For Immediate Release:

Eating is supposed to be enjoyable. For too many, eating represents trouble. People feel guilty if they eat what they ''shouldn't'' and deprived if they eat what they ''should.'' Even young children worry about ''bad'' foods and are afraid to eat. All that guilt-tripping and dithering simply do not work. Roughly half of adults know about MyPyramid, the official dietary guide, but only 5% say they follow it. Only 20% get their five-a-day of fruits and vegetables, and, despite the fact that three-quarters of adults diet, more and more are overweight.

But what does work? Consider becoming a competent eater. Based on revolutionary research on the Satter Eating Competence Model, Ellyn Satter’s newly revised Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Feed, How to Cook (Kelcy Press) is an eating epiphany. Satter concentrates on the how, not the what of eating. Says Satter, ''the secret of feeding a healthy family is to love good food, trust yourself, and share that love and trust with your child.''

Research directed by Pennsylvania State professor Barbara Lohse and originally published in the fall 2007 Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, demontrates strongly that competent eaters feel better about eating, are less likely to be weight-reduction dieters but weigh less, are better nourished, and have lower blood pressures, LDLs (bad cholesterol), and triglycerides, and higher HDLs (good cholesterol). Remarkably, they are also healthier emotionally and socially. Competent eaters feel more effective, are more self-aware and are more trusting and comfortable with themselves and with other people.

The Satter Eating Competence Model has four parts: feeling positive about eating, having regular meals, eating enjoyable food, and eating enough to be satisfied. Satter developed the eating competence model during her decades as a clinical dietitian and psychotherapist specializing in eating disorders. ''I was only able to help when I learned to go along with, rather than fight against, my patient’s creature needs. Eating is, after all, about getting fed. Concentrating on providing rather than depriving made all the difference.

''At first, my patients worried that letting themselves eat enjoyable foods in satisfying amounts would send their eating and weight out of control. Instead, they experienced greater control. Foods you aren’t obligated to eat become enjoyable foods that you eat for pleasure. Foods that aren’t forbidden became ordinary foods that you eat in ordinary ways. Big portions lose their appeal when you know that you don’t have to try to make yourself go hungry in the name of weight control. As my clinical experience and our research demonstrated, people who let their bodies weigh what they do according to their lifestyle and genetic endowment weigh less, not more.''

As Satter says in Secrets, to become competent with your eating, emphasize permission and discipline:

• The permission to choose enjoyable food and eat it in satisfying amounts.
• The discipline to have regular and reliable meals and snacks and to pay attention when you eat them.  

Satter’s practical and effective approach to feeding in her clinical work, lectures, website, and books Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense and Your Child’s Weight: Helping Without Harming, have made her a leading authority on feeding children. Her division of responsibility in feeding, also addressed in Secrets, says that for children to eat and grow well, parents must manage the what, when, and where of feeding and let the child manage the how much and whether of eating. As a parent wrote after ''Satterizing'' her approach to feeding her family, ''The basic idea is so ZEN—stop controlling, stop struggling, stop worrying and you change the very nature of the problem.'' Satter’s groundbreaking approach to eating is just as effective and just as freeing.

For more information about Ellyn Satter and Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family, or to schedule an interview with Ellyn Satter, contact Clio Bushland at clb@kelcypress.com or call 608-663-0759.