My Story
By: Joan Swerdlow-Brandt, MSWCategory: Joan Swerdlow-Brandt, MSW
I began dieting at the age of 8, and by the time I went to one of the first Weight Watchers groups started by Jean Nidetch in a loft in Little Neck, N.Y. as a teenager I had already lost and gained 60 pounds.
By the time I was in my mid 20s I was consumed by the struggle to lose weight and the feelings of shame about being too fat. I was fortunate to discover the book Fat is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach when it came out in 1978 and I immediately created a support group with another psychologist to explore the radical idea that dieting was actually the problem, not the solution. It became obvious that years of dieting had led me to feel deprived and I was caught in the dietâbinge cycle.
I came to understand that there were emotional connections to my overeating and body image issues. With the help of that first wave of anti-dieting approaches, such as The Psychologists Eat Anything Diet by Leonard Pearson, I was able to become a normal eater, lose a healthy amount of weight, and more importantly learn how to keep the pounds off.
We developed The FACE® Weight Loss Program in 1980 to offer the successful strategies and skills that had helped me to become a comfortable eater and maintain my goal weight. Over the years our program has helped thousands of people to permanently restructure their relationship to food and weight.
For some people, it means learning to eat when hungry, stop eating when satisfied, and to examine the emotional connections to food and weight in a safe and supportive environment. For others it means learning to work more sensibly with a structured diet, ultimately making it oneâs own, and avoiding the deprivation-binge cycle.
For those who are severely obese, it may mean helping them decide if weight loss surgery is right for them, and helping them re-develop a new comfortable eating pattern that enhances the success of the surgery. Wherever you are in the weight loss journey, we can help you make the permanent changes you need to in order to live your life fully.
