ED Bites

In psychology, mindfulness is a really hot topic. It’s everywhere, and plenty of research is showing that it can be helpful in managing anxiety, depression, and many of the other woes of modern living. Not surprisingly, mindfulness has also become extremely popular in the eating disorder field. We need to learn how to “be in [...]

Spend time in an eating disorder treatment center, and you will see some pretty strange stuff go down. Mealtimes, due to the stress-inducing nature of the situation and the presence of food, can bring out some of the most bizarre. We all probably have some amount of unusual food habits, most of which fall into [...]

Hang on to your hats, people, because we have a new eating disorder in town. This one is called “almost anorexia.” Wait…what?!? Do we really need another pseudo-cutesy name for an eating disorder like pregorexia, drunkorexia, brideorexia, and manorexia that (in my opinion) negate the extreme suffering that accompany eating disorders? Also, in my opinion, [...]

In honor of the last day of eating disorders awareness week, I thought I would do a post on what we know about preventing EDs. A lot of what is discussed during the week (besides the obvious “awareness” bit) is how to prevent EDs. So for those of you that don’t have much time to [...]

It seems you can’t go anywhere without seeing “healthy eating,” anti-obesity, weight loss messages. They’re literally everywhere. Besides the magazines in the grocery store checkout lines, Pinterest boards, and mass media, children are receiving lots of these messages in school. More and more schools, it seems, are limiting sweets that can be brought in for [...]

It’s a question I’ve been asked many times: what, exactly, is a binge anyway? Is it eating too much? Eating a lot of food? What? The DSM isn’t necessarily much more helpful. Take the new criteria for Binge Eating Disorder (via Mayo Clinic, as the APA pulled down the draft criteria from their website) that [...]

Of all the mental disorders associated with the military, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is at the top, followed by suicide/depression and addiction. But a number of studies have found that a surprisingly large number of people in the military have eating disorders, at rates that exceed current population estimates. Being a member of the military [...]

My friend Kathleen MacDonald shared this on Facebook earlier today, and she graciously gave me permission to share it on my blog. I hope you enjoy. ‎”So how did you turn things around?” is one of the most common questions I get about my recovery-process. I wish there was an easy/short answer…but there isn’t. (don’t [...]

I’ve engaged in several email and chat conversations with eating disorder patients recently, and one of the things that keeps coming up is that people with eating disorders are frequently labeled “non-compliant” and then kicked out of treatment. My first thought is: so where the hell are the compliant patients?!? I remember discussing medical non-compliance in [...]