| Current Program Offerings |
Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment
Bariatric Surgery Evaluations
Individual Therapy
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Adjustment Issues
- Substance Use
- Body Image Concerns
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Groups
- Adolescent Group, Tuesdays 5 - 630 PM
- Adult Group, Wednesdays 430 - 6 PM
Yoga Therapy
Adolescent Obesity Prevention
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Comprehensive Psychological Testing
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Greetings!
At MindBodyHealth, we believe in comprehensive treatment for psychological problems and assist with adjunctive services for a variety of medical concerns. We also believe that proactive management of eating, exercise, and attending to relationships can have long lasting impacts on overall health and wellness. In this issue of MindBodyHealth Monthly, we review Intuitive Eating.
Intuitive Eating is a concept that is intended to help individuals create healthy relationships between food, mind, body and health. In practice, it may sound simplistic. However, the basic tenets are often overlooked. Significant problems with relationship to food, maladaptive coping with weight fluctuation, eating disorders, shame/guilt about one's appearance, and general dissatisfaction can occur when intuitive eating is not a principle of everyday life.
The basic premise of Intuitive Eating is to pay attention to your body's hunger cues, rather than focusing on caloric intake or to count grams of carbohydrates, fat or protein. In many ways the basic principles of Intuitive Eating are the direct opposite of dieting which. Intuitive Eating involves learning the distinction between true physical hunger cues and emotional cues, the latter of which drive compulsive eating behaviors such as overeating, binge eating, and choosing unhealthy foods. This process involves making amends with your own beliefs about food, including what food you label as "bad" or "fatty."
Some tips for incorporating Intuitive Eating into your life:
1. Rid the notion that you have to eat at set times with set portions.
2. Think of hunger much like a gas tank, with extremes of Empty and Full. Consider Empty to be a score of 0 and Full to be a score of 10. The goal is to keep your level of satiety between a 3 and 7 at all times, to ensure that you are never completely empty nor completely stuffed.
3. Address when you are eating to cope with stress, pain, sadness, anxiety, or any other emotional reason. Examine if there are other coping skills to address these emotions rather than food.
4. Spend some time exploring your own food beliefs, specifically which labels you give to certain foods that lead to rigid eating behaviors.
5. Stop counting calories, carbohydrates, fat grams etc. Pay attention to your own bodily cues for hunger. Do you notice hunger pangs in your stomach, a drop in energy, or increased irritability when you are hungry?
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| Mindfulness Tip of the Month |
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Mindfulness of Sounds
Spring is a great time of year to pay attention to the changing environment. For many of us, spring is a re-awakening and re-experience of the outdoors. Sounds are a vital aspect of this change process, and hearing is a sense that is often taken for granted. Mindfulness of Sounds can be engaged as a formal exercise 3 days a week for 5 minutes, or simply an experience that you pay closer attention when walking outside, driving, or working in your office. Tips for the formal practice:
1. Find a comfortable setting to sit and allow your eyes to gently close.
2. Spend a moment connecting with your breath, and the changing sensations in your body as you breath in and breath out.
3. Allow the focus of your awareness to shift from sensations in your body to hearing.
4. Bring attention to the ears with a quality of receptiveness.
5. As best you can, be aware of sounds simply as sensations being experienced, rather than focusing on the meaning or implications.
6. There is no need to go looking for sounds, simply be aware of sounds as they arise.
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| About Us |
MindBodyHealth is a health psychology practice located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. We provide comprehensive psychological services from a health, wellness, and mindfulness based perspective. We offer free initial consultation and work with all ages. Please contact us for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!
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