For two decades, Petra Beumer has been coaching and counseling people on “mindful eating,” the principle that in order for people to have a healthy relationship with food, they first need to learn how to regulate their emotions. She teaches her clients how to do this through “re-mothering” themselves, changing their internal dialogue so that they listen and speak to themselves as if they were communicating with a child. Beumer is the founder and owner of the Mindful Eating Institute and has presented on the relationship between stress and food for the American Heart Association. She’s also a regular at guest speaker at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
How did you get into your line of work? I grew up in a working-class family in the town of Duisburg, Germany. Many of my family members were addicted to alcohol and cigarettes, so as a child I had poor role models regarding one’s relationship with their body. I graduated with a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Hamburg and worked as a psychotherapist for many years before I immigrated in 1994 to Santa Barbara, where I began working at local clinics.
Why did you decide to focus on mindful eating? While teaching weight-loss classes, I noticed some clients ate food when they were not physically hungry as a way to manage stress. Even after completing the program, these emotional eaters, or “yo-yo” dieters, struggled to maintain a healthy balance. In my opinion, they needed a more supportive environment to develop lifelong weight-management practices. I thought I could develop a more holistic program with higher success rates, and I have.