Presentations by Dr. Karin Kratina

Fat, Facts and Fantasies

The failure rate for dieting is 95 to 98%.  Yet Americans spend over 33 billion each year on dieting...and keep getting fatter as a result.  Most people do not realized that there are two parts to dieting -- the weight loss phase and the recovery phase, which is when food cravings take over and weight regain occurs. Learn why this second phase exists and what to do about it.

Getting Beyond Fear of Food

Is fear of "forbidden foods"  controlling your life?  Do you expend an inordinate amount of energy trying to control food intake?  This presentation will explore the effect of our culture’s view of food on individuals’ attitudes toward themselves and ultimately their health care practices.  Attendees will learn techniques to help move beyond food concerns and toward a more relaxed relationship with food while enhancing health and stabilizing weight.

Feeding the Body While Starving the Soul:  A Look at Food and Weight Issues in American Culture

Health is as much about our attitude as it is about what we eat and the amount of fat on the body.  Unfortunately, in our culture, we look at food and the body in a scientific way...coldly, with distance and distrust.  This leads to negative feelings about eating, as well as about one's body.  In this presentation, current standards of beauty and health will be challenged.  The consequences of dieting will be explored and alternative means of managing weight and wellness will be discussed. Practical suggestions for implementing a new approach will be explored. 

Decoding Food Symbolism: Healing the Client’s Traumatized Relationship with Food and Self

The true voice of individuals with eating problems can often be found in their symptoms.  Eating problems and body image issues can be used as text to decode a client’s relationship with the self and with society.  This experiential workshop seeks to enhance the health care practitioner’s ability to decode messages that lie behind a clients food and weight related behaviors.  Practical suggestions will be offered to utilize this information in the therapeutic process.

 Binge Eating Disorder: Breaking The Chains of Compulsive Eating

Binge Eating Disorder has recently been identified by the American Psychiatric Association.  This workshop will review diagnostic criteria and look at the distinction between BED and compulsive eating.  Treatment strategies will be explored, including the need to separate deprivation-sensitive eating from compulsive eating and issues inherent in food dependency.

 If Diets Don’t Work, What Can I Do?

With growing awareness the diets don’t work, health professional and the public alike seek alternatives to weight management.  One extremely effective alternative is non-restrained, internally-cued eating combined with joyful movement and self-acceptance.  This workshop will teach health care practitioners the specific skills and techniques needed to implement this approach in their practice.

De-Mystifying Diet Confusion: A Look at Weight Loss in Today’s Culture

This workshop will sort through the differences and benefits of various weight loss programs, including non-dieting approaches.  Cultural messages affecting the way the body is viewed will be explored.  The participant will then be led through several techniques to reframe body image and alter eating patterns.

 Women and Disordered Eating: Dealing with the Complexities of Food and Body Image Issues

 Nutrition therapy is an integral component in the treatment of disordered eating.  While basic nutrition counseling skills are effective for most populations, many experts believe that additional skills are needed to effectively treat this population. This workshop will explore the complexities of treatment, and offer specific intervention techniques to be used with clients who suffer from disordered eating. Practical suggestions will be offered to utilize this information in the therapeutic process.  Additionally, the workshop will outline how disordered eating symptoms can be decoded and used as text in counseling sessions to foster understanding of underlying issues and assist in the recovery process.

 Specifically, we will challenge currently held beliefs about body fat standards and dieting; examine the impact of categorizing food as 'good' and 'bad' and the importance of "legalizing" all foods; explore the complexities of HungerWork and it's implementation in practice; outline the decoding and therapeutic use of disordered eating symptoms; review specific counseling techniques; and provide tools and strategies to utilize these counseling strategies in the nutrition therapy process.

 Eating Disorders: Effective Treatment Strategies and Techniques

Anorexia and bulimia are intractable disorders which most find difficult to treat.  Control of symptoms, often the goal of treatment, usually does not work.  This workshop will explore some of the complexities of treatment, and offer specific intervention techniques to be used with clients who suffer from eating disorders.

 Anorexia and bulimia are intractable disorders and difficult to treat.  Control of symptoms, often the goal of treatment, usually does not work.  This workshop will explore some of the complexities of treatment, and offer specific intervention techniques. .....  how to treat individuals suffering from eating disorders, not by eradicating the symptoms, but by using them as allies in treatment.

But It's Just a Game: Female Power and How it is Challenged 'on the Court'

        (or But It's Just a Game: The Female Athlete's Body as Contested Ideological Terrain)

 

In the past 30 years, women have broken through the most exclusively masculine domain of any social institution…sport.  But not without significant resistance. This presentation explores society's response to women's attempts to 'become physical' and looks at the not-so-subtle but easily overlooked ways in which the power of women is undermined and limited.

  

HungerWork: The Art and Science of Transforming Relationship with Food and Eating

Hunger and satiety are physical, cognitive and relational experiences. Responding to these cues is one path to a deeper relationship with self. The act of eating is trivialized in this culture and therefore often overlooked in therapy.  Using lecture, case study and panel discussion, this workshop will explore the physical, cognitive and relational subtleties of HungerWork. 

The Language of Self-Acceptance: Negotiating Life and Work in a Fat-Phobic World

 Many work in the eating disorders field precisely because of their own need to heal their relationship with themselves and their bodies.  The continued willingness to maintain awareness of and explore “body issues” can be challenging in this society; however, to do so most often results in very positive changes in one’s life.  This awareness and exploration provides the opportunity for the caregiver to care for her or himself daily.   This presentation starts with one practitioner’s journey to self-acceptance…exploring obstacles while looking at therapeutic implications…and culminates in the opportunity for participants to explore what it means to live with self-acceptance in this fat-phobic world.

Counseling Techniques That Work: Empowering Your Client to Make the Changes

Dietitians are taught to be the “experts in nutrition” and provide information and advice to the client, who typically takes a passive role.  This can result in non-compliant behavior and a frustrated professional.  With counseling skills, the dietitian can learn about the problem from the client’s point of view, focus on the client’s feelings, and involve the client with strategies to make these changes.  Clients become more receptive to dietary interventions when the dietitian becomes the “expert with people” who happen to have dietary concerns.

Healing for Healers: Finding Joy in Life and Work

When the health care practitioner is out of touch with their own emotional needs or with the peaceful core of inner wisdom, attempts to facilitate therapeutic healing is incomplete at best, and leads to burnout at worst.  This workshop utilizes a framework for healing that spans body, mind, and spirit, thus restoring the psyche - the soul - to psychology.  Skills of relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness will be explored with the intent to develop intuition, maintain energy and feel a deep connection to spirit that will help sustain the practitioner in the face of difficult, and ultimately, rewarding work. 

 Exercise Issues

Too Much of a Good Thing: Compulsive Exercise and the Eating Disorders

        (or The Exercise Fix: When You Can’t Quit Exercising)