2024 Eating Disorder Recovery Resource Roundup

2024 Eating Disorder Recovery Resource Roundup

As we close the chapter on 2024, we have the opportunity to take a few moments to reflect on the last year of eating disorder recovery & treatment and make note of resources available to us for continuing care in 2025.

As awareness of eating disorders and recovery options continue to grow, families, clinicians, and communities are searching for tools and knowledge that prioritize compassion and effective care. Whether you’re considering levels of care for recovery or exploring family based therapy for eating disorder treatments, these conversations have helped shape a community of care we’re excited to take with us into 2025.

Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, or someone in recovery yourself, there’s so much to be aware of and as we learn more together, we strengthen our communities and our possibility for a thriving recovery.

As we move into 2025, these insights can guide us to approach eating disorder recovery with greater intention. They challenge us to prioritize early intervention, understand diverse diagnoses, and advocate for inclusive and accessible care. Whether you’re navigating recovery personally or supporting a loved one, the lessons of 2024 can serve as a foundation for a hopeful and informed new year.

Stay tuned as we build on this momentum in 2025, continuing to explore the complexities of eating disorders and the paths to healing. Let’s enter the new year with renewed purpose and compassion.

Here’s what I wrote about this year:

When Your Loved One Doesn’t Want to Get Better: Understanding Anosognosia in Anorexia Nervosa

“Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by severe food restriction, an intense fear of weight gain, and body image disturbance. Anorexia nervosa affects many individuals of all genders, ages, and identities worldwide.

The consequences of anorexia nervosa can be devastating, both physically and psychologically. However, one of the most challenging aspects of this disorder, particularly for family members and caregivers (and even clinicians!), is the phenomenon known as anosognosia.

What is Anosognosia?

Anosognosia, stemming from the Greek words “nosos” (disease) and “gnosis” (knowledge), refers to a lack of awareness of one’s illness. Anosognosia often can feel and look like denial.

Denial is a defense mechanism and psychological response to avoid dealing with anxiety or other uncomfortable feelings. In contrast, anosognosia in mental health conditions is better described as a lack of awareness of their own condition.”

Understanding ARFID: More Than Picky Eating

“Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder is not just a simple case of picky eating; it is a complex psychological condition that can cause significant nutritional and reduced quality of life, particularly if it endures into adulthood.

Unlike other eating disorders that are often driven by concerns about weight and body image, ARFID is characterized by an avoidance of food based on sensory sensitivity, lack of interest in eating, depressed appetite, and/or fear of adverse consequences such as choking, throwing-up, or an allergic reaction.

Individuals grappling with ARFID may face a persistent difficulty when it comes to eating sufficient quantities or varieties of food. This can stem from deep-seated anxiety, gastrointestinal discomfort, or past negative associations with food.”

Book Review: When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder is a Must-Read

“If you think your child or teen has an eating disorder this is a must read.

Eating disorders can perplex many parents and clinicians alike. Your teen may not be acting like their usual self, and it’s hard to know if this is just normal teenage angst or something more serious. If your teen has an eating disorder, they may have changed greatly right before your eyes: refusing food, feeling anxious around eating, or experiencing changes in mood and energy.

You may have tried several times to talk with them about the importance of eating and try to reassure them that they are not gaining weight. (In fact, they are likely losing weight.) But, your child’s struggles seem to be getting worse not better.

If your teen has not seen a doctor yet about their eating disorder this is the first step to make sure they are medically stable.”

Levels of Care in Eating Disorder Treatment: How to Choose the Right Option

“Levels of care refer to how much support is needed to reduce eating disorder behaviors during treatment. Several levels of care may be utilized throughout treatment for an eating disorder, based on what is necessary for the person in recovery.

Treatment choices can be overwhelming if you or your teen are newly diagnosed with an eating disorder. Residential, day treatment, or outpatient care – what does this all mean?

Levels of care in eating disorder treatment are selected based on many factors including:

  • Medical: This often is the driving factor in selecting the level of care. If you or your teen are medically compromised more care may be needed.
  • Severity of malnutrition: Different levels of care offer varied amounts of support for nutrition rehabilitation.
  • Co-occurring conditions: Often those with eating disorders have other medical or psychological conditions that also need to be treated.
  • Social support: Social support improves mental and physical health. The different levels of care offer varying levels of social support.
  • Motivation”: Most of us want to feel better and be healthy. However, change can feel scary, overwhelming and downright impossible at times. Those who feel more stuck in their eating disorder may need more support to feel like change is possible.
  • Access to care: Proximity to treatment, insurance, and specialty care are all considerations. Virtual treatment by clinicians and treatment programs are being utilized to increase access to care.”

Treating Anorexia Nervosa in Teens: The 5 Tenets of FBT

“Looking at all of the treatment options for anorexia nervosa in teens may feel daunting.

In this article, the focus is on family-based treatment (FBT), one type of treatment for eating disorders that is used for treating anorexia nervosa in teens. In particular, this article discusses the nuances of family-based treatment, which are referred to as the “Tenets of FBT”.

The focus of FBT is to empower you, the parent, to provide nutrition rehabilitation and restore your child back to health with the guidance of a treatment team. FBT is an outpatient treatment that can be used in place of residential treatment or partial hospitalization if your teen is medically stable. That means your teen can stay at home during treatment.

The tenets of Family-Based Therapy guide me as a clinician, and you as a parent, during eating disorder treatment and recovery. When working with families and teens throughout treatment I refer to these guiding principles frequently.”

Can Family-Based Treatment Help My Child Recover from an Eating Disorder?

“If you are a parent or caregiver, desperate to help your child who is struggling with an eating disorder, family-based treatment may be the solution you are searching for.

Often, families come into my office worried sick about their child.

Their child might have lost a lot of weight or been acting “sneaky” around food. Maybe their child has been over-exercising, using laxatives, or throwing up after eating.

Or, they might be worried because their child only eats a small number of foods, or eats a lot of food at once.

Or maybe your child has become an extremely “picky eater”.

On top of that, parents are often terrified because they have heard doctors mention hospitalization and many therapists have turned them away. When they do research online, things look bleak.

No matter their child’s symptoms, when families first come in they are often frantic, frustrated, and feeling powerless. They don’t know what to do.

If you find yourself in a similar boat today, you’re not alone. I have worked with countless families who walk into my office feeling this way. Sadly, there’s a lot of blame put on the parents. All they want for their child is to get better and live a happy life without the constant obsession with food.”

I’ll be back in 2025, writing more about eating disorder recovery, food peace, and weight bias. If there are any topics you want me to cover next year, let me know. You can send me a message here, and you can also follow me on Facebook. Every week, I share resources from myself + other eating disorder experts, so follow if you’re looking for more information.

A graphic that reads "2021: A Year In Review" over a stock photo of some pine branches and gifts wrapped in brown paper, on a red background.

2021: A Year In Review

What a year! 2021 was our second year in a pandemic, and seemed just as chaotic and challenging as 2020 was. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for making it to the end of this year, it certainly hasn’t been easy, but I’m so glad you’re here. This too shall pass, and until it does, I’ll be here to support you virtually to stop feeling out of control and gain a sense of calm in relationship with food and your body

This year, more than ever, people experienced anxiety and burnout. If you’re feeling like you’re running on empty, you’re not alone. I hope you get some quality time to rest and recuperate this season. It’s always important to rest, but with the constant chaos of existence right now you might be feeling the need to slow down more than ever. I encourage you to lean into it!

You’re allowed to have periods of rest, and it’s important to listen to your body when it’s trying to tell you something. Consider this your permission slip to do nothing but self-care for the rest of the year! 

Every year, I like to round up all of my blog posts from the year in one place. It’s fun to look back on the year through these posts, and I hope you find them useful as you work toward peace with food. 

Here’s what I wrote about this year: 

5 Reasons not to Diet in 2021 (or Ever)

“Unless you are taking a break from social media and the news, you most likely have been bombarded with messages about dieting and weight related New Year’s resolutions. Diet programs are promising the magic bullet for good health and weight loss in the New Year.

Maybe this year you are re-thinking your New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you are beginning to notice that dieting is taking up too much space in your life or you are tired of worrying about what you eat or what you look like. It could be you are looking to “get off the diet roller coaster” permanently and heal your relationship with food and your body.

If you are ready to give up dieting, you’re not alone. Consider these five reasons to quit dieting for good.”

Anorexia Nervosa: One Size Does NOT Fit All

“Unfortunately, there are many incorrect assumptions associated with eating disorders. One I see a lot is the assumption that in order to have an eating disorder, particularly anorexia nervosa, one has to have very low body weight. This is simply not true.

Sadly these assumptions block those suffering from eating disorders from getting the life-saving treatment they need. In fact, most people with eating disorders don’t necessarily fit neatly into an eating disorder category.

Eating disorders are more about how the person relates to food, exercise, and body than what a person looks like.”

The Body Image-Eating Disorder Connection

“How we perceive our bodies is influenced by many factors, including family, friends, media, gender identity, culture, and the health-care system, to name a few. Body image is not static. It may change depending on our mood, situation, stage of life, or the season.

The majority of those who suffer with eating disorders have a negative body image. One of the key features of eating disorders is the overvaluation of weight, shape, and eating habits on self-worth.

Self-worth is how and what we think about ourselves. In other words, those who struggle with eating disorders equate much of their self-worth with their ability to control their weight, shape, and eating habits. Having a negative body image often keeps the eating disorder going.”

Maintaining Eating Disorder Recovery as a College Freshman

“College can be a difficult transition for anyone, but if you’re in recovery for an eating disorder, it can be a particularly stressful transition! 

Some of the challenges of maintaining your recovery while returning to school include change in routine, increased demands and independence, and exercise/diet culture. 

Remember: it’s normal for eating disorder symptoms to recur in times of high stress and periods of transition. But by taking time to consider how your recovery will be impacted in this period of transition, you can create a plan to cope with stress and continue with your recovery.”

Why You Should Try Body Acceptance Over Body Positivity

“The idea of body positivity has its roots in fighting diet culture, but the term doesn’t resonate with everyone. After all, feeling positive about your body is a tall order for a lot of people. 

First of all, there is a multi-billion dollar diet industry that uses its considerable resources and influence to convince us all that there is something wrong with our bodies. Feeling insecure about how our bodies look is a surefire way to get us to buy products that will “fix” us. However, consider the idea that there was nothing wrong with your body in the first place. 

People who are chronically ill or disabled might not feel like they can be positive about a body that is constantly in pain or not able to move through the world easily. People who are recovering from eating disorders might not trust their body’s cues or might feel distress when thinking about their bodies. 

Body acceptance might feel like a more attainable goal than body positivity.”

4 Tips for Anyone Who Loves an Adult in Eating Disorder Recovery

“It’s possible for eating disorders to initially develop later in life, not just during adolescence. It’s also possible that adults suffering from an eating disorder developed it during adolescence and never fully recovered.  Life stressors (like a pandemic, for example!) later in life can also cause a relapse of eating disorders.

Eating disorders develop for a variety of reasons including genetics, temperament, gender, and dieting history to name a few.

It is less important why and how the eating disorder developed, and more important to focus on supporting your loved one in their eating disorder recovery.”

A graphic that reads "2021: A Year In Review" over a stock photo of some pine branches and gifts wrapped in brown paper, on a red background.

I’ll be back in 2022, writing more about ED recovery, food peace, and weight bias. If there are any topics you want me to cover next year, let me know. You can send me a message here, and you can also follow me on Facebook. Every week, I share resources from myself + other eating disorder experts, so follow if you’re looking for more information. 

Podcasts to Help Reject the Diet Mentality

Podcasts to Help Reject the Diet Mentality

Although the idea of ‘body positivity’ has become more mainstream in recent years, we’re still firmly stuck in a culture that is obsessed with dieting and thinness. While many semi-savvy companies have hopped on the body posi bandwagon, it’s easy to become disenchanted with the idea of body positivity when it’s advertised to you as a way to sell more products, including diet products (looking at you, WW). Instead of using the words body positivity as a cheap way to lure in new customers, they should focus on the foundations of the fat positivity movement and work toward creating an actual cultural change in the way we view dieting and bodies.  

However, even though the culture at large can be disappointing, there are fantastic resources that you can find with a little digging on the internet. It’s easy to be wary of what you find related to body positivity and anti-diet resources, since the movement has been flooded with people trying to cash in without spreading the actual message of the anti-diet movement. When looking for a trusted resource online, make sure that they mention on their website (hopefully prominently!) that they believe in dismantling diet culture, center larger bodies, and don’t mention weight loss anywhere on their site. Even with those starting points, it can be tricky to find people doing the work sometimes, though. 

If you’re looking for true anti-diet mentality resources, here are some of my favorite podcasts to listen to on the topic: 

Body Kindness® with Rebecca Scritchfield

As the name suggests, the purpose of this podcast is to teach you how to be kind to your body in realistic, gentle ways. As you are probably aware, the preoccupation with diet culture leads us to treat our bodies pretty terribly as a society. We ignore the messages our bodies send. We try to change its shape. Sometimes we let it be hungry. We punish it when it doesn’t look the way we want it to.

Rebecca interviews guests on a wide variety of topics, like diet culture, weight stigma research, fat activism, and the Me Too movement, just to name a few. The mission statement of this podcast is basically “Health is about being kind to your body,” as the Body Kindness® website states, and this podcast will give you permission to be kind and gentle with yourself as you make peace with your body.

FoodPsych® with Christy Harrison

Christy Harrison is a big name in anti-diet circles. She just released a fantastic book called Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating. Christy has been doing anti-diet work for years through her practice and through her podcast, FoodPsych®. Each episode is a conversation with interesting and thoughtful guests, and Christy is a talented interviewer. She uses the podcast to ask her guests about their relationships with food, their own body image, fat acceptance, and recovery from diet culture and eating disorders. This podcast has been going strong since 2013, so there is a massive backlog of episodes to listen to. If you’re ready to dive in to anti-diet culture, FoodPsych® is a fantastic place to start. 

Dietitians Unplugged Podcast with Aaron Flores and Glenys Oyston

Like the podcasters above, Aaron Flores and Glenys Oyston are registered dieticians who use their podcast to focus on health and wellness from an anti-diet perspective. They discuss topics like Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, fat representation in popular culture, thin privilege, and self-care in a larger body. Aaron and Glenys often have guests on the show to talk about a particular topic – past guests have included Jes Baker, Dr. Lindo Bacon, Ragen Chastain, Rebecca Scritchfield, Christy Harrison, and dozens more. This show doesn’t have quite as large of a backlog as the others mentioned, but there are still over 70 episodes to listen to! 

The BodyLove Project with Jessi Haggerty

Finally, the BodyLove Project, hosted by Jessi Haggerty, focuses on discovering what body love means. This is different for everyone! Jessi interviews guests on topics like Health at Every Size®, Intuitive Eating, eating disorder recovery, body image, and mindfulness in each episode, and often dives deeper than just those topics. In each episode, you get to listen in as Jessi and the guest discuss what body love means to them and how it can transform lives in general. This show has almost 70 episodes currently, so there’s plenty to listen to! 

In a culture that is constantly talking about dieting, these podcasts are a wonderful way to tune into a perspective that will uplift and inspire you to abandon diet culture. Each one of these podcasts offers valuable information on diet culture, our relationships to our bodies, and on being kind to ourselves.

Podcasts to Help Reject the Diet Mentality
Podcasts to Help Reject the Diet Mentality

What are your favorite anti-diet podcasts?

2018 Year In Review

2018 Year In Review

As we come into the end of the year, I wanted to reflect on the posts I’ve published here in the last year, so here is 2018 in review!

If you’ve read the blog before or visited my site, you’ll know that my mission is to help people make peace with food & their bodies. My goal is to help people challenged with ED and other food & weight-related concerns to move from constantly worrying about food and their weight to being free to create the lives they want.

This year, I wrote a lot about recovery, intuitive eating, and supporting loved ones with eating disorders, to name a few topics. I’ve compiled every single post from this year, so you can catch up if you missed a post or refresh your memory if you’d like!

Are you already feeling diet culture pressure?

Before the new year, read why you should Forget About Diets To Improve Your Health This Year. Another concept to become familiar with is how Rejecting the Diet Mentality is Key to Healing Your Relationship with Food.

How can you support the people in your life to develop positive body image and/or work through disordered eating?

Here are 5 Surprising Ways to Support Your Loved One with an Eating Disorder and a post especially for Dads: 6 tips to Help your Daughter Develop a Positive Body Image.

Recovery from an eating disorder is not an easy process.

This year I wrote about 4 Tips to Cope with Weight Gain in Recovery from Anorexia Nervosa, Tips to Support Eating Disorder Recovery this Semester, 5 Steps to Reconnect with Exercise in Eating Disorder Recovery, and How to Stay on Track with Eating Disorder Recovery during the Summer: Tips for College Students.

Are you curious about Intuitive Eating?

Here are 3 Important FAQs about Intuitive Eating that you should know.

Recognizing that it’s time to get treatment for your eating disorder is a huge step.

Here are 5 Signs That It Is Time to Get Treatment for Your Eating Disorder.

And finally, a treatment team can make all the difference.

Here are my tips on how Building a Treatment Team to Help You Conquer Your Eating Disorder, and 5 Ways a Dietitian Can Help Reduce Binge Eating.

I hope you have enjoyed all of the posts from this year! Please let me know if there are any topics you would like for me to cover in 2019. If you’re looking for even more resources, make sure you’re following me on Facebook and Pinterest – I share tons of resources from me + other experts in the field on both platforms!

2018 year in review 2018 year in review
2017 year in review

2017 Year in Review

Wow! This year really flew by! Can you believe we’re already at the end of 2017?

 

I’ve covered a bunch of different topics on the blog this year. You can find them here, all in one place. Now, you can look back with me and see everything we covered with ease!  

 

If you’ve been reading for a while, you can revisit some past favorites or refresh your memory on any of the topics that speak to you. If you’re new here, this is a great place to get to know what I’m all about and become familiar with my style. My goal is to work collaboratively with clients to reduce food and weight preoccupation and teach clients to trust their bodies, rather than a diet, to know how to feed themselves.

 

First off, make sure you check out 5 reasons not to diet in 2017!

It’s relevant for every year, not just 2017. Since we’re heading into the season where everyone and their brother will be talking about their New Year’s Resolutions it’s good to have these facts in mind to support you in your choices.

 

Don’t suffer in silence!

The theme for National Eating Disorder Awareness week this year was “It’s Time to Talk About It.” Check out this post for the best place to get started on your journey.

 

Are you ready to break up with dieting?

Learn about what intuitive eating is, and the 10 basic principles that can help you get off the diet roller coaster for good.

 

There are a lot of questions you can ask yourself about your relationship with food.

Do you feel out of control with food? Is the good-bad food trap ruining your relationship with food? Are you an emotional eater?

 

Diet culture is everywhere these days.

It surrounds us on social media, on TV and in movies. It’s even present in the interactions we have with others. It’s important to understand that dieting is hazardous to your health. There are lots of myths and inaccuracies floating around that people use to justify diet culture and that lead to misunderstanding eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Eating disorders don’t just affect teens- they are common in midlife, in people who suffer from anxiety disorders, and can even occur in people who are perfectionists.

 

There is hope.

Eating disorders are treatable, and there are resources available for people who are ready to ditch diet culture. It’s possible to like your body better without having to change it!

 

Let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in 2018. Don’t forget to share your favorite posts with friends and family!

2017 year in review