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INTRODUCTION TO OUR PROGRAM

This website gives you access to our eating impulse management program and within that, to the EIA. Our approach centers on the practice of systematically processing your impulses rather than more simply hoping to override them by ignoring them.

Participants are guided through the process of building a systematic practice of intercepting eating urges before acting on them impulsively. You will learn how to recognize the specific drivers to each impulse and how to take non-eating action that resolves the urge because it addresses the underlying driver.

The yield from your efforts in our program is a powerful and progressively effective approach to impulse management. As you will see, the large number of people who have adopted this approach swear by it. It really does work.

But this is also a complicated approach which requires an investment of time and focused attention. It works, but is not easy and it is not the approach for everyone. It really does take work - especially over the first few months of being in the program. Simply put, our program requires that you make space in the rhythm of your life - in each day - for paying attention to your impulse management.

FAIR WARNING: If you are looking for a magic bullet or some sort of miracle cure, read no further. This is not the program for you.

WARMEST INVITATION: If you are not put off by the notion that reprograming your patterns of response to your impulses requires an investment of time and guided work, then read on. This may well be the program for you.

ELEMENTS OF OUR PROGRAM

A. BUILDING THE FOUNDATION OF SYSTEMATIC IMPULSE MANAGEMENT: BELIEVING IN PAYING ATTENTION !!

As you will find in the INTRODUCTION section you reach from the top menu bar, we recognize that the practice of paying heightened and systematic attention to eating impulses is rather counter-intuitive for most people. Consequently, a crucial cornerstone of the early work you will be doing with us is restructuring your beliefs so they are in line with the evidence that mastery of your impulses requires consistent, systematic attention. The restructuring is accomplished through a process of identifying your current beliefs (e.g. "I don't have time to devote that much attention to my impulses.") and then challenging those beliefs with solid consideration of the costs of being riddled by these impulses. This process sets the foundation for establishing and affirming what you develop as new beliefs.

B. BUILDING POSITIVE AND EMPATHIC SELF-TALK:

We know from outcome studies on success with self-regulation that people who have a positive and empathic style of encouraging themselves, achieve the finest and most enduring self-regulation. And from the general eating-disorders literature, we know that people who have a harsh and perfectionistic style of talking to themselves have the most seriously dysregulated eating patterns. As a result, a second crucial cornerstone of the work in our program is developing empathic and encouraging self-talk. The restructuring of self-talk is also accomplished through a process of identifying your current self-talk patterns and then deliberately building specific positive self-talk messages that correct the old patterns.

C. INSTALLING AN IMPULSE PROCESSING PROCEDURE - Using the EIA

Regular Use of the EIA

Identifying Triggers

Building and Using Specific Responses to specific Triggers

USING PROBES OF THE DATABASE to bring clarity regarding impulses where the trigger is hard to detect

MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS