"Health at Every Size" is a treatment philosophy rather than a commercial program, Burgard emphasizes, and it differs from so-called "non-dieting" or "intuitive eating" programs in that it encompasses not only food-related decisions, but a wide range of lifestyle choices as well. Launched in the late 1980s by like-minded mental health professionals, medical professionals, fitness experts and "fat activists," the model has percolated into the national consciousness as an approach for anyone who struggles with dieting and weight issues, says psychologist Deb Burgard, PhD, an eating-disorders specialist in Los Altos, Calif., and one of the movement's founders. Hersfeld is one of a growing number of women seeing psychologists and other counselors who use the "Health at Every Size" approach in their practices.
"If someone told me I'd be wearing a bathing suit, I'd have said they were out of their mind," she chuckles. She's also doing exercise she actually enjoys-swimming and walking, instead of forcing herself to go to the gym-and she's wearing a bathing suit for the first time in 30 years, despite having gained a little weight.
"Now, I look at the whole menu and say, 'What do I feel like having?'" "When I used to go into a restaurant, it was always about, 'What can I have that's on this menu?'" she remembers. Today, Hersfeld feels liberated from a confining and boring relationship with food-and feels freer in other parts of her life as well, she says. Called "Health at Every Size," the model emphasizes accepting your body as it is and helps people develop approaches to eating, exercise and social support that promote health and joy. Three years ago, Hersfeld landed in a program, Bodywise in Ann Arbor, Mich., that uses a non-diet approach to optimizing health. She attributes the dieting-and the binging that followed-to her lack of self-acceptance, fueled by an early message from home that she was not OK as she was.
"I tried the 'hot dog, banana and egg' diet, WeightWatchers, the Susan Powter diet-you name it," the 52-year-old retiree recalls. Since she was 7, Susan Hersfeld had tried one diet or another.
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