The Food Addiction Workbook: The Coping With Behavioral Addictions Series

Food AddictionThe purpose of The Food Addiction Workbook is to provide helping professionals with cognitive and behavioral assessments, tools, and exercises that can be utilized to treat the root psychological causes of a food addiction. It is designed to help people identify and change negative, unhealthy thoughts and behaviors that may have led to a food addiction. The activities contained in this workbook can assist participants to identify their triggers that can lead to an addiction to food, and teach them ways to overcome and manage those triggers.The Food Addiction Workbook will help participants to help themselves in these ways:· Recognize that they are experiencing an addiction problem.· Reflect and become aware of the behaviors that were part of, and arose from, the addiction.· Build self-esteem in positive capabilities outside of eating.· Understand the triggers for preoccupation with various aspects of eating behavior.· Develop greater self-acceptance and the ability to change ineffective behaviors.· Understand recurring patterns that indicate an addiction to food.· Learn ways to live a new life without the need to obsess about eating food.The Food Addiction Workbook is a practical tool for teachers, counselors, and helping professionals in their work with people affected by an addiction to food. The modules can be used either individually or as part of an integrated curriculum. The facilitator may choose to administer one of the activities with a group or administer some of the assessments over one or more days as a workshop.This workbook contains five separate modules of activity-based handouts that will help participants learn more about themselves and about their addiction to food. These modules serve as avenues for self-reflection and group experiences revolving around topics of importance in the lives of the participants in the group. The activities in this workbook are reproducible. Minor modifications are permitted to suit participants. Copyright is retained by the authors and must be included on reproduced materials.Food Addiction ModulesModule 1: Dealing With CravingsThis module helps participants investigate their eating behaviors and cravings. The module explores why people have cravings, ways to distract themselves from these cravings, healthy substitutes for cravings, and the long-term consequences of binge eating.Module 2: Emotional EatingThis module helps participants to explore why they turn to food when they are feeling a variety of emotions: understand their eating schedule, identify eating triggers, learn effective ways of coping without eating, and learn how to be more mindful while eating.Module 3: Consequences of a Food AddictionThis module helps participants examine the consequences of problem eating behavior, the physical consequences of poor eating habits, their eating behaviors and how they can affect self-esteem, and the ways people who are addicted to food attempt to isolate themselves socially from family and friends.Module 4: Healthy RoutinesThis module helps participants be more mindful of their eating behaviors, rely on exercise to help curb eating behaviors, enhance good sleep behaviors, use physical activity to think less about eating, set goals for effective eating behaviors, and avoid junk food.Module 5: Coping StrategiesThis module helps participants discover ways to cope with their addiction to food by planning healthy ways of shopping for groceries, exploring how they see themselves when they look in the mirror, and identifying people to whom they compare themselves. Read more