Sheryl Canter

Sheryl Canter, the author and designer of this site, earned an M.A. in Counseling from New York University in 1980. For her practicum, she worked at the N.Y.U Counseling Center, and in addition to individual counseling, designed and led support groups for attuned eating. This was a new idea at the time, introduced with Susie Orbach's pivotal book Fat is a Feminist Issue. Sheryl's N.Y.U. workshops were very popular, and also very effective. Participants found relief from the obsession with eating and body size, and also lost weight - including Sheryl who lost 30 pounds and swore off dieting forever.

Sheryl went on to work on a doctorate in Social/Personality Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center, but became entranced with computers while doing her independent research, and left before writing her dissertation to pursue a career in the computer industry. For the next 20 years, she worked as a programmer, editor, and writer, mainly focusing on computer software and technology. In 2002, while still involved in the computer industry, Sheryl returned to her educational roots by starting the Normal Eating Support Group, an online group to help people free themselves from the misery of compulsive eating. The growth of the group led to the launch of the NormalEating.com Web site to describe the basics of Normal Eating. As Sheryl added essays to the Web site, they eventually grew into the Normal Eating book. An expanded version of the Normal Eating book will soon be available in printed form.