As a physician, I knew all about nutrition and healthy lifestyles.  Yet in my hectic day to day schedule I found I could not control my eating or my over-eating.  Finally I decided to explore my eating behavior and make some changes.  This past summer I took a life changing journey to a health institute where I spent a week in an interactive seminar on "Regaining Control"-"Avoiding emotional eating", facilitated by Jeanne Phillips.   I came to realize that you can count calories all you want,  exercise all you want but unless you get inside your head and understand why you eat or overeat you cannot win the overeating battle and you will continue to gain weight.  The week I spent in Jeanne's  interactive seminar was not only educational but inspirational.  I learned about respecting yourself, that you are more than what you weigh, on how to distinguish between emotional hunger and physical  hunger. How to determine if you really are "full or satisfied" while eating. That no food or no amount of food can satisfy an emotional hunger or an anxious feeling.  The sessions were interactive with lots of sharing of feelings and ideas and great feedback from Jeanne.  Each day we reviewed what we had learned about ourselves. Just like drugs and alcohol, food can be addicting and we talked about what food meant to us and our families. I left the class with a new feeling of conviction that I could control my eating and my eating would not control me. There are still  times when I overeat in response to stress but now, after my class,  I recognize the signs and symptoms  and get back on track the next meal or the next day. This workshop is the "other half" to the healthy lifestyle approach we are all striving to adopt-avoiding overeating. FYI, I read a report in USA Today about habits of people who lost weight and kept it off. Yes, there was healthy choices, portion control, journaling and exercise but in the top three was "avoiding emotional eating". This only reinforced that my week with Jeanne had been worthwhile and hopefully what I learned will lead me to continue successful eating behaviors in the future. I definitely would recommend this seminar to anyone who is striving for a healthier lifestyle and who is willing through self examination to make lasting changes in their eating behavior.

Mitchell , M.D.