What Matters

Helping you live a lifestyle of Health and Wellness

Meet Barbara Holtzman:

Barbara L. Holtzman, MSW, LICSW, is a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and lifestyle coach in Providence and Wakefield RI. A graduate of Smith College School for Social Work (1981) and a 2-year hypnotherapy course, she has had extensive training in the mind/body connection and has a personal mindfulness meditation practice. Barbara is a nationally acclaimed speaker and leads workshops at colleges, hospitals, women's expos, wellness centers and professional conferences.

Barbara has a workshop here at All That Matters on July 19 from 6-9pm.
Her workshop is:

Making Peace with Food
& Your Body

here, Barbara shares with us an article found in Oprah Magazine and some insights..

The Non-Diet Approach
Endorsed by Oprah

Barbara: This is an interview with Geneen Roth in the April 2010 Oprah Magazine and her new book, "Women, Food and God" that I think will resonate for you. I share them with you because it helps to hear the information many times and sometimes a different voice will help us "get it." If you are tired of dieting, bingeing, or losing and gaining the same 15 or 50 lbs, Geneen's experience and words of wisdom may help strengthen your intention to finally make peace with food and your body.

"Conquering issues with weight starts with learning to love yourself", Geneen says. 'How would you treat a child who needed your love? Would you just whack them around and just say: 'Wrong! Bad. Look at your thighs, look at your legs'? No. Kindness. Only kindness makes sense. Only kindness ever makes sense."

Note from Barbara: We think we can shame ourselves into taking better care of ourselves, but it doesn't work, does it? We think we have to be perfect to be loved. But don't you love your children, your pets and your friends, even though they're not perfect? Why do you deserve anything less?


"Having issues with weight is always about more than the food." "Your beliefs show up in your relationship with food. So if I'm eating when I'm not hungry, I'm basically saying 'I can't feel these feelings. Life is too much for me."

Barbara: In my newsletters on emotional eating, I've mentioned some practices for coping with feelings without using food (which is also the name of one of the tracks on my CD). We can't give up using food as our main source of pleasure and comfort unless we have others. And, by the way, I have recently added another approach that has been deliciously satisfying - Martha Beck's "Joy Diet." I will share some of her ideas in the next newsletter.

In the article in Oprah's magazine, one of Geneen's students talks about how Geneen's teachings changed her.

" What mostly clicked was recognizing that going to the food wasn't working and that what I was looking for wasn't in the food. So what I was trying to get rid of and what I was trying to not feel, it didn't help to be eating over it... The other thing that clicked was that there was a whole lot of pain there to look at. I needed to look at some of the layers, recognizing some of the beliefs that were keeping me at the weight where I was." 'Those beliefs, she says, were that she wasn't good enough, that nobody liked her and that nobody would accept her the way she was'.


Geneen shares a gem of a recommendation that I think all recovering emotional eaters should write down and keep handy: 'To eat what you want when you're hungry and to feel what you feel when you're not.'

Barbara: Please remember that you developed these belief systems and habits as the best coping strategies you had at the time you started using them. Since you've practiced them for many years, insight alone will not change them. But by having a clear intention, a plan, and compassion for yourself, your new behaviors will eventually become your new 'default setting.' And when you inevitably experience an emotional eating experience, you will get the learning (of what precipitated it and what you needed), forgive yourself and let it go.