Living With Food: The Science Supporting Eating Disorder Treatment

By Mark Warren

Healthline, the online medical resource has recently pub their list of top apps for people with eating disorders. Although we cannot vouch for every app on this list we find it in general to have many useful applications. In particular that we recommend Recovery Record and iCounselor: Eating Disorder. Both of them seem very helpful. Recovery Record uses nutrition record keeping to help you and your therapist work more closely to monitor eating patterns and issues as they arise. It has an app and an online feature that lets you communicate to your therapist in real time. iCounselor: Eating Disorder  is an app that uses both cognitive and dialectical behavioral therapies to help diminish eating disorder thoughts and feelings. There is also an app called Body Beautiful that is more geared towards body image than eating disorders. However it is still very pertinent for many of the clients we work with. As you read through the list please be forewarned that some of the apps listed relate to dieting. These are not apps that we recommend for people with eating disorders, although we understand they may be useful for others. So please take a look at the list, ignore the diet apps, pay attention to the others, and hopefully modern technology can be another piece of helping those with eating disorders find recovery more easily.

Take a look: Top 12 Apps for Eating Disorder Patients 2012

Should you have any questions or comments regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

Contributions by Sarah Emerman

This week’s roundup of eating disorder blog posts and articles include: the celebration of the female athlete at this year’s London Olympics; advice on how to transform a negative body image into a positive one; a look at night eating syndrome and its characteristics; solutions on how to deal with our emotions, rather than food; and a challenge for women to spread the power of kindness.

Olympic Pride
The “Does Every Woman Have an Eating Disorder?” blog celebrates the female athlete at this year’s London Olympic games. The author writes, “More American women made the team than men, and they won their fair share of our nation’s hefty gold medal count.” For the most part, the media focused more on what the athletes’ bodies were capable of doing, rather than how they looked. But, there were a few exceptions. The author asks, “Can we continue to move beyond these inconsequential details in our appreciation of female athleticism?”

The Mirror-Free Bride
Eating Disorder Hope writes, “In a society that’s quick to discriminate and cast judgment, it is no wonder that we are susceptible to finding fault with ourselves.” But one soon-to-be-bride and a recovering anorexic, fought her insecurities about her appearance by vowing to not look at her reflection in a mirror for one year to focus her energies elsewhere. While this may not be feasible to everyone, the blog offers other ways to transform a negative body image into a positive one.

When Binge Eating at Night Might be Night Eating Syndrome
Sumati Gupta, PhD, of New York City’s Cognitive Health Group shares with us a recent study that distinguishes night eating syndrome from other eating disorders. Researchers categorized participants into groups of healthy eaters and those showing signs of an eating disorder. The study found that 1.3 percent met criteria for night eating syndrome. Within that same group, 15 percent of the people met criteria for binge eating, while 10 percent also met criteria for bulimia. She concludes that though night eating syndrome is closely related to binge eating disorder, it may be a unique eating disorder.

Speak Up, Don’t Eat Up
Psychotherapist and author Karen Koenig offers an example about a woman who struggled in her marriage due to an overbearing husband. But as soon as the woman realized her intimidation had less to do with him and more to do with her fears, she took matters into her own hands. Though she felt better getting her feelings out, she turned to food for reregulation. Though this is usual behavior for dysregulated eaters, Koenig offers some better ways to deal with our emotions as adults.  

The Power of Kindness
Renowned author and speaker Jenni Schaefer shares with us a piece her colleague at the Center for Change wrote: “How did we get to this point? This place where it is ok to be a ‘mean girl,’ where the ‘b-word’ is thrown at each other like knives, where we sit in judgment of another woman’s physical appearance.” She challenges women alike to take back what is rightfully theirs — nurturing, compassionate and loving qualities — by righting a wrong and standing up for those who cannot stand for themselves.

If you have any questions or comments regarding this post, or if you spot a great blog or article you think we should share with our readers, please email us at blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

By, Mark Warren

In our conversations about eating disorders we sometimes forget to state the obvious, which is that it’s horrible to have an eating disorder. It is always horrible for the person that has it and the pain of the disorder often extends far past the individual to their family, friends and community. Eating disorders affect everything about us. They affect the way we think, the way we feel, our self image, our experience in our bodies, our minds, and who we are in the world. They destroy our health, our hearts, our brains, and ultimately can take our lives. Eating disorders affect our relationships, school, work, and ability to have the lives we want to have. They are illnesses in the truest sense of the word. They disable us and take our health and well being. Part of the awfulness of having these disorders is that they are not well understood or appreciated for how terrible they are and the pain they cause. Layered into all of this is that the treatment for the disorder often causes more pain. Trying to refeed, stop behaviors, change self image, and work on body image can take us to places that are both painful and frightening. Yet there is no other choice. So what do we do? We find strength from each other, find ways to feed ourselves and make our bodies healthy, and find a community that is healing. We need to believe in and seek out the evidence based care that can help us and trustworthy providers, family, and friends who will be there with us. In Marsha Linehan’s writings she talks about the pain of living in hell and how the only way out of hell is to get on our hands and knees and crawl through the fire until we reach the sunshine. So we acknowledge the pain and acknowledge how awful these disorders can be, but also know that if we keep moving forward we can find the light that will give us our lives back and let us escape the disorder.

Should you have any questions or comments regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

Contributions by Sarah Emerman

We're appreciative of this blog post by Dr. Julie O'Toole from the Kartini Clinic on anorexia and compulsive exercise. An important and informative post for patients, families, and professionals on the difficulty and necessity of addressing this life threatening behavior.

Exercise and the Severely Anorexic Patient

Should you have questions or comments regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org