Health At Every Size Special Interest Group
The Health at Every Size (HAES) SIG represents the members of the Academy for Eating Disorders who have a particular interest in providing alternatives to traditional weight-focused interventions. The HAES model addresses eating and weight problems across the weight spectrum, and emphasizes quality of life, encouraging pleasurable physical activity, eating attuned to hunger and satiety cues, satisfying interpersonal relationships, and skills to cope with discrimination. The focus is on the day-to-day decisions that lead to an experience of self-care, and an acceptance the weight resulting from a healthy everyday life.
Tenets of the Health at Every Size SIG include:
- Health enhancement—attention to emotional, physical and spiritual well-being without focus on weight loss or achieving a specific “ideal weight”
- Size and self-acceptance—respect and appreciation for the wonderful diversity of body shapes and sizes (including one's own!), rather than the pursuit of an idealized weight or shape
- The pleasure of eating well—eating based on internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite, rather than on external food plans or diets
- The joy of movement—encouraging all physical activities for the associated pleasure and health benefits, rather than following a specific routine of regimented exercise for the primary purpose of weight loss
- An end to weight bias—recognition that body shape, size and/or weight are not evidence of any particular way of eating, level of physical activity, personality, psychological issue or moral character; confirmation that there is beauty and worth in EVERYbody
Annual Meeting 2003
Ellen Shuman led the first AED HAES SIG Meeting at the 2003 Conference in Denver on May 30, 2003.
At the meeting in Denver, participants agreed that the HAES SIG's purposes are to:
- Create a network of professionals interested in HAES
- Share resources and current developments in the field
- Promote research on non-weight loss focused treatments as alternatives to traditional interventions
- Educate the public and other clinicians about HAES interventions
- Collaborate with other SIGs and the broader organization of AED for the purposes of eating disorder prevention in the form of activism, position papers, and workshops at the annual conference
Future Goals and Planned Activities
The overall goal of the HAES SIG is to determine ways that this group might further the above stated agenda, through advocacy, education and support of AED SIG members who are dedicated to doing this important work.
Additional Meetings
We held our second HAES SIG Meeting via teleconference, at 3 p.m. EDT Friday, June 13, 2003. We discussed plans and a format for these regular teleconference meetings.
We also spoke about the 2004 and 2005 AED conferences and how we might contribute to the membership’s knowledge of HAES. We hope to submit a workshop proposal on the application of an HAES model in a clinical setting. Since integration is the theme for 2004, we also plan to contact the Prevention SIG and propose a joint Panel Discussion for 2004.
We’d like to see a keynote, plenary, and/or satellite symposium planned for 2004 or 2005 with health experts like Steven Blair, PED, Director of Research, The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research; Senior Scientific Editor, Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health, and with Glenn Gaesser, Ph.D., University of Virginia, author of Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health, Gurze Books, 2002.
Contact
Ellen Shuman, Executive Director
WellCentered Eating Disorder Treatment Programs
Acoria ED Treatment Center
3414 Edwards Road
Cincinnati, OH 45208
Tel: 513-3217202
E-mail: ellen@wellcentered.com
Deb Burgard, Ph.D.
4966 El Camino Real, Suite 219
Los Altos, CA 94022-1458
Tel: 650-321-2606
E-mail: debburgard@aol.com
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