Philip Werdell

Author Bio: Philip Werdell, M.A., is a prominent practitioner and writer in the field of food addiction who has worked with over 5000 late-stage food addicts since 1988. He is a graduate of Yale University with postgraduate work in eating disorders at the University of South Florida and adult education at Columbia. At age 46, following a twenty-year career in innovative higher education, Mr. Werdell discovered that he was in an advanced stage of food addiction and spent the next two years...See more

Author Bio: Philip Werdell, M.A., is a prominent practitioner and writer in the field of food addiction who has worked with over 5000 late-stage food addicts since 1988. He is a graduate of Yale University with postgraduate work in eating disorders at the University of South Florida and adult education at Columbia. At age 46, following a twenty-year career in innovative higher education, Mr. Werdell discovered that he was in an advanced stage of food addiction and spent the next two years primarily focused on his own recovery. After two decades in the cycle of gaining weight, losing up to 50 pounds, and then regaining it, he began treating himself in the addiction model and achieved an 80-pound weight loss. Mr. Werdell's first professional position in the field of food addiction was at age 48 for the Glenbeigh Psychiatric Hospital of Tampa as a front-line therapist in a six- to eight-week residential food addiction program. Five years later, he became lead therapist for the outpatient food addiction treatment program of the Rader Institute of Washington in Seattle. When private health insurance companies eliminated reimbursement for residential food addiction programs, Mr. Werdell was asked to develop a fee-for-service program for treatment of Glenbeigh alumni. In the first year, ACORN Food Dependency Recovery Services held 34 weekend retreats up and down the East Coast of the United States. Soon it was discovered that some of those in relapse needed more intense work, so Mr. Werdell developed a five-day residential food addiction workshop which replicated the first days of treatment for those not needing hospitalization or direct medical supervision. Since 1995, the ACORN Primary Intensive(c) has been offered in twenty states, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Mr. Werdell was the key founder of the Food Addiction Institute (FAI), a non-profit organization committed to the mission of healing all food addicts. He helped develop the website foodaddictioninstitute.org and created a three-year experiential Food Addiction Professional Treatment Program. He has written several books on food addiction. His clinical protocol is derived from Mr. Werdell's work at Glenbeigh Psychiatric Hospital and was redesigned by him as part of the ACORN intense five-day workshop. He has been abstinent from his binge foods and maintained his 80-pound weight loss since 1986. See less