Working with Clients Who Still Want Weight Loss

Clients often come to us as eating behavior experts not ready for body acceptance or a Health at Every Size® approach. They often assume that if they improve their relationships with food, weight loss will “naturally” occur. How do we help clients who are beginners at body acceptance, and who aren’t sure they are ready to give up a weight loss struggle? How can you invite skeptical clients into a non-weight-control approach to their bodies and well-being, while respecting their agency, autonomy, and lived experience of their bodies?

Learning Objectives:

Following this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Communicate effectively with clients about the efficacy of self-acceptance vs. weight loss approaches to health and well-being.
2. Assist clients to review their own previous weight loss and body acceptance efforts and understand the risks and benefits of self-acceptance vs. weight loss approaches.
3. Develop goal consensus and collaborate with clients using self-acceptance-based approaches to meet clients’ health and wellness goals.

Margit I. Berman, Ph.D., LP (they/them/she/hers) Bio:

Margit I. Berman is currently Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Augsburg University and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and is also a psychologist in private practice. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018) and A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018). She received the 2021 National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology’s President’s Leadership Award for her work developing and launching the Clinical Psychology PsyD Training Program at Augsburg University. She was a recipient of the 2015 Hitchcock Foundation Scholars Career Development award for her research and development of the Accept Yourself! intervention for large-bodied women with depression. She is past chair of the Society for Counseling Psychology’s Section for the Promotion of Psychotherapy Science, and is associate editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology. She is a feminist, cognitive-behavioral therapist who trains and supervises clinicians in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and self-acceptance-based interventions throughout the U.S.