Many are of the opinion that a program that addresses emotional eating will only resonate with those of the female persuasion. Well, registered dietitian and community wellness facilitator Caroline Le Clair begs to differ. She demonstrated that men also have ‘ah-ha’ moments when introduced to cognitive-behavioural concepts related to the psychology of eating.
“I had a husband attend the Craving Change program who mentioned to me that he couldn’t relate to the program because he didn’t have any issues with his eating behaviours. He said that he was just attending to support his wife. I asked him if there was anything in his life that he wanted to change. Turns out, he is a smoker and wanted to quit. We talked about the cognitive behaviour approach and how the concepts in Craving Change could be used for smoking cessation. A light went on and he totally got it from that point forward.”
“I presented the Craving Change program to a group of male workers. It was part of their Health and Safety Week presentations. I was not sure how the group of men (who do manual labour all day working at a steel mill) were going to take my information. I did the ‘Why do we eat?’ and Types of Hunger activity with them during my presentation. At the end of my presentation, one man told the class that he wasn’t really sure what I was talking about the whole presentation and couldn’t relate until we did that exercise. The ‘Why do we eat?’ activity really opened his eyes to what food means to him and to society in general.”
