Food and body image issues heat up summer workshop
Summary: CEDRIC Centre founder, Michelle Morand announces an upcoming workshop for anyone who frequently uses food to cope with stress, teaching important techniques and strategies for finding freedom and peace of mind.


VICTORIA, BC, CANADA, July 01, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Food. It can be a source of sustenance or solace. Yet in today's fast-paced world, many of us turn to food for emotional reasons. Stress levels are much higher than in past generations. Pair that with the endless availability of fast foods, and North America's obsession with weight and you have a recipe for a host of health problems.

"There is so much emphasis right now on body image and diet but no one really stops to 'hear' what people struggling with these issues have to say," says Michelle Morand, founder of CEDRIC Centre for counseling, inc., a Victoria, BC-based counseling centre aimed at supporting people worldwide to heal from their use of food as a coping strategy.

"We're not just talking about people who overeat on occasion when something really stressful happens in their lives - we're referring to people who engage in behaviours that can have a damaging effect on their lives - people whose every thought revolves around body image and food intake," she says.

Even celebrities like Kirstie Alley and Oprah Winfrey continually struggle with weight and body image, despite having every possible health and financial resource available to them, confirming that the issues aren't simply a matter of lack of willpower or genetics. There's something else going on.

"Those who use food to cope have no doubt experienced some form of trauma which triggered the development of and dependence on food and body image focus. It could just as easily have been alcohol, shopping, gambling, drug or sexual addiction," says Morand, quickly setting the record straight that food dependence is not what she would call an eating disorder. "The socially-sanctioned term puts far too negative a tone on the issue, continually surrounding people with the same messages of shame that helped start the cycle in the first place."

Morand says it's not the severity of the trauma or stressor that dictates whether or in what way a person will manifest symptoms, the key factor is the meaning or significance which a person attaches to the stressful situation. "They began using food as a stress response early on in life. I can help them understand why and show them how to change that response to a more life-enhancing one."

So what's the answer? Education, awareness, and a willingness to start the process of self-exploration. And that's what Morand's summer workshop is all about. "The Centre's workshops have an amazingly profound and transformative quality about them," Morand says. Participants will spend three days peeling away the mindset that has kept them stuck and walk away with everything they need to start and maintain the road to recovery.

"A person's health and quality of life suffers greatly when they use food as a well-intentioned but unhealthy coping strategy," says Morand. "Our goal is to help them become free from focusing on food once and for all. And we don't do that by reliving traumas or introducing yet another diet, we do it by giving the necessary information and proven tools to create lasting change."

The CEDRIC Centre's summer workshop is being held July 24-26. In advance of the event, a no-cost Q&A telecall will be held June 30 from 5-6pm PDT (8-9pm EST). Visit: http://www.cedriccentre.com/upcoming-events/ for more information, and to register for the call and the workshop. An early bird price is in available until July 5.

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Press Release Contact Information:

Kathy Smith
CEDRIC Centre for counselling in
Communications Coordinator
307-1005 Broad St.
Victoria, BC
Canada V8W 2A1
Voice: (250) 361-3121
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