{"id":23651,"date":"2019-02-21T07:02:47","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T15:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/?p=23651"},"modified":"2019-02-21T07:38:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T15:38:55","slug":"introducing-whole-person-integrative-eating-dietary-lifestyle-overcoming-overeating-overweight-obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/all-mfn\/introducing-whole-person-integrative-eating-dietary-lifestyle-overcoming-overeating-overweight-obesity\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing \u201cWhole Person Integrative Eating\u201d: A Dietary Lifestyle for Overcoming Overeating, Overweight, and Obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c[Whole Person Integrative Eating] provides a fresh perspective on our epidemic of overeating, overweight, and obesity\u2026that\u2026could signal a paradigm shift in the field of nutrition.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

David Riley, MD
\n\u201cIntegrative Nutrition: Food\u2019s Multidimensional Power to Heal\u201d
\nExplore: The Journal of Science and Healing<\/em>1<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the beginning of our coaching sessions, Alison was a 64-year-old woman who weighed 235 pounds and wore a size 3x. A former business woman turned professional meditation practitioner, Alison\u2019s obesity began as a teenager. She had tried many \u201cdiets-du-jour\u201d over the decades. Each time she would lose some weight\u2014sometimes a lot; then she would return to her preferred \u201cgo-to\u201d foods and gain back the weight\u2026and more.<\/p>\n

Alison had already figured out what would never, ever work for her: dieting and its twin, calorie counting. \u201cEvery time I eat those small portions of \u2018should\u2019 food I don\u2019t enjoy, I feel angry and hopeless and so alone. Meditation and spirituality have become a big part of my life now, so I resonate deeply with the idea of bringing more meaning to my meals, to relating to food in a different way so that food and eating are fulfilling\u2014not something I fear, count, and obsess about. Does this make sense?\u201d \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d I assured her.<\/p>\n

Alison had called me after reading \u201cThe Enlightened Diet\u201d article I had written for\u00a0Spirituality & Health<\/em>\u00a0magazine. In the piece, I invited people to participate in my Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE) online e-course. Based on our original research, the e-course is an evidence-based program that addresses\u00a0what\u00a0and\u00a0how\u00a0to eat for weight loss and well-being by nourishing yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially each time you eat. These are the four major \u201cnutrients\u201d in the Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE) dietary lifestyle I\u2019m excited to tell you about in my new blog.<\/p>\n

After one year of coaching, Alison weighed about 165 pounds and wore a size 12. She has attributed her weight loss to the \u201cwholeness\u201d\u00a0of the Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle she learned\u2026and continues to practice. By following her spot-on intuition\u2014which, for Alison, meant infusing meaning into meals by replacing calorie counting and traditional dieting with a way of eating that nourished \u201call of her\u201d each time she ate\u2014she achieved the\u00a0sustainable\u00a0weight loss she had been seeking for years. Having adopted Whole Person Integrative Eating as a lifetime practice, Alison has maintained her weight loss five years later.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE): A Dietary Lifestyle for Overcoming Overeating, Overweight, and Obesity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, the research odyssey behind our program.<\/p>\n

Discovering Ancient\/New Nutrition Truths<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cAncient food wisdom meets modern nutritional science\u201d is how I describe the Whole Person Integrative Eating program that brought weight-loss success to Alison. This is because its foundation is based on a distillation of Western nutritional science and ancient food wisdom that provided optimal eating guidelines to humankind for millennia\u2014prior to the evolution of nutritional science in the 20th century. The perennial food wisdom I unearthed emerged from major world religions (such as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.); cultural traditions (yogic nutrition, Native American food beliefs, and so on);(2)<\/sup> plus Eastern, holistic medical systems (Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and Tibetan Medicine).<\/p>\n

Meet\u00a0the\u00a0\u201c4\u00a0Facets\u00a0of\u00a0Food\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, Ph.D.,\u00a0<\/strong>is my husband, and we often collaborate on research and writing projects.\u00a0<\/strong>So, too, with Whole Person Integrative Eating (WPIE). When we stepped back to make sense of the enormous amount of ancient food wisdom we had amassed, we realized it encompasses six perennial principles that in turn, comprise four facets of food.(3)<\/sup> In other words, ancient food wisdom provides guidelines for:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. biological<\/strong>\u00a0(what to eat for physical health)<\/li>\n
  2. psychological<\/strong>\u00a0(how food affects feelings)<\/li>\n
  3. spiritual<\/strong>\u00a0(the life-giving meaning in meals)<\/li>\n
  4. social<\/strong>\u00a0(dining with others) nourishment; ergo,\u00a0whole person\u00a0integrative eating.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    To find out if there is a link between perennial food wisdom\u2013on which our Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle is based\u2013and weight, we partnered with\u00a0Spirituality & Health\u00a0<\/em>magazine. In its cover story on what we than called \u201cThe Enlightened Diet,\u201d readers, like Alison, were invited to take our six-week, eighteen lesson e-course on the magazine\u2019s website. Participants first completed our 76-item WPIE survey and entered their height and weight.<\/p>\n

    The \u201cNew Normal\u201d Overeating Styles\u00a0and Weight<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Of the 5,256 participants, throughout the e-course, those who increasingly ate according to the six, perennial, ancient-food guidelines we had identified, were the ones who lost the most weight. While the implications were enormous in relation to the question of how to lose weight, with another look at the food choices and eating behaviors our 76-item questionnaire revealed, we identified seven\u00a0(statistically significant)\u00a0styles of eating that predict overeating and weight gain. We call them the \u201cnew normal\u201d overeating styles.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s especially powerful about our discovery of the overeating styles is this:<\/p>\n

    All seven \u201cnew normal\u201d overeating styles we identified strongly diverge from the perennial principles we\u2019ve identified that served as optimal eating guidelines in the past.<\/em>\u00a0The more participants followed the ancient Whole Person Integrative Eating guidelines, the less overeating and more normal their weight. The more they followed today\u2019s \u201cnew normal\u201d ways of eating\u2014the seven newly identified overeating styles we discovered\u2014the more likely they were to overeat and be overweight or obese.(4)<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

    Clearly, as a society, we have moved away from the integrative modes of eating that kept us slimmer for centuries.<\/p>\n

    Welcome to Whole Person Integrative Eating\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    When Alison began our coaching sessions, she filled out our (statistically validated) \u201cWhat\u2019s Your Overeating Style? Self-Assessment Quiz<\/a>,\u201d so both of us could get a better understanding of the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social\u00a0root causes\u00a0of her overeating, and in turn, insights into her lifetime struggle with weight.<\/p>\n

    What we both realized over time is this: Returning to a relationship to food and eating espoused by wisdom traditions for millennia; one that provides multidimensional nourishment\u2014and that is supported by our research and that of many others\u2014enabled Alison to attain and maintain weight loss success.(5)<\/sup><\/p>\n

    Visit Deborah’s website<\/strong>,\u00a0makeweightlosslast.com<\/a>, for free\u00a0evidence-based, credible information and education about optimal eating for weight loss and well-being. You can also visit her blog,\u00a0integrativeeating.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Join Deborah for her upcoming webinar with MedFit:<\/strong>
    \n    \"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

    Reprinted with permission from Deborah Kesten.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n

    Deborah Kesten, M.P.H., is an award-winning author, specializing in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. Her expertise includes the influence of epigenetics and diet on health, Lifestyle Medicine, and research on the Whole Person Integrative Eating dietary lifestyle to treat overeating, overweight, and obesity. She and her husband, behavioral scientist Larry Scherwitz, Ph.D., collaborate on research and writing projects.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Riley, D. \u201cIntegrative Nutrition: Food\u2019s Multidimensional Power to Heal,\u201d\u00a0Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing\u00a0<\/em>1, no. 5 (2005): 340\u201341.<\/li>\n
    2. Deborah Kesten,\u00a0Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul: Essentials of Eating for Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Well-Being\u00a0<\/em>(Berkeley, CA: Conari Press, 1997; Amherst, MA: White River Press, 2007).<\/li>\n
    3. Deborah Kesten,\u00a0The Healing Secrets of Food: A Practical Guide for Nourishing Body, Mind, and Soul.\u00a0<\/em>(Novato, CA: New World Library; 2001).<\/li>\n
    4. Larry Scherwitz and Deborah Kesten, \u201cSeven Eating Styles Linked to Overeating, Overweight, and Obesity,\u201d\u00a0Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing\u00a0<\/em>1, no. 5 (2005): 342\u201359.<\/li>\n
    5. Kesten D, Scherwitz L, \u201cWhole Person Integrative Eating: A Program for Treating Overeating, Overweight, and Obesity,\u201d\u00a0Integrative Medicine: A Clinician\u2019s Journal\u00a0<\/em>14,\u00a0<\/em>no. 5 (October\/November 2015): 42-50.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      \u201c[Whole Person Integrative Eating] provides a fresh perspective on our epidemic of overeating, overweight, and obesity\u2026that\u2026could signal a paradigm shift in the field of nutrition.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0. . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":23653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[270,139,286],"class_list":["post-23651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-mfn","tag-mental-health","tag-nutrition","tag-obesity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medfitnetwork.org\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}