Diets “work”… Until They Don’t Any radical change with eating or exercise will result in weight loss – for a while. Radical changes can be anything from cutting calories to clean eating to eliminating carbs to drinking shakes to taking supplements to hormone injections to body boot camps to commercial diet [...]
What is stress? Stress is the mental and/or physical tension or strain the body experiences in response to events happening in a person's life. Stress affects our internal organs, like the heart and stomach, and impedes our mental state, emotional reactions, relationships and spirituality. Medical problems, such as heart disease, are stressful in many ways: [...]
One of the most challenging aspects of eating disorders treatment and recovery is dealing with body image. A big reason for this is that the body image expectations depicted in every form of media give the clear message that NO body is acceptable the way it is. So, if the average person without an eating [...]
“Orthorexia Nervosa” is an obsession with eating the “right” foods or the “healthiest” food for the purpose of optimal health. It begins with an enthusiastic interest in following a stringent dietary practice, such as vegetarianism or raw food veganism. It is not that these diets cause orthorexia. Rather, when these practices are taken to extremes, [...]
When To Suspect An Eating Disorder No one ever sets a goal to develop an eating disorder. Eating disorders are typically the result of attempts to be “healthy” that have gone awry. There is also no clear cut delineation between trying to be healthy and the onset of an eating disorder – that fine line [...]
The new year is almost upon us and, of course, we are being inundated with commercials for diet and weight loss products. ‘Start this program’ or ‘take this pill’ are old and uninspiring messages from companies that survive off of the failure of their products – there is something really messed up with that, isn’t [...]
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) was recognized as a diagnosable eating disorder in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the guide to all psychiatric diagnoses, published in May 2013. Prior to this, BED was frequently referred to as ‘compulsive overeating’ or ‘emotional overeating’ and was not recognized as the clinically significant and [...]
Recovering from an eating disorder is a complicated endeavor because of the interplay between genetic predisposition, symptom severity, environmental/lifestyle factors and often, the patient’s ambivalence about changing behaviors they both ‘want’ and hate. I have attended several presentations by Ovidio Bermudez, MD, the Medical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center in [...]
Prior to the understanding we now have about the genetic influence of eating disorders, the impact of sociocultural factors, such as drive for thinness and dieting behavior, were thought to be primary contributors to the development of anorexia and bulimia. We now have a greater understanding that eating disorders are the result of complex interactions [...]
Evidence-based treatment (EBT) has become a hot topic in the field of eating disorders as well as healthcare in general. EBT is defined as interventions, treatments or psychotherapeutic techniques that have been shown to produce therapeutic change when studied in controlled research trials. While the purpose of this article is not to be critical of [...]
