Craving Change™ is a licensed, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) based program that addresses emotional eating. Delivered by thousands of clinicians across the country, Craving Change empowers individuals to focus on the ‘why’ of their eating behaviours. We conducted phone interviews with the co-founders and co-owners, Colleen Cannon and Wendy Shah, to shed light on Craving Change’s purpose and its prominent impact on others.
Colleen:
“Before meeting Wendy, I had a background as a health psychologist working with people with eating disorders and other serious health conditions. I met Wendy at a Diabetes Hypertension and Cholesterol Centre, where she advised people on implementing long term changes in their eating habits and weight management. Doing so was extremely difficult, because although patients know the information, they struggle to implement it in their daily lives. When I tried to refer such individuals to community based resources for help with eating, there was no one to see them because the distress caused by their eating patterns and relationship with food wasn’t “severe enough” to be considered an eating disorder. A huge proportion of people struggle with their relationship with food, but have no services available to them. Wendy and I realized that what most people wanted to talk about was the marriage between nutrition and psychology – why they eat the way they do. Change could be brought about by the combined efforts of various healthcare professionals, as each of them contributed their own scope of practice and expertise. As the co-founders and co-owners, Wendy and I wrote all the material for the program, and our job is to connect with other allied health professionals and offer this licensed program, as it may help them in their work with their clients.
When we first started talking with colleagues about implementing a program about emotional eating, the feedback was “That sounds great, but people won’t come!”. There was so much shame and guilt talking about “disordered eating”. However, we’re proud to say that they were wrong - our program is a huge success all across Canada and is well received by clinicians in in every province. We have over 50 000 Canadians exposed to our workbook. The isolation, guilt, self-loathing and frustration that people feel towards their eating habits is deeply personal and heartbreaking to hear about; to know that we’ve helped people feel less of that is amazing.
If I could implement one change in the Canadian health care system, it would be to dramatically increase funding for mental health services. Mental health care is currently atrociously underfunded and it is very difficult to access specialized care. The disparity in funding between physical and mental health is very upsetting and the status quo is far from okay.”
Wendy:
“I’ve worked as a dietitian for over 30 years. Before starting Craving Change, I was working with adults who were interested in making changes to their eating to help with a medical condition or to lose weight. I found that connecting them to information on sustaining changes in their eating habits was quite difficult - something in my approach was missing. In addition to learning what, when and how much to eat, these individuals needed a better understanding of why they were eating the way they were. My desire to fill this gap dovetailed perfectly with Colleen’s interest in the psychology of eating. After reviewing the literature together and discussing our clinical experiences, we discovered that there was a way to help people become more aware of why they were having a difficult time making positive change and to help them determine and manage their problematic eating triggers.
We based the Craving Change program on the CBT model to help people change their eating habits by changing their thinking habits. For example, to alter their thought processes in regards to emotional eating and eating at times when they weren’t physically hungry. We worked as a team to develop resources and training to help other health professionals use this approach with their clients.
I love teaching these concepts to individuals when they’re together with others; it’s very powerful when people hear that they’re not alone in struggling with their eating habits. One of the most popular Craving Change activities is to ask individuals to make a list of all the different reasons they eat. In less than 2 minutes, most people have a long list. Then we talk about how each of these reasons could represent one of three types of hunger: stomach hunger, mouth hunger and heart hunger. After going through the lists of why they eat and identifying the types of hunger, we discover that 80% of peoples’ reasons are related to heart hunger. Everyone realizes that a lot of the time, they’re eating when they’re not really physically hungry.
Thus, in my practice, people will leave from an appointment not with a list of healthy snacks, but with strategies for dealing with the underlying circumstances that caused them to eat in a way that doesn’t feel healthy to them. For example, people often eat when they’re bored, upset or frustrated. But not only will they still feel that way after eating, they may now also feel guilty. This negative emotion may trigger more ‘heart hungry’ eating, thus feeding this vicious cycle of problematic eating. Another common reason for eating to fulfill heart hunger is using food as a way to show appreciation, whether it be a husband bringing chocolates to his wife or a mother using candy as a motivator for her child. What we need to realize is that there are lots of other ways to show appreciation, without food. People just resort to food because it's handy, quick and easy. Craving Changes helps people become aware of underlying reasons for and to find other solutions to manage those times when they’re eating to fulfil heart hunger.
One of my goals going forward is to help people develop a healthy relationship with food, early on in life. For instance, one year ago, I self-published a children's’ book that teaches children about the three types of hunger. Moreover, I hope that someday, appointments with dieticians will be covered in the public health care system, because healthy eating is so important for everything. Everyone benefits from learning about healthy eating."
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