The Sunflower - the free monthly newsletter from Mirasol

Subject line for this newsletter: The Sunflower Newsletter, Apr 20, 2005

The Sunflower - the free monthly newsletter from Mirasol

Mirasol Eating Disorder Recovery Centers Tucson, AZ

April, 20, 2005

Mirasol, the spanish name for sunflower, means “looking at the sun.” In dreams, the sunflower is a symbol of spiritual joy.

-Mary Summer Rain’s Guide to Dream Symbols

In This Issue:

Spring is Here

Top Ten Reasons to Give Up Dieting

For Professionals

Recipe: Mixed Baby Greens with Roasted Pears

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A Letter From Mirasol's Founder and CEO

Spring is here. And in the springtime, if we’re not thinking about wildflowers, baby birds, and warmer days, what is the average woman in western society thinking about? She is thinking about her weight. How is she going to look in a bathing suit and shorts!

Affecting people of all ages, classes and ethnic backgrounds, weight preoccupation is becoming widespread. Chronic dieting is one of many ways that women develop eating disorders. Efforts to acquire the "ideal" body are leading more and more young people, especially women, to diet at the cost of health. Popular feminine images of the 90s put unrealistic demands on today's women, pressuring them to be thin, lean yet large-breasted. Images of modern women equate thinness with power and success, exacerbating the unhealthy preoccupation with dieting. Yo-yo dieting cycle, which often starts in the teen years, may lead to later obesity. Dieting is a way in which people may try to express control, and those with low self-esteem may hope to gain approval through being thin, precariously relying on body size for proof of worthiness rather than on more substantial and enduring qualities.

The following is from one of our favorite eating disorders websites, http://www.gurze.com

Warmly,

Jeanne Rust, M.C., C.P.C. Founder
and CEO Mirasol

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Top Ten Reasons to Give Up Dieting

#10: Diets don't work. Even if you lose weight, you will probably gain it all back, and you might gain back more than you lost.

#9: Diets are expensive. If you didn't buy special diet products, you could save enough to get new clothes, which would improve your outlook right now.

#8: Diets are boring. People on diets talk and think about food and practically nothing else. There's a lot more to life.

#7: Diets don't necessarily improve your health. Like the weight loss, health improvement is temporary. Dieting can actually cause health problems.

#6: Diets don't make you beautiful. Very few people will ever look like models. Glamour is a look, not a size. You don't have to be thin to be attractive.

#5: Diets are not sexy. If you want to be more attractive, take care of your body and your appearance. Feeling healthy makes you look your best

#4: Diets can turn into eating disorders. The obsession to be thin can lead to anorexia, bulimia, bingeing, and compulsive exercising.

#3: Diets can make you afraid of food. Food nourishes and comforts us, and gives us pleasure. Dieting can make food seem like an enemy, and can deprive you of all the positive things about food.

#2: Diets can rob you of energy. If you want to lead a full and active life, you need good nutrition, and enough food to meet your body's needs. And the number one reason to give up dieting.

#1: Learning to love and accept yourself just as you are will give you self-confidence, better health, and a sense of well-being that will last a lifetime.

Copyright 1994 Coucil on Size & Weight Discrimination, Inc. For more information: International No Diet Coalition, PO Box 305, Mt. Marion, NY 12456, or call 914-679-1209. Copying permitted (with copyright intact)

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For Professionals

We’re going to start including a page for the professionals ocassionally in the newsletter. We’re getting quite a few names of professionals on our newletter list. I’m going to offer 5-6 weeks of good interventions that can be used by professionals treating eating disorders. I’d also be thrilled to have some of you professionals write in with some of your favorite interventions that we can share on the newsletter.

One intervention that I’ve found very interesting is...

Motivational Interviewing with Eating Disordered Clients: the Pros and Cons

How can we tell when a client is ready to change; How can we know when she is ready to learn how to be well?

Many individuals with eating disorders typically express, either directly or indirectly, intense ambivalence about change. Many well meaning therapists can fail to fully recognize and articulate the client’s ambivalence and will initiate "action-oriented" interventions (such as increasing dietary intake or reducing the number of times a client purges, etc.) with individuals who are not yet ready to change. Such client-treatment mismatches typically result in clients failing to fully engage in therapy, or to drop out, and/or to relapse, all of which can result in frustration for the client and therapist.

Discovering a client's readiness for change may not be a straightforward task. On one hand clients may be unaware of the extent to which they are ambivalent and consequently may be unable to clearly articulate their readiness for change. On the other hand clients who strongly desire support may feel pressured to express greater readiness for change than they actually feel in order to gain approval and/or access to treatment. Finally, a complication unique to eating disorders is that a client’s feelings of readiness to change may differ by symptom. Determining a client’s readiness for change is not a black or white issue.

Motivational Interviewing, a central part of this work, offers a number of guiding principles for working with individuals who have mixed or negative feelings about change. Many of these are incorporated into the Readiness and Motivation Interview (RMI), 5 a semi-structured interview designed to assess readiness and motivation for change in the eating disorders.

The format of the RMI involves reviewing each symptom of an eating disorder, as defined by the diagnostic questions of the Eating Disorder Examination (Cooper & Fairburn, 1987). Clients are asked to talk about the extent to which they experience each relevant area (i.e., binge eating) as a problem. The therapist then uses follow-up questions to explore why or why not each symptom is (or is not) a problem. In the process, barriers to change are often also identified. A number of other tools have been developed to help clinicians better understand clients' experiences with and feelings about change. For instance, clients can be prompted to write letters to their eating disorder as a friend or as an enemy. This process may identify key themes for the individual, as well as critical barriers to recovery

Another useful clinical tool is to assist clients in identifying the pros and cons of their eating disorder. The therapist can assist the client to generate reasons for and against change. The relative weight of pros and cons of an eating disorder can also be assessed. Assessing readiness for change in the eating disorders is greatly facilitated by a curious, open, nonjudgmental stance by the therapist, in which the therapist makes it clear that there will be no cost to the client for exploring and talking about his or her ambivalence toward change.

In order to facilitate discussions about readiness for change with clients, treatment options that address the needs of clients who are ambivalent about change must be available. The development and validation of such treatments is a critical area for future work.

This model is one that is relatively new in regards to eating disorders treatment. It has been used mostly with substance abuse clients. Even if researchers find that the model has its limitations with eating disorders, it can be a useful way of gathering information about the client and the eating disorder and a useful way with which the therapist can ally herself/himself with the client.

This information is from: Assessing Readiness and Motivation for Change: Challenges and Practical Advice, Eating Disorders Review, 2000, 11, 6.

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The Recipe Section: A Guide to Meaningful Eating

Mixed Baby Greens with Roasted Pears

I’m thinking about Spring – and what comes to mind first of all when I think about food and Spring are fresh, crisp baby greens. Here is a wonderful, simple recipe.

Serves 4-5

4 cups mixed baby greens
2 large pears
1 cup pine nuts
2 large pears
1 tablespoon olive oil or melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Place pine nuts on baking tray and toast in oven till lightly browned, 5-8, min. (Watch to make sure they don’t burn!)

Peel and core the pears, then cut into _ inch cubes. Toss with butter or oil and roast in oven till brown and caramelized – 20 to 30 minutes.

Place greens on serving platter and top with cooled nuts and pears. Serve with vinaigrette dressing.

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