413-237-6526
Mindful Awareness Practice Center
Where you can learn and practice Intuitive Eating, meditation, self-compassion
Intuitive Eating
PRIVATE SESSIONS with Leslie Smith Frank, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor
If you're ready to get off the diet roller-coaster, stop obsessing about food, and learn to trust your body, you've come to the right place.
Through support and practice, its possible to for you to enter into a healthy relationship with food and your body—so that you have the energy and mental space to focus on all the other important relationships in your life.
As a certified intuitive eating counselor, I'll help you reclaim your ability to honor your body's individual needs, including hunger, fullness, satisfaction, and pleasure. I bring my training and experience as a physician assistant and certified mindfulness meditation instructor to support you in finding the way to stop dieting forever and develop a balanced approach to food and movement.
We'll work together to identify unhelpful beliefs about food, which will become less problematic as you learn to trust your inner awareness and non-diet nutrition wisdom. You'll be surprised how good you can feel!
WHAT I THINK AND HOW I WORK
Our society is full of conflicting nutrition information and media images depicting impossible standards of beauty. The barrage of diet products is nearly constant, so it's no wonder many people struggle with eating and worry about weight. We live in an incredibly body-negative world that thrives on convincing people their bodies aren't good enough. These marketing tactics serve to keep us caught in a struggle that is very hard to escape. If you're battling these issues, know that you're definitely not the only one.
As we work together, you can learn to recognize and reject diet culture in all its forms, tune out the constant noise about nutrition and health, and tune in to your body's intuitive wisdom about hunger, fullness, movement, and rest. I use the principles of intuitive eating combined with mindfulness practice to help you make peace with food—which means that no diet will ever be suggested nor will I encourage weight loss, whatever your size. Instead, you'll live into authentic health by focusing on your body's needs, not its appearance.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM OUR WORK TOGETHER
In my private counseling program, you'll learn to recognize and challenge harmful beliefs about food and your body. You'll become reacquainted with your body's messages of hunger, fullness and satisfaction with food. As you incorporate compassionate self-talk and behaviors that promote sustainable whole-person health—you'll become more tuned in to emotional well-being and your relationship with food. It will become so much clearer why you choose to eat.
Research shows that when folks learn to meditate, they are more attuned to their body, their emotions and thoughts. This sensitivity can be immensely helpful as you learn to nourishing yourself in an intuitive way. I will support you in beginning or strengthening a meditation practice. People often have preconceptions about what meditation is. You may be surprised to learn that meditation can be done sitting, standing, walking or lying down. Drawing on over 25 years of practice and training in contemplative practice, I can encourage and support you in finding the meditative practices that are best for you, right now.
In sessions that are tailored for your needs, I’ll provide kind support as you move through this process. You'll have access to scientific studies, worksheets and tools to help you recall and build on our work between sessions. If you need additional support, you can access me via email. There is also an amazing online community of Intuitive Eaters that you can join.
When we begin our work together, we’ll get right into exploring how the diet mentality is showing up for you in subtle ways, and how to recognize a mindset of deprivation versus one of self-care and permission.
I’ll help you make peace with even the foods you consider off-limits. Ultimately, you can have any food in the house and not be afraid of losing control.
As you learn to make peace with your body, you may discover that it's possible to be physically active just because it feels good - not to burn calories.
It's quite clear that fat phobia in our society, and especially in medicine, has contributed and may be largely responsible for the weight cycling culture we are living in. The unreasoning fear of fat has led millions of people to deprive themselves of adequate nourishment, thereby sacrificing their mental and physical well-being in the pursuit of weight loss, a goal that is not attainable. Studies demonstrate that 95% of dieters regain the lost weight and often more. So part of the learning will focus on calling out the lies and misinformation that the diet industrial complex ( a $71 billion dollar industry in 2020) is promoting.
Together, we will explore how it's possible to choose nourishing foods without needing willpower or control. You will choose food you actually like! Ones that leave you feeling satisfied and whole. Over time, your relationship with food will become just another aspect of your life, not the obsession it may be now.
This is not an overnight transformation. The habits and patterns of a lifetime can be strong. It's helpful to allow time and patience, as you gently relearn trust in your body. To begin, I suggest allowing a series of 6 sessions, spaced over at least 2 months, to give your mind and body a chance to recalibrate.
If you're wondering about the cost of this work, please go to ABOUT TAB AND CLICK PAYMENT, where your questions will be answered.
I hope you'll be in touch so we can find a time to meet.