For most of my 40+ year career I have dreamed about publishing a book of my own. This dream is coming true! I have worked for the past 2 years assembling and editing an anthology titled Wellness, Not Weight: Health At Every Size and Motivational Interviewing. It will be published by Cognella Press in the fall of 2013. I will announce the publication on my website www.trainingwithdrellen.com, as well as in my monthly newsletter.
The three topics of this book are near and dear to my heart. As a Registered Dietitian, I have spent my career helping people to change their behavior about their health. For about 20 years, I worked as a clinical dietitian and researcher, trying to get people to lose weight. I found that the traditional approach of teaching people diets almost never worked. As I began my doctoral work in 1991, I started to understand that body weight, the number on the scale, was not relevant to an individual’s level of health or wellness. During that time in my career, I was introduced to three sets of concepts that changed my life and my work.
The first is the Health At Every Size (HAES) ideas, which are just as it says. An individual can be healthy at every size, and lower weight does not equal health or wellness. The focus of the work using the HAES ideas with clients is to help them adopt healthy behaviors about their health, without the focus being on weight change. The second set of concepts is a “non-diet” or mindful eating way of relating to food, which dovetails beautifully with HAES. The third set of concepts is contained in Motivational Interviewing (MI), which is an approach to health behavior change counseling. The purpose of MI is to help the other person decide if, when and how they will make changes in their lives.
These 3 ideas are the topics of my new book, which is comprised of three parts. Part One introduces the three central ideas just described, and provides an overview and history of development of each. Part Two includes a series of chapters elaborating on each concept, and discussing the scientific basis for each one as well as its application to special populations such as patients with eating disorders, athletes and children. Part Three is aimed at professionals and the lay public, and offers practical advice and ways of implementing these ideas.
I look forward to having the final publication date, and announcing it here on my blog!
