Premorbid History

Mike was careful to point out the connection between some of his poor eating behavior and the demands of his life. It is difficult to escape the impression, however, that his claims about pressures in his life have provided him with a "perfect" cover for poor eating behavior. He said that had to eat fast food for lunch, because he had to hurry from one of his two teaching jobs to the other; he was punishing himself by eating his lunches in the car as he drove. Although he said he liked teaching in spite of the low pay, worries about finances were occupying him. According to him, he ate in times of stress and to escape anxiety.

At several times in the intake interview, Mike emphasized the importance of cultural factors in his life. He comes from a strict Orthodox Jewish background, and today teaches in a religious school. When he was an adolescent, his

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culties through its selection of modifications to the home environment and through the restrictions it places on restaurants' acceptability. Stimulus control comes about through providing clearly discriminable stimulus conditions for proper and improper eating, rather than through attempts to eliminate restricted foods. To have an effective weight loss program requires a compromise with the demands of the real world. Such an approach has definite benefits, of course, because eating habits aquired in an artificial set of circumstances probably would not survive the rigors of real life. The kitchen will be rearranged in a manner that places foods for other family members, particularly snack foods, in unfamiliar locations. The objective is not to trick Mike, who would soon find the foods, but to reconstitute the environment so that it includes new distinctions between permitted and nonpermitted foods. The rearrangement of the kitchen is one way to encourage the client to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate eating. The accommodation of eating at restaurants does not present insurmountable problems. Through preliminary observations we will establish an estimate of the number of times the Mike dines ou
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3808
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)