 | The Center for Mindful Eating |
We are pleased to introduce our Advisory Council, previous board members who continue to advise, influence and guide the developments, resources and mission of The Center for Mindful Eating.
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Alexis Conason, Psy.D., CEDS is a licensed psychologist and certified eating disorder specialist in private practice in New York City. Her group practice specializes in the treatment of overeating disorders, body image dissatisfaction, and sexual functioning using mindfulness-based interventions. She is the founder of CAROLINE BAERTEN, RD
She is the first certified Mindful Eating, Conscious Living teacher (ME-CL) worldwide and offers additionally Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindful Self-Compassion courses to her clients. Since 2012 she has created an international platform for mindful eating teachers in Europe. In her institute, mindful eating training programs (ME-CL) are facilitated for European healthcare professionals and mentoring in mindful eating is offered through e-coaching. She is part of several research projects where the impact of mindful eating on health, wellbeing and ecology are studied. Caroline’s personal meditation practice is under the guidance of Vietnamese zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh at the European Institute of Applied Buddhism. Caroline’s interest for mindful eating is intimately connected with her passion for the earth and expressed by urban gardening and pottery. In her life and work Caroline encourages mindful food choices based on culinary pleasure, compassion and sustainability. www.me-nu.org (English)
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Caroline Baerten, the founder of MeNu, Centre for Mindful Eating and Nutrition, in the heart of Europe (Brussels). She works as a Mindfulness-based nutritionist/RD, integrative psychotherapist and is also a qualified chef.MEGRETTE FLETCHER, RD
Megrette Fletcher, M.Ed, RD, CDE is a co-founder of The Center for Mindful Eating. She is a co-author of two books, including Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat with Diabetes with Michelle MD, Discover Mindful Eating: A resource of handouts for health professionals, with Frederick Burggraf. Megrette is a professional speaker and spokes person in both the US and UK. She is a dietitian and certified diabetes educator and works in a diabetes clinic.
Jenna Hollenstein, MS, RDN, CDN
Jenna is a nutrition therapist, author, meditation instructor, and speaker based in the Greater New York City area. She helps people struggling with chronic dieting, disordered eating, and poor body image to move toward greater peace, health, and wellness using a combination of mindfulness, meditation, Intuitive Eating, and somatic modalities. Jenna teaches the Meditation Instructor Training Course for Non-Diet Clinicians, a 9-week course that instructs clinicians and practitioners how to teach meditation skillfully and responsibly to those with whom they work. Jenna is the author of five books, including Eat to Love: A Mindful Guide to Transform your Relationship with Food, Body, and Life and Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice. She is a frequent contributor to the Buddhist magazine Lion’s Roar and speaks on topics related to disordered eating, body image, recovery, meditation, and mindfulness. She has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, US News and World Report, Self, Health, Yoga Journal, Mindful, and many more. For more on Jenna go to www.jennahollenstein.com. |
Ronna Kabatznick, Ph.D.
Ronna Kabatznick, Ph.D is a social psychologist specializing in eating, depression and relationships. Dr. Kabatnick helped develop the
behavioral weight management component of the Weight Watchers Program and is the author of two best-selling books: The Zen of Mindful Eating: Ancient Answers to Modern Weight Problems and Who by Water: Reflections of a Tsunami Psychologist.
She has served as a TCME Board member is currently an advisor to TCME.
Ronna Kabatznick, PhD
Dana notte, MS, RD, CD
Dana Notte is a non-diet dietitian and nutrition educator who aims to help people heal their relationship to food, body, and self through non-diet, weight-inclusive, and mindfulness-based approaches. She specializes in working with individuals seeking support to heal from chronic dieting, disordered eating, and eating disorders. Additionally, she actively presents at conferences and professional trainings on topics related to mindful eating and non-diet approaches to care.
Much of her training has been self-guided and on-the-job. She has spent years reading, researching, and attending trainings and conferences related to mindfulness, mindful eating, and weight-inclusive care. She is a former facilitator of the Am I Hungry® Mindful Eating Program and spent several years working for a non-diet, mindfulness-based wellness retreat, where she honed her skills as a nutrition educator, counselor, and mindfulness practitioner.
Dana is now the owner of ThrivInspired Nutrition, a Burlington, VT based nutrition counseling practice offering individual in-person and virtual nutrition counseling services, group workshops and retreats, and community, corporate, and professional speaking services. Dana is also part-time faculty at the University of Vermont where she teaches in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department.
Recognized as an expert in the field, Dana has been quoted in several major publications including TIME, Reader’s Digest, Health, and EatingWell.
Outside of her professional work, you can find Dana in her kitchen experimenting with new ingredients and creating new recipes, with her nose in a Lonely Planet book planning her next international adventure, practicing staying present on the mat at the yoga studio, or enjoying all that the outdoors of VT have to offer.
ALICE J. ROSEN |
Lynn Rossy, Ph.D., is an author and health psychologist who specializes in offering mindfulness-based interventions for mindful eating and living. After spending much of her career at the University of Missouri, she became the Executive Director of Tasting Mindfulness, LLC.
Dr. Amy Sapola, Pharm.D., IFMCP
Dr. Sapola is a Certified Wellness Coach, Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP), and Doctor of Pharmacy with a B.S. in Nutrition. She has also completed a 2-year fellowship with honors in Integrative Medicine from the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM). Dr. Sapola is the Director of Farmacy at The Chef’s Garden in Huron, Ohio, and the owner of Sapola Integrative Wellness, LLC. Farmacy at the Chef’s Garden is about building a greater understanding of how health is impacted by the regenerative agriculture principles we practice here at The Chef's Garden. She works to help guide consumers towards a mindful relationship with food by connecting the benefits of healthy soil, to healthy plants, and ultimately, to healthy people. As a mother of two young children, master gardener, passionate cook, and long-time yogi, Dr. Sapola has an integrative approach to health and wellness both personally and professionally. |
Dr. Amy Sapola is passionate about helping people achieve radiant health through reconnecting with their own intuition, nature, and deep nourishment as well as working on public health issues related to the social determinants of health, soil health, and planetary health.
Sharon A. Suh, Ph.D.
Sharon A. Suh is a Level II certified Mindful Eating-Conscious Living teacher (ME-CL, UC San Diego) and a Professor of Buddhism at Seattle University.
She received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University and is author of: Being Buddhist in a Christian World: Gender and Community (University of Washington Press, 2004); Silver Screen Buddha: Buddhism in Asian and Western Film (Bloomsbury Press, 2015); and Occupy This Body: A Buddhist Memoir (Sumeru Press, 2019).
Her academic work explores racialized trauma experienced by people of color and emphasizes the importance of Trauma-Informed embodiment practices such as meditation and yoga that can increase the capacity for resilience.
She is interested in somatic awareness and the generative possibilities of mindfulness, neuroscience, and trauma-informed yoga for healing.
She served on the Board of Directors of Yoga Behind Bars and has completed the YBB Trauma-Informed Yoga training; Yoga 4 Trauma certification and extensive work in trauma-informed yoga for transcending sexual assault. She teaches barre for fun and lives in Seattle.
You can find her work in mindful eating at www.mindfuleatingmethod.com.
Narmin Virani, RDN, CDCES
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Narmin Virani is a Registered Dietitian who has been in clinical practice since 2003. She worked for 10 years in the cardiac wellness and rehab field at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital where she learned the research and clinical applications of mindfulness meditation. This work led her to start the life-changing practice of meditating herself, and she began integrating it with nutrition counseling to promote a healthy relationship with food.
After that, while working at the University of Massachusetts Memorial Bariatric Center, she continued teaching experiential mindful eating to help her patients heal the anxiety, fear, and guilt around eating that had developed from years of chronic dieting. She moved away from a weight-centric to a weight-inclusive approach after seeing clinical and scientific evidence that chronic dieting led to weight gain and eating disorders in the long term. She witnessed her patients thrive with this approach, and this motivated her to conduct a research study on Intuitive Eating that was published in Bariatric Times, before she decided to leave the bariatric field.
Narmin currently works at Veritas Eating Disorders Hospital (Atlanta), and Nashville Nutrition Partners, a private nutrition counseling practice based on Health At Every Size principles. She is also collaborating with Dr Carolyn Becker of Trinity University on an ongoing research study on food insecurity and eating disorders in bariatric patients.