User:Nkosman/sandbox

Dr. Melissa McCreery

Dr. Melissa McCreery is an American psychologist and emotional eating coach. McCreery obtained Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, as well as part of the Editorial Advisory Board for Weight Loss Success for Lifestyles Magazine. Her programs and publications have been geared towards helping women of all ages successfully tackle overeating by offering an approach that involves creating a better relationship with food, addressing stress in healthier ways, promoting self-love and improvement, and most importantly developing curiosity as to the reason overeating happens to begin with rather than automatically turning to self-judgement.

Dr. McCreery is the founder of the Too Much on Her Plate company. The company's website includes several blog posts, under categories such as Healthy Lifestyle Tips, Motivation, Personal Coaching and so forth, as well as links to other resources about eating disorders. Her website also serves as an introduction to McCreery's book, The Emotional Eating Rescue Plan, published in 2013. The book includes a 28 day plan designed to help women better understand how to nourish their bodies and improve the impact stress has on their eating habits.

McCreery focuses her work on emotional eating, which both stress eating and overeating are forms of. In her own words, McCreery describes emotional eating as any time someone is using food to "cope with a feeling, to change a feeling, to not think about a feeling". However, McCreery also explains that emotional eating isn't inherently negative. It may be the result of celebration, achievement, or an innocent desire for comfort.

Moreover, McCreery has written a lot about how to avoid and address the stress that working women face, emphasizing that it has a strong impact on eating habits and overall health. Through social media platforms like Twitter as well as online blog posts, McCreery provides women with day-to-day tips, using headlines like “3 Decadent Ways to Be More Productive and Less Stressed” and “Use These Tiny Tweaks and Stop Stress Eating” There is much to be said about the links McCreery develops between eating habits and work life. For one, McCreery states that there are three 'O's' that ambush high performing women—overload, overwhelm, and overeating—and warns her readers of how these O's lead to one another: "successful women often buy into the belief that they have to work harder and harder to maintain their success, but if stress and overload are not addressed, and if [null self-care] doesn't find its way into your schedule, you're likely to pay a price. That price often includes exhaustion, frustration, and weight gain". McCreery encourages readers to pay attention to transition times between activities, for these are times when high stress leads people to turn to food to "numb out". Furthermore, McCreery also touches on the consequences of perfectionism, which she believes is a significant root cause of overeating. According to her posts, women should work towards both acknowledging their "inner perfectionist" and separating themselves from it, as doing so contributes to a self-awareness that is crucial to recovering from poor eating habits as it in regards to any other health issue. McCreery recommends that women "create an alternate mantra"—that is, come up with a positive message to tell themselves when this perfectionist comes into mind. Another key aspect to the approach she encourages is understanding the reason one eat's under certain circumstances in the first place, in order better implement strategies to address the issue. Many other psychologists and eating coaches confirm that this is one of the first steps in stopping emotional eating. To guide her readers in doing so, McCreery created the Hidden Hungers Quiz, said to help them use curiosity to control overeating and get more clarity about the power of food in their lives. These are only a few of the many lessons that McCreery has diffused on the web.

McCreery's work and success relies heavily on internet communication. She is able to coach people all over the world via skype or over the phone, and was included in a list of the most most prominent psychologists on Twitter. In addition, McCreery created the Success Soundtrack™, an audio program that requires ten minutes a day and provides listeners with lectures on how to eliminate one's pessimistic and critical mindsets that hinder success. Thus, McCreery's online presence and clear, accessible content makes her a psychologist and mentor that women of all ages can turn to.

Bibliography

Emotional Eating and How to Cope [Expert Interview] - PCOS Diva. (2015, November 17). Retrieved June 01, 2016, from http://pcosdiva.com/2015/11/pcos-diet-emotional-eating/

Psychologist Shares Free Solutions to Overeating, Overload, and Overwhelm. (2011). Retrieved June 07, 2016, from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/psychologist-shares-free-solutions-to-overeating-overload-and-overwhelm-133429798.html

McCreery, M. F. (2013). The emotional eating rescue plan for smart, busy women: Make peace with food, live the life you hunger for. Too Much On Her Plate.

McCreery, D. M. (2015, April 9). The Unexpected Place You're Probably Overeating. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-melissa-mccreery/the-unexpected-place-youre-probably-overeating_b_7019494.html

McCreery, M. (n.d.). Taking on Too Much Can Sabotage the Best of Plans - Connections for Women. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.connectionsforwomen.com/article_details.php?article_id=982

McCreery, D. M. (2015). How to Escape the Mindless Eating Trap. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-melissa-mccreery/5-steps-to-stop-mindless-eating-trap_b_6943276.html

McCreery, D. M. (2015). Emotional Eating, Perfectionism and Not Feeling Good Enough. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-melissa-mccreery/emotional-eating-perfecti_b_6290524.html

McCreery, M. (n.d.). 5 ways to squash your inner perfectionist, before s/he squashes your plan. Retrieved from http://toomuchonherplate.com/