Customer Reviews

The Appetite Awareness Workbook: How to Listen to Your Body and Overcome Bingeing, Overeating, and Obsession with Food

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I find this book to be just what I was hoping for! The whole purpose is to help all of us become more aware of our appetites and how we can use that awareness to become healthy eaters. Dr. Craighead and her associates have spent years researching and using this method--not only with their clients, but with themselves as well.

As with any attempt at healthy eating, there is work involved. Just reading this book (or any other book) will not help us lose weight or eat in a more healthy manner. I found this book to be very informative, well laid out and tuned in to the root of the problem for many of us. As I read this book, I realize that I really do not know when I am moderately hungry and when I am moderately full. I also tend to eat while I do other tasks. Therefore the food is not satisfying.

The workbook pages are easy to use if we read the directions carefully. We DO NOT start off keeping a record of the food we eat. We start off learning how to tell if we are moderately hungry and moderately full. What a revelation! The chapters are set up as weekly activities with a specific focus. Each week, the form adds another item to focus on. Each week builds on the one before it. If we try to do it all at once, it won't work. The key word is PROCESS, not instant success. If we expect instant and total success, we are just setting ourselves up for failure again. And if we are looking for a magic weight loss miracle that takes little or no effort, this book is not what you are looking for. I love the weight and body mass index chart and all the related information about healthy weight. This book will benefit those with severe eating disorders as well as those of us who just want to get a better handle on how and why we eat.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about how your own body signals you that it is hungry--both biological hunger and psychological hunger. Do I hope to lose weight? Absolutely! But I know from personal experience that "diets" don't work for the long haul. I am tired of all that. My goal is to learn to listen to my body and take it a step at a time. I truly believe that by following the guidelines in this book, all of us can learn to be aware of our appetites and benefit immensely!

Dr. Craighead, her colleagues and clients have laid the groundwork for all of us to have healthier bodies. Get this book, and go for it!

This book is not a diet plan as such. It is a training manual that helps people who have disordered eating habits (overeating, bingeing, as well as food restriction) learn to recognize their bodies' hunger and satiety signals.

If you are expecting someone to tell you exactly what to eat and when to eat it, this book will probably disappoint. If you are hoping to develop healthier eating habits without having to measure the caloric content of each bite you take for the rest of your life, or perform other obsessive, time-consuming, deprivation-inducing behaviors, if you'd like to eat healthy foods in quantities that are right for your body and actually enjoy the food that you eat, this book might just be the ticket.

I've been working through the first week, and it's a struggle, but I'm already learning a lot about myself and my eating habits. This book is what I was looking for.

I ordered this book in the hopes of it helping me change the way I treat food. It doesn't come close to what I expected.

My first dissapointment was in the setup of the book. It is not designed in an easy to use format. When it said that it was an eight week workbook, I expected it to be divided as such. It is somewhat divided but not in the clear, scheduled way I expected. It is not clear as to when to start different chapters of the book. There is no Week 1, Week 2, etc....

The worksheets might be helpful for some people. They were not for me. You are basically asked to moniter your fullness at each meal/snack on a scale of 1-7. I did not find it clear enough as to how to decide which number you are.

The book says eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. She acknowledges that this is not a simple task. If it were, the book would not be necessary. I found no helpful advice into following that code.

My final dissapointment, and perhaps this is my most important one, was that this book is sold under the unwritten pretense that it will help you lose weight. That if you truly listen to your body that it will tell you when it has had enough and that you will be able to be at a healthy weight for you. If that is what is supposed, and I'm sure that everyone else who ordered this book is under that same assumption, why after all the "learning of the AAT method" is there an Appendix C called the "Weight Loss Window" that sounds like just about every other diet that is out there.

There is a section of "Alternatives for Urges to Eat When Not Hungry"- and what is on the list you ask?
-Take a nap
-dance
-yoga
-go shopping
-take a bath
-do physical activity

Sounds like any magazine with tips for weight loss or any other diet book. If I was willing to do yoga or exercise instead of eating, I wouldn't have ordered this book.

I am very sorry that I wasted money on this book. I don't know what my permanent resolution to weight loss and a healthy lifestyle will be, but this book was another faulty attempt.

This is one of the best books I have ever read about changing eating and the way you think about food. It really teaches you to listen to your body and not all the fad diets out there today. I would recommend this book to anyone with a weight problem that stems from disorderly eating.

Linda Craighead's Appetite Awareness Workbook - in my opinion - is an absolute must for anyone struggling with binge-eating and overeating. Dr. Craighead offers a compassionate yet no-nonsense innovative clinically-proven treatment program.

Moreover, in the opinion of this reviewer, Dr. Craighead offers the Best Opening Paragraph of a self-help-for-overeating book that I have so far come across. Unlike most self-help books, Dr. Craighead's intro offers no cheer-leading feel-good fireworks - but it offers a sobering truth, a truth that a psychological Do-It-Yourselfer cannot afford to be without.

More about it below, but, first, who is Linda W. Craighead?

Dr. Craighead is a professor of psychology and a director of clinical training at the U. of Colorado in Boulder, CO, and a clinical director at La Luna, an outpatient eating disorders clinic in Boulder.

But most importantly, Dr. Craighead is a scientist-practitioner. Her Appetite Awareness Training program (AAT) evolved out years of research. In particular, to provide scientific/empirical support for AAT, Dr. Craighead and her research team conducted and reported on several studies of the AAT protocol. Dr. Craighead writes that their 2002 evaluation of AAT-based individual treatment for women with binge-eating disorder revealed that 80% stopped the pattern of binge-eating by the end of treatment.

80% success rate! Now, that's not just clinical lore or anecdotal data. We are not talking about a book of insights and epiphanies from clinical battle-fields. We are talking about outcome studies that satisfy the methodological rigor of the peer-reviewed scientific journals!

Now: about the Best Opening Paragraph of a self-help-for-overeating book...

Here it is:

"If you picked up this book, you are probably concerned about the way you eat, how much you weigh, and how you look. In today's world, most women are dissatisfied with some part of their body. You may even blame a lot of your life's problems on you weight and shape. You may think, "If I were thinner or had a better shape, I would be happier. Learning to eat in a way that feels natural and comfortable is very valuable; it is the goal of this book and it may allow you to change your weight or shape to a degree. But you are not likely to ever be completely satisfied with how you look, and solving your eating problems is not going to make all your other problems go away. The reality is that changing your weight may make less of a difference than you anticipate. Fortunately, once you start feeling better about the way you eat, you will have more time and energy to focus on changing those aspects of your life that have greater potential to make you a happier and more fulfilled human being."

So... what am I "drooling" over here? You might be wondering: what is really here to applaud? A lot, actually. In comparison to your typical bombastic cheer-leading, this first introductory paragraph might feel like a bucket of ice. And it is: Craighead - in a typical for her book straight-forward manner - takes the unrealistic expectations of a total-life-makeover-via-weight-loss head on. She pulls no punches. She says it as it is: "you are not likely to ever (! - my exclamation sign) be completely satisfied with how you look, and solving your eating problems is not going to make all your other problems go away." Now, that's courage of honesty that can cost you book sales in this wishful-thinking culture of ours.

She goes on say: "The reality is that changing your weight may make less of a difference than you anticipate." Bam! A one-two punch, no less! What a brutally honest role induction: you might have just bought her weight management book and here - right off the bat! - Craighead is telling you that losing the weight will not make you the most popular kid on the block and that you will not be finally discovered by Hollywood and that you will probably not be the first trillionaire on Earth... Brutal, but honest, isn't it?!

She goes on: "once you start feeling better about the way you eat, you will have more time and energy to focus on changing those aspects of your life that have greater potential to make you a happier and more fulfilled human being." No more upper-cuts and left hooks here, just plain sobering wisdom and (!) the beginning of re-prioritization of what this whole weight management self-help business is about. Craighead doesn't promise that "once you lose weight, you will have more time and energy..." Her choice of words is carefully selected here. She says: "once you start feeling better about the way you eat, you will have more time and energy to focus on changing those aspects of your life..." The focus is clearly on ending the obsession with food, on shifting back to the position of eating to live, not living to eat (or living to avoid eating, for that matter).

Clinically, Craighead's workbook is impeccable. She offers an excellent program, one of the very few published consumer-level books that offer a Harm Reduction approach to Emotional Eating that allows you to "reduce binges to mere overeating" and to turn ineffective emotional eating into more effective eating as a coping response to prevent emotional overeating.

Stylistically, in terms of the writing demeanor, Craighead offers a calmly compassionate, rationally wise, no-nonsense, realistic-expectations-only, and, most importantly, honest delivery of the method. If, in your search for a perfect weight-management book, you are not ready for honesty and realistic expectations, if you are still looking for that bombastic cheer-leading "you-can-do-it-with-triple-!!!-signs" kind of book, this one isn't it. But - it is my prediction - it is a book that you will eventually have to buy. As your weight management self-help library grows, perhaps, after you haul off a couple of plastic bags of thumbed through and dog-eared weight loss and diet books to Goodwill, when you are finally off that diet-mentality-high, you will likely boomerang back to this very web-page and "look inside" Craighead's book and probably buy it.

But here you are, prospective reader, in this moment, in this as-always-decisive here-and-now... Why waste a few more years on the feel-good-but-unrealistic-total-life-makeover promises? Why not start the process of change at a reasonable place of moderation? Why keep on looking for the short-cuts that prove at best dead-ends or detours? There's more to life than dieting. So, my recommendation is this: point, click, proceed to checkout, and buy, even if you are not yet ready. I think you will find that Dr. Craighead's Appetite Awareness Training program will prove a strategic addition to your weight management self-help library.

Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
Author of "Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, 2008)

I bought 3 books on this subject this week, and this is the one I wish I hadn't bought. I am so disappointed in this book. I was expecting a true workbook, and there is no real plan in this book. There is a lot of interesting information, some of which is useful, but if I hadn't also bought The Seven Secrets of Slim People, I wouldn't have gotten a plan to actually do the work I need to do to be able to find out when I'm hungry and when I need to stop eating.

Dr. Craighead has set up a system that you can tailor to your own individual needs based on your own disordered eating. We don't all eat the same way and we do not all share the same concerns about eating. Not all overeaters are bingers. Not all people who obsess over food overeat.

A forewarning: this is not a book you sit down and work through week by week. She tells you in the beginning of the book which chapters to address based on your individual concerns with food. It will require a little extra work on your part in that matter, but it'd be impossible to create a linear workbook that would work for all of us, so there's no getting around it.

Her techniques and advice are stellar. It's not easy and she acknowledges it's not going to happen overnight. But overeating and bingeing patterns don't develop overnight and correcting them won't happen overnight either.

This book is slowly changing my life. It is helping me un-obsess about food and eating and how much, etc.. I even feel better about myself and how I look!
The book is a bit hard to read. but chock-full of useful info that really relates to someone who has binge eating disorder (like I did). With this book, at week 3, my binges went from 12 a month to 4. I have also started to lose weight---4 pounds in 2 weeks, just by taking the advice in the workbook and working with each form for however long it takes for me to learn the lesson. I guess one could even say that the eating disorder is just about a thing in my past for me. I wish I had run to this book first!
Give this book a chance, and take as much time as you need to learn each task in the forms provided.
Highly recommended for anyone who ever went, or wants to go, on a diet, or who has an eating disorder
and would like this along with therapy.

I have read many, MANY books on this subject in my search for a path to normal eating and weight loss. As a long-time binger and overeater, my habits have run the gamut from restricting and dieting to full-out compulsive eating. I can say without a doubt, however, that for me this book rises above all the rest.

The author outlines a specific, direct way to learn to give up overeating without enforcing too many "rules" (which I end up using to try and be a "perfect" normal eating...which leads me back to disappointment and bingeing again). She writes about eating in such a rational, logical way that I can't help but follow her suggestions to monitor my appetite with the worksheets provided. If you are a binge eater looking for a way out buy this book - it may very well help you like it is helping me. I'd say the biggest challenge is just getting yourself to actually DO IT, to not just read the book but use the worksheets and follow through. If you do that I can virtually promise that you'll see your eating habits change in a few weeks. Good luck!

I purchased the book for treatment of my clients. Based on my own impression after reading the book and my client' feedback, this book is very reader friendly, and it provided practical advice that help people form good eating habbits naturally. It might be a bit frustrating in the beginning when you try to attend to your internal signal. However, if you keep practicing, especially if you can have a coach or a therapist that guide you through the process in a reasonable pace, good progress is likely made.