Are you frustrated with the continuing cycle of losing and gaining weight? Do you want to improve your health and happiness?

The Grace A. Dow Memorial Library invites you to join us for a free lecture series entitled, “Redefining Beauty,” presented jointly with Partners in Change: Psychological and Community Services, PLC. According to survey results recently released by the Midland Community Health and Human Services Council, 33 percent of the population is overweight and another 36 percent is considered obese. This series will focus on ways to address dieting to improve your quality of life.

The first lecture, “The Truth About Dieting and Self-Esteem,” will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 11, in the library auditorium. Presenter Rebecca Brumm will explore the effects of yo-yo dieting on both health and self-esteem.

Statistics show that one out of three women and one out of four men are on a diet at any given time. With the diet industry raking in $40 billion a year, it is a highly profitable area of exploitation.

But even with all that dieting, two thirds of dieters regain the weight within a year, the rest within five years. So, are these diets really helping or are they just damaging to health and self-esteem?

This lecture will shed light on how the never-ending diet cycle can lead to unhealthy eating habits, feelings of failure and body dissatisfaction. It will provide alternative ways to think about yourself and how dieting can affect your long-term health.

Expanding on these themes, the second lecture on Thursday, Feb. 25, entitled “Understanding and Overcoming Emotional Eating” will focus on one of the main causes of overeating.

Sometimes the strongest food cravings hit when you’re at your weakest point emotionally. You may turn to food for comfort, either consciously or unconsciously. Emotional eating is often seen as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness.

Major life events or, more commonly, the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt weight-loss efforts. This can lead not only to unhealthy eating habits, like binge eating, but also to unhealthy emotions such as guilt, shame or self-loathing. By learning to recognize these patterns, you can make conscious decisions about avoiding the triggers to emotional eating.

Please join us as we explore ways to deal with the societal and psychological pressures of constant dieting in a healthy and more compassionate way. Check out the Library’s cookbook collection to explore healthy eating ideas and recipes. For further information, contact the Reference Desk at (989) 837-3449 or see our webpage at www.cityofmidlandmi.gov/library.

Jan Martz is a reference librarian at the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library.