About Karen R. Koenig

Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed., is a licensed psychotherapist, motivational speaker and international author who has specialized in the field of compulsive, emotional and restrictive eating for more than 30 years. She received a B.A. from Boston University, an M.Ed. from Antioch College and an M.S.W. from Simmons College School of Social Work. She lives, teaches and practices in Sarasota, Florida.

She is a co-founder of the Greater Boston Collaborative for Body Image and Eating Disorders and a former member of the Professional Advisory Committee of the Multi-service Eating Disorder Association of Massachusetts.

During the past three decades, she has taught and made presentations to venues such as the adult education centers of Sarasota, Florida and Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, Manatee Memorial Hospital, University of South Florida School of Social Work, National Organization for Women, Center for Disordered Eating, Bayside Center for Behavioral Health, Boston Women Communicators, Women on the Scene, American Business Women’s Association, Florida Writer’s Association, Minnesota’s Breast Cancer Awareness Association and Lake Austin Spa.

She has conducted professional trainings for the Multi-service Eating Disorder Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the Massachusetts Dietetic Association, the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, T.W.I.C.E. Educational Seminars, Simmons College School of Social Work and Feeding Ourselves.

Among other publications, her essays and articles have appeared in Social Work Today, Social Work Focus, The Newsletter for the Society for Family Therapy and Research, Positive Change, Attitudes Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The West Roxbury Transcript, Equal Times, and Single Living. She has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Ladies' Home Journal, AARP Online, Women’s Health, Shape, Self, Berner Zeitung and OK magazines. Among three of her books, there are 10 foreign-language translations.

Struggling with food and weight can color your whole life. No matter how successful, talented, brilliant, creative or kind-hearted you are, when you’re obsessed with food and the scale, you never feel quite as happy or successful as you could be. I know, I’ve been there — calorie counting, nibbling and noshing my feelings and the hours away, binge-eating and scale-hopping as if it was the most natural behavior in the world. Which, it is not. Since overcoming my own eating problems more than 30 years ago and acquiring a degree in social work, I’ve been counseling, teaching, coaching and writing about dysregulated eating to turn people just like you into “normal” eaters.