718603b2b233dccf16b575b11. Accessed 10 Aug. 2017.

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