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Show Notes - Episode 004

Episode 004

A Roadmap to Key F.E.A.S.T. Resources

In this episode of ‘The Other Side of the Plate,’ host Jenni Gaines provides an in-depth look at crucial resources offered by FEAST, an organization dedicated to supporting families dealing with eating disorders. The episode covers educational programs such as the ‘FEAST 30 Days’ program, the ‘FEAST Caregiver Skills Toolkit,’ and the ‘Family Guide series,’ which provide vital information on managing eating disorders. Jenni also highlights peer support options like caregiver and sibling support groups as well as the ‘Men of FEASTt’ community for male caregivers. The episode aims to offer caregivers actionable insights, emotional support, and a sense of community, emphasizing that they are not alone in their journey.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

01:02 Jenny’s Personal Journey and Key Resources

03:16 FEAST 30 Days Program

08:20 Caregiver Skills Toolkit

12:57 Family Guide Series

15:21 Peer Support Resources

18:57 Online Communities and Email Support

22:59 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

SUPPORT & RESOURCES

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

FEAST website:
https://feast-ed.org/

Resources:

FEAST 30 Days

FEAST 30 Days – Spanish

FEAST Caregiver Skills Toolkit

Using Leverage: A Guide To Promoting Compliance And Striking A Balance Between Compassion And Limits In Eating Disorder Treatment

Getting Started with Refeeding: A Guide to Moving Forward When You’re Not Sure What Comes Next

Caregiver & Sibling Support Group – F.E.A.S.T.

Men of FEAST

Around the Dinner Table Forum

Around the Dinner Table-Facebook group

Email Support:

Full Transcript - Episode 004

Episode 004 – A Roadmap to Key FEAST Resources

A conversation with Jenni Gaines from FEAST

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Host:
Welcome to The Other Side of the Plate, brought to you by FEAST—Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders… Together we’ll share personal insights, connect you with professionals, and point you toward helpful resources. And as we say at FEAST: We’re here because we’ve been there.

NOTE:
The content contained in this podcast is not a substitute
for professional or medical treatment, and it may not represent
the views and beliefs of FEAST. Always consult a medical
professional for medical advice and treatment recommendations.

Jenni:
Hi everyone, it’s Jenni, one of your co-hosts for the Other Side of the Plate podcast. If you’re a parent or caregiver supporting someone with an eating disorder, chances are you’ve felt overwhelmed and scared and just plain exhausted. I understand because I’ve been there. I remember a time when I wished that someone would help me find the information and support that I needed.

I had no idea what a steep learning curve I had ahead of me, and I didn’t know enough to know what exactly I needed as far as knowledge and support. So if you’re caring for a loved one with an eating disorder and you aren’t sure where to look for resources or even what resources might be useful, this episode is for you.

Today I’m sharing some of the key resources that F.E.A.S.T. offers, including educational programs and peer support services, so you’ll know where to turn when you need information, support, and insight. Links to everything I mention will be in the show notes. Okay, let’s take a look at some of the F.E.A.S.T. resources now and what they have to offer.

For me, I know in the beginning I was really concerned with finding reliable information, and yet I had no way of knowing if the information I was finding when I was searching was anything that I could actually rely on. I remember spending countless hours searching for information about eating disorders and how to help my daughter.

Luckily, F.E.A.S.T. has created resources for parents like me and like you who need education and support, now. These resources are for parents and caregivers who need a lifeline in this storm. The transformative educational and peer support resources at F.E.A.S.T. were created to educate, empower, and help parents and caregivers feel connected with the community that truly gets it.

In the beginning, it is so hard to know what you even need to know. The F.E.A.S.T. website is a great place to start: feast-ed.org. You can find all of our educational programs and peer support services there, along with blog posts, upcoming and past webinars, answers to frequently asked questions, and more. Let’s take a look at some of the F.E.A.S.T. resources a little more closely.

F.E.A.S.T. has done such an amazing job creating some really practical, structured resources for caregivers. I’d like to start by highlighting three of our educational resources, and those are F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days, the F.E.A.S.T. Caregiver Skills Toolkit, and our Family Guide series. These three educational resources take complex concepts and make them something that caregivers can take and actually start using today.

I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days in previous podcast episodes. I consider it F.E.A.S.T.’s flagship program. You might be wondering, what do you get when you register for F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days? First of all, you can register at no cost. The program consists of 30 lessons that arrive by email to help you build knowledge and confidence one day at a time, along with resources on each topic to go deeper.

I wanna give you a little bit of an idea of what some of those topics are. You get lessons on mealtime strategies, dealing with extreme behaviors, the genetics of eating disorders, how eating disorders affect the brain, and one of my favorites, what to expect when your child has an eating disorder. Those are just some of the 30 topics that you’ll get.

And something before I forget, I wanna let you know if there’s a certain topic you’re really looking for and you don’t wanna wait, you’re able to advance to the next lesson at the bottom of each one of your emails. So you could actually read all 30 lessons in one day if you wanted to. Also, F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days is now available in Spanish.

Let’s go back and look a little bit closer at Day 12, which is “What to Expect When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder.” I wanna bring this one to your attention because it describes three concepts that I wasn’t familiar with when I started my caregiver journey. The three concepts we’ll look at now are: one, recovery isn’t linear; number two, there will be resistance to treatment; and number three, there isn’t a set time for recovery.

I’ll go a little bit more into detail. We’ll start with “recovery isn’t linear.” In fact, I would describe recovery as messy. I didn’t know in the beginning that it wasn’t a straight line through treatment to recovery. If I were to describe it, instead of calling it a straight line, I would call it a very squiggly line at that. And there were some setbacks. It’s even normal to have relapses in the course of eating disorder recovery.

Concept number two: “there will be resistance to treatment.” I had the idea going in that something must be wrong because my daughter doesn’t wanna get well. Once I understood that it was okay to begin treatment even without her being motivated and that nothing had gone wrong, it really helped me to move forward.

Also, “there isn’t a set time for recovery.” I think all of us wanna know when we start this process, how long is this going to take? And truly what I found out, and what F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days will help everyone understand, is that it’s going to be an individual journey for each person and for each family.

So you can probably tell that I highly recommend F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days.

The next educational resource that I want to highlight is the F.E.A.S.T. Caregiver Skills Toolkit. F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days gives you the what—all the information you need—and the Caregiver Skills Toolkit gives you the how. It is packed with skills that will give you what you need to know on how to manage many of the challenging situations you’ll face.

It’s a series of 26 videos, each about seven or eight minutes long, delivered by eating disorder experts who provide easy-to-apply skills. The toolkit contains five main categories of skills: Mealtime Skills, Boundary Setting Skills, Distress Tolerance Skills, Emotional Management Skills, and Crisis and Medical Intervention Skills.

Let’s look at each category. Under Mealtime Skills, you’ll learn how to use the magic plate method, how to prompt your person to eat, and how to expose fear foods. Under Boundary Setting, you’ll learn how to avoid accommodating the eating disorder and how to use leverage.

Distress Tolerance Skills are next, and there are eight different videos. I would say from my experience, these are one of the most important sets of skills you can learn. My natural instincts as a parent were to do a lot of things that are not helpful with eating disorders. I had to learn new skills. Some of the skills in the toolkit are how to practice radical acceptance, how to use validation and holding firm, how to use distraction, and one of my favorites, how to use the broken record technique.

The broken record technique is really interesting because when you first hear about it, it sounds so simple. It doesn’t seem like it could possibly be effective, but once you learn it, it’s amazing how much it helps. It can help you stay calm and firm, it eliminates the need to come up with the right thing to say, and it provides you with a plan of action when it’s hard to know how to handle resistance. Just like any of these skills, I learned that I had to practice them. But it gets easier over time.

Under Emotional Management Skills, you’ll learn how to decode bad body thoughts and respond to hopelessness. Under Crisis and Medical Intervention Skills, you’ll learn how to be an effective medical advocate and how to deal with suicidality.

In addition to those, another educational resource I want to talk about is our Family Guide series. We have guides on multiple topics, but the two newest are on the topics of Getting Started with Refeeding and Using Leverage. Both are designed to give caregivers concrete steps and confidence.

Here’s an excerpt from the Family Guide on Getting Started with Refeeding: “People with eating disorders don’t choose this path. It is something that happens to them. They often do not know what is happening, and they have little to no insight about what is happening. They can’t, quote, ‘just eat’ or make scary thoughts go away.” I really love that excerpt because it shows the perspective of the person with the eating disorder.

And here is a little bit from F.E.A.S.T.’s Family Guide on Using Leverage: “When your loved ones have to choose between their eating disorder and other important things in life, they grow stronger and the eating disorder weakens. Fighting for something and/or avoiding a negative consequence gives your loved ones permission to eat and comply with treatment, even when the eating disorder voice bullies them not to.” I think that’s a really powerful statement. This guide really helps you see your child and see how you are helping them by using leverage.

After those educational resources, I’d love to move on to the wonderful peer support resources that F.E.A.S.T. offers. You just need to talk to someone who’s been there.

First, we’ll start with the free online virtual support groups. F.E.A.S.T. partners with ANAD to provide caregiver support groups twice weekly on Monday evenings and Thursday afternoons, US time. These support groups are 75 minutes long, and they’re led by trained volunteers with lived experience. I’m one of the leaders, and many times we get the feedback that when someone attends, they feel less alone, less isolated, and more hopeful.

In addition, we also partner with ANAD to provide free sibling support groups. These are just for siblings, for ages 13 and up, and they’re led by their peers. Some siblings say that the sibling support group is the first place they felt seen and heard since their sibling’s eating disorder.

And for dads, partners, and other male caregivers, there are the Men of F.E.A.S.T. groups. These are offered twice monthly. The goal is to provide a safe space for men to share their experiences, access resources, and truly support one another.

If you’re looking for group peer support, but support groups aren’t for you, F.E.A.S.T. has other offerings. Our online peer support communities may be a better fit. We have two: the Around the Dinner Table Forum and our very active Facebook group.

The Around the Dinner Table Forum has been a vital community for many families. It’s a moderated online group that you can join, and it’s available worldwide. It was amazing because, honestly, I didn’t even post on the forum, and yet it was a lifeline for me. I was able to go in, read questions and responses, and it was as if I myself had asked the questions.

And if you enjoy a faster-paced group, our Facebook group is a really active space where you can connect with many other caregivers. This group has over 7,500 members. To give you an idea of how helpful this Facebook group can be, I’d love to share some recent feedback that was posted: “This is by far the most supportive, kind, and helpful group I’ve ever seen on Facebook. Thank you for all those brave enough to share.”

And if support groups and online communities aren’t quite what you’re looking for, I’d like to highlight one more of F.E.A.S.T.’s key peer support resources. F.E.A.S.T. has an amazing email support team. That’s a group of trained volunteers who can respond to your questions with encouragement and guidance. Please email our parent support team. I’ll make sure to put that email address in the show notes.

We started out today’s episode, and I talked about how overwhelming it can be. I hope that while you were listening, one or more of the educational programs or peer support services stood out to you. No matter the age of your loved one, their diagnosis, or where you live in the world, F.E.A.S.T. is here for you.

Caring for someone with an eating disorder is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. The good news is you don’t have to do it alone. Every resource at F.E.A.S.T. exists to support you and your family. You can find links to all of the resources I mentioned today in the show notes, and if you know another caregiver who could use these resources, please share this episode with them.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll join us for our next episode where Laura and I will have a conversation with Judy Krasna, Executive Director of F.E.A.S.T. and expert by experience.

Show Notes - Episode 003

Episode 003

What to Tell Family and Friends About Your Loved One’s Eating Disorder

In this episode of The Other Side of the Plate, hosts Jenni and Laura discuss the complex topic of how to inform family and friends about a loved one’s eating disorder diagnosis. Drawing from their personal experiences, they outline the pros and cons of sharing the diagnosis, setting boundaries, and managing privacy versus support needs. The hosts also provide practical suggestions for navigating these conversations and emphasize the importance of finding supportive communities. They conclude by reminding listeners that eating disorders are treatable and that they are not alone in this journey.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

01:05 Navigating the Diagnosis: What to Tell Family and Friends

03:50 Pros and Cons of Sharing the Diagnosis

06:58 Personal Experiences and Lessons Learned

09:49 Setting Boundaries and Asking for Support

21:56 Cultural Considerations and Finding Support

26:01 Returning to School: Preparing Your Child

28:17 Final Thoughts and Resources

SUPPORT & RESOURCES

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

FEAST 30 Days – F.E.A.S.T.

ATDTfb – Eating Disorder Family and Carer Support | Facebook

F.E.A.S.T’s Around The Dinner Table forum

Caregiver & Sibling Support Group – F.E.A.S.T.

Men of FEAST – F.E.A.S.T.

Full Transcript - Episode 003

Episode 003 – What to Tell Family and Friends About Your Loved One’s Eating Disorder

A conversation with Jenni Gaines and Laura Cohen from FEAST

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jenni: Hi everyone. We are excited today to bring you a topic that both Laura and I have navigated on our daughter’s eating disorder journeys, and it’s something that everyone who has a loved one who’s been diagnosed with an eating disorder will have to face. And that topic is what to tell family and friends.

When your loved one is diagnosed with an eating disorder, whether it’s your child or another loved one, and when the diagnosis comes, it feels like your world’s been turned upside down and the people that you would normally turn to for support—your friends and family—since they don’t know a whole lot about eating disorders, and you’re maybe thinking about how do I protect my loved one in case there’s any stigma involved? It makes getting their support a little bit more complicated. And so we’re hoping today through this podcast that we can bring you some information and share our lived experience and make this a little bit easier for you because almost everything with eating disorders, there aren’t really clear answers, and it’s something you have to figure out for yourself, different for every family, and different for every individual.

Today we’ll talk about the pros and cons of sharing your child or your loved one’s diagnosis with friends and family or others. We’re going to talk about how to decide who to tell and what to say in those situations, and then also how much do you consider your child’s perspective on this if they don’t want anyone to know? How do you manage that? Setting boundaries and asking for support. Another really important thing when it comes to telling family and friends about the diagnosis, and then we’re going to share some personal experiences and some lessons that we learned along the way.

Laura: Thanks Jenni, so much for getting us started. So we want to talk about, and in practice I did this so much—who to tell, who not to tell. These conversations always came up. And some of the big questions that I want you all to start thinking about is, thinking about your loved one’s eating disorder. Do you want to keep it private to protect your child from—and I put heavy air quotes around—stigma? Who needs to know this and who should know about your child’s diagnosis? How much information is too much information, and it’s really important that we stress that there’s no easy answers. Every family is going to navigate this decision differently. I could speak to a hundred families and everybody does it a

Jenni:
Hi everyone. We are excited today to bring you a topic that both Laura and I have navigated on our daughter’s eating disorder journeys, and it’s something that everyone who has a loved one who’s been diagnosed with an eating disorder will have to face. And that topic is what to tell family and friends.

When your loved one is diagnosed with an eating disorder, whether it’s your child or another loved one, and when the diagnosis comes, it feels like your world’s been turned upside down and the people that you would normally turn to for support—your friends and family—since they don’t know a whole lot about eating disorders, and you’re maybe thinking about how do I protect my loved one in case there’s any stigma involved? It makes getting their support a little bit more complicated. And so we’re hoping today through this podcast that we can bring you some information and share our lived experience and make this a little bit easier for you because like almost everything with eating disorders, there aren’t really clear answers, and it’s something you have to figure out for yourself, different for every family, and different for every individual.

Laura:
Thanks Jenni, so much for getting us started. So we want to talk about, and in practice I did this so much—who to tell, who not to tell. These conversations always came up. And some of the big questions that I want you all to start thinking about is, thinking about your loved one’s eating disorder. Do you want to keep it private to protect your child from—and I put heavy air quotes around—stigma? Who needs to know this and who should know about your child’s diagnosis? How much information is too much information, and it’s really important that we stress that there’s no easy answers. Every family is going to navigate this decision differently. I could speak to a hundred families and everybody does it a little bit differently, and it’s definitely a topic that comes up all the time. So I’m hoping that we can really help give you all some support so we could talk about the pros and cons of sharing the diagnosis.

I think the biggest pro is you will be on an island if you don’t have support around you. Eating disorder treatment, recovery, the whole journey is very isolating, especially not only to the person suffering, but to the family. So one of the pros of sharing and being public, and we can talk about who you should share this with, is to really give some emotional support to you and your family. I’ve worked with caregivers that have told nobody. Sometimes I’m the only one that’s supporting them, and that’s really challenging.

Also just the practicality of it. It’s helping with meals, childcare, transportation. It’s having another set of hands and that’s so important when you’re in the trenches and there’s just no time for anything and no one can help you if they don’t know what’s going on. Also, one of my biggest things is educating others in really trying to reduce the stigma. What I would say over and over again, often daily in practice, was if your loved one had cancer or—I don’t like to use the cancer diagnosis, but it usually is one that people can relate to a little bit better—or any other life threatening illness, would you not share that with people? Chances are that, you know, someone whose loved one has had cancer, again, I’m using cancer. I hope that’s not triggering to anybody or any life altering illness and you’ll see a meal train and you’ll see the whole community come together. They’ll put on a 5K, so many different things. And with eating disorders, people like to keep that a secret. And there’s truly no difference between the two. So really talking about reducing that stigma is so important.

But what are the cons? Well, let’s be real. We talked about the stigma, but there still is that risk of someone judging and having stigma. I’d like to say that there won’t be, and that’s a reality. But I wouldn’t tell someone not to share because of that. I think education is what comes with that. It also makes it easier for the next person to be able to share. It’s also risking judgment. People are judgmental. There’s nothing we can do about that. Again, education and experience helps with that. And then there are a lot of people there just going to give you unhelpful comments and we can talk about that a little bit too.

Often people have a misunderstanding of what eating disorders really are. And there always is your child has a right to their privacy and telling people can invade their privacy. I would argue that in a lot of cases that it’s again, the pros and the cons, what’s going to outweigh each other. So that’s a little bit of our pros and cons. And I know Jenni was going to get into a little bit about how we handle things.

Jenni:
Yeah. Thank you Laura. Just highlighting when you’re talking about pros and cons, just how hard it is to really figure out how to go about doing this. There’s not a right or wrong way. And so again, on this journey, it’s a matter of just kind of deciding what are your values? What’s most important to you? How can you manage this in a way that is the most beneficial to you and your family? And we can share, you and I, Laura, can share kind of some of our experience and hopefully it will illustrate some examples of how different it can be.

What I think of first, you said meal train. I am a very private person. My friends who know me really well know if anyone is in the hospital in my family, or I’m going through anything, do not do a meal train for me. Okay? I know what not to do. I don’t know. I just have a thing about it, it just feels really personal to me and so this is something that I chose to tell people who very much wanted to help me. I said, here’s something you can do and here’s something that I would prefer that you not do. And so I think that’s what we have to do. People don’t know about eating disorders. They don’t understand them. They don’t know if it’s okay to talk about it or not. And so we, even though we are going through all this stress, we have to step in and kind of tell them what we need and what we want.

And I chose during my daughter’s eating disorder to tell my main friend group that I wasn’t going to be involved and I wasn’t going to be doing anything for a little while. And all I told them was, my daughter’s been diagnosed with an eating disorder and I am focusing on her recovery. I’ll let you know when I’m coming back. That was what worked for me. That was a personal choice. And they honored that and someone else might want their friends to come in closer during that time. So it just depends on you.

Extended family can be a challenge too, because at least in my extended family, I so much wanted to lean on them, but I also almost felt I needed to protect them from what I was going through. And they also didn’t know much about eating disorders, and so I didn’t want to open up the chance that maybe a lot of wrong things would be said. And so for that first holiday season, we chose to stay home and not go traditionally like we do to my mom and dad’s house for the holidays. And that was just for a way to take care of myself and that’s what I needed at that time. And so we’re considering our loved one here, but we’re also considering ourselves. Self-care comes up a lot around eating disorders and you can have a broad interpretation of what that means. For me, it meant not making it more stressful than it already was.

And there’s sometimes necessity in telling. You may be looking at who cares about my daughter the most? Who do I trust the most? But there were a couple of key people in my daughter’s world that I felt needed to know and I had to weigh the costs and benefits of, is it better to tell them or not tell them? And the specific example I’m going to use is my daughter’s artistic director for her ballet company. She was already scheduled to be in some performances and so I needed to share with her that she wasn’t going to be able to perform in those. And I did not know how long she was going to be out. And again, I gave a minimal amount of information there.

Also during this time, if people know, they may say some unhelpful things. Even the most well-intentioned and loving people will step into it and say the wrong things. Their very first one that I heard was from a very close family member saying, you know, what do you mean she has anorexia? She’s too smart to let that happen. That was hard. That was hard to hear. And it was shocking. And I realized I’m still getting educated about eating disorders. I’m learning that they’re not a choice, that they’re not anyone’s fault, that they’re genetic. So I can’t expect other people to understand eating disorders. So I learned to just let those roll off of me, and not take it personally and not—those are just some of my lived experiences.

Laura:
Yeah, I had a lot of those. Thanks for sharing that, Jenni. I had a lot of similar things right from the get go. I said to my daughter, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Who do we want to tell? I prefaced it like that. And right away it was her gymnastics coach and her best friend and at the time, and I reached right out to her gymnastics coach and her friend, who I was good friends with the mom. And I always made it that there’s no stigma here that if you share it will be more helpful. So we were always very open about her diagnosis and my daughter actually became very open about it. You know, once she was in a little bit better of a place, she very much has become an advocate and has always posted her story on social media. She’s done talks, a podcast, a whole bunch of stuff, but that’s how we cued it up at the beginning.

With all of that being said, extended family is really challenging, comments that should never come out. I had to train them. Even with the best training. Five years later, comments still come out. I do think that the older generation is challenging. Our, you know, I’m in my fifties, so my parents generation is the grandparents generation is challenging. They say things they don’t understand. My father-in-law will be oh, is she over that thing yet? They call it that thing. The diet talk that has to be shut down to protect my kid, my mother, saying that she wishes she could lose weight. Not helpful. Definitely had to cut a lot of friends and family out of some conversations and put a lot of boundaries around what they’re allowed to talk about. It was hard. It was really hard and it would do anything to protect her during recovery because our kids are recovering into a really challenging diet culture world. So there’s a lot of protection.

But it also is really helpful. Her gymnastics coach needed to know. She needed to know what was going on. Her school needed to know, because she couldn’t get her assignments done on time and there was a reason why and that added stress, applying to colleges did they need to know. So we always kept it very open so there was no stigma around. And I think in the end that helped. And we also had to protect certain privacy and certain situations. It was not helpful. So yeah, so again, what may work for us may not work for you, and that’s okay. Every parent has to make decisions based on their own child, their priorities, and their own needs. And we can get into some of that.

Jenni:
Yeah. Laura, I love the way you described that you kind of put it out in the open and that you didn’t look at it as if it had any stigma, and I think that’s really brave. I feel it’s a little bit scary when you’re starting to share this diagnosis because you don’t know what people’s reaction is going to be. I decided early on that I didn’t want stigma attached. My daughter was similar to you. She was fine with people knowing that she had an illness, and what the illness was. And I think figuring out the balance between the shame and the secrecy and the stigma versus the protection and the privacy that you were talking about, that’s kind of what we’re figuring out here. And as you said earlier, it’s going to be different for every individual and every family.

Sometimes practical suggestions can help. These are some just suggestions if you want to try them as you’re navigating this, the very first thing is to learn as much as you can about eating disorders, because then you’ll have facts to share with people and you’ll feel more confident sharing them. I found the more I learned about eating disorders, the more I could choose which parts of what I knew to share with people, and it was different for each person that I was sharing it with. FEAST 30 days is amazing for this. It is 30 email lessons, one lesson a day in your inbox, and you will learn about all of the most important topics about eating disorders. And you can share that link with others, any family members or friends who you think want to learn about eating disorders. And then they’ll start to understand there’s even a day that talks about talking with friends and family and it’s day 21. If you want to go straight to that lesson, once you register for FEAST 30 days.

Another thing that you can do is to actually decide how do I want people to help me? What kind of support do I need right now? Even write a list. Write a list of what would be helpful to you. Is getting help with meals helpful? Do you have younger kids that you could use some childcare for when you’re taking your child to their pediatric appointments or to see their other providers? Could someone run some errands for you? Pick up groceries. Could you join me once a week to go have coffee so that I can have some time away from the eating disorder or maybe just someone to talk to? Just making a list of that, and being aware of what would really help you.

Then also just decide what isn’t helpful for you and make that clear also. An example here is telling people I will not entertain any talk about diets, weights, exercise, eating, you know, issues, anything. I still do that five years later, I still do that. They don’t remember. Even though you’ve told them before.

Laura:
Exactly. That’s I mean, it’s so embedded in our culture and our society today. It’s almost normalized to the point where it’s expected to be in the conversation. So I mean, it’s not our responsibility to educate people, but it’s our choice if we want to try to help them out with that. And if that’s going to be unhelpful to us, I think it’s perfectly fine to set that boundary and say, we’re not going to talk about that around me or around my family, around my child.

Jenni:
I know with people who have sent emails ahead to wherever they’re going, to whoever they’re going to see to give them the do’s and don’ts. These are the things that are good and these are the things that are not good to do- please don’t do these things. I did that verbally with my family the next holiday season, and I still, you know, there were still some people who just didn’t get it. Who still said the wrong things, by then my daughter was able to manage it, but it’s always worth a try letting people know what you need and what’s not helpful.

I already mentioned FEAST 30 days. Using resources to support you through this is a really great way to manage it. And finding a community that understands if you’re not finding that support network with your friends and family that you normally turn to. FEAST is an example of a wonderful community of people who have been through this, who get it, who understand, who have wonderful experiences and insights to share. We have a Facebook group that has thousands of caregivers in it and also an Around The Dinner Table forum and support groups. All of those can be places where you can find support.

Laura:
Yeah, definitely. And one of the biggest things that we will talk about in multiple episodes is boundaries. Boundaries and self-care. Right? So you got to keep your boundaries. It’s okay to take a step back from different groups or extended family. I will actually implore some people to do that because it’s really challenging at times. You know, I have a small group of women that I’m close with and you know, when we were in the thick of it, and I would talk to someone and I would tell them all these things that were going on that they could never understand in a million years, and they would try to give me advice and it was really frustrating. Because they didn’t understand and their advice was really challenging, and I finally had to speak up and say to them, do you know what I need? I need you all to listen and not to give me advice. And that was probably the best advice that I give to people is tell your friends and family that you want them to listen. And you don’t want their advice because there’s no way that they can understand it. And sometimes even someone is oh, my niece had an eating disorder. Let me tell you everything. No, you don’t need it, it’ll just mess with your head a lot, unless it’s helpful. It’s really okay to set those boundaries.

Boundaries can look different for everybody. Limiting what you share at times and with certain people. Choosing who gets information. I definitely had different people that I would share different things because it all came back to what’s helpful for me and what’s helpful for my child. And that’s really all that mattered. Someone who I knew was going to nitpick and naysay and give me other information, they were not allowed in my circle at that time. Deciding how to respond to unhelpful comments. And that’s kind of what I just talked about was I was very much thank you for that information. You know, I’ve got it. Usually what I would say was, I have a professional team that’s helping me and I would say that often to my really close extended family that would give me suggestions. I would say I have a professional team that is helping me right now. Thank you very much. And that was kind of something that I said over and over again.

You can always change your mind as circumstances change, right? As you feel more comfortable, you’re in charge of that, you set your own boundaries for it. One thing that I just wanted to bring up and we had talked about before was about shame and stigma. And one thing that I do feel very strongly about is that silence breeds shame. So if you’re really trying to, or secrets, secrecy and not silence, secrecy breeds shame. So if you’re really, you know, the message at home is we don’t talk about that. That just makes the person who has the eating disorder feel so shameful about it, right? So that is one thing I will say.

With that being said, the next thing I do want to make sure that we address is when we talk about culture, you have to acknowledge cultural differences in how mental health and eating disorders as part of mental health is viewed in your identities in your culture. I’ve worked with numerous families through the years of all different cultures. And some cultures really, they don’t talk about mental health. Mental health is something that is, it is shamed. It is secret. It’s, I mean, again, we’re saying we don’t agree with that and we can’t change someone’s culture. So in that kind of situation, again, it could be that the elder, you know, the grandparent generation or even sometimes your contemporaries, if your culture is that you don’t talk about mental health, then you may need to find support elsewhere. You can choose to break that stigma. I’m all for breaking the stigma and you also need to protect yourself. So there are absolutely cultures that I’ve worked with that you have to respect what their feelings are and how they tend to do things. So in that situation, you want to find, well, where else can you get that support? Right? Maybe you can’t get it culturally, you know, from your family or your close friends, or even your environment around you where you live. However, find support groups, just FEAST. You know, find those social networks. It could even be someone in your community. Maybe you find out, oh, they actually do have a support group that’s, maybe it’s private, but you know, this group of women meets or, you know, families or whatever. So really lean into your team to find that. But yeah, tons of resources online for that.

Friends and family really may struggle to get it, even if you try to explain. I have a family that has medical professionals and they still didn’t get it. There was still a lot of things they didn’t understand and I had to use that often with them. I have a team of professionals and, you know, we are doing the best thing we can, so it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong if they don’t understand. It’s just really, we didn’t understand anything when we got started. Right. I actually had a professional background. I didn’t even understand eating disorders. So I wouldn’t expect most people to get it. And that’s okay. You’re not doing anything wrong.

Jenni:
Exactly. And I think another thing to highlight is that your support networks going into the eating disorder before the diagnosis and then your support network coming out after the diagnosis is probably going to be different. There’s a shift that happens there, and that’s part of this process of figuring it out. Don’t be surprised if some of the people that you were really planning on leaning on through this disappoint you. And also, don’t be surprised if completely unexpected people step up in big ways. You might have some champions and some heroes on this journey that you just couldn’t foresee at the beginning.

We’ve already talked about how important it is to find community with those who understand finding a caregiver network, a parent network, turning to FEAST and the peer support community there. Finding support groups. It’s hard to have energy for all of these things, but it’s part of taking care of yourself and I’m sure we will have many episodes talking a lot more deeply about self-care, but the secrets and the shame that Laura was talking about and the stigma can really make you feel isolated. And even among your family and friends, you can feel isolated. And so if there’s any message that we would really hope to impart today, it’s that you’re not alone.

Laura:
I want to say one thing, I just wanted to backtrack. You’re definitely not alone. We get the question a lot about kids returning to school, especially our younger people in treatment. You’ve got your 10 to 14 year olds, and they don’t want to tell their friends, right? Maybe they’re going back to soccer practice, but they don’t want to tell anybody on the team that they’ve just been in the hospital and then they were in residential. And I have this conversation often and what I’ve learned through practice is that when you don’t come out with at least a part of the truth, often what people are talking about and what people are gossiping about is way worse than the truth. They come up with their own stories, and I’ve seen it time and time again, so having that conversation of actually setting the record straight. Really being honest about it is often way better than what people are talking about. Because often people know if your loved one, you know, has lost a significant amount of weight. If we’re talking about that’s the situation and they’re leaving and they’re going to residential and they’re in the hospital and they’re coming back in a different body, that’s a whole other discussion. Right. But people, often, people know, their friends know what’s going on? So that honesty back there, if we can help with that, if your team can help you with that, that often that return to school is really important as well as role playing with your child. Well, what are they going to say? Because people are going to ask, people have no boundaries on what they ask. So when people come up to your kid and be: what happened? Where have you been? Or you look different, or all the different scenarios that can come up, giving that, you know, giving those answers that you practice with them before they go again. This may be for the younger kids when they go back to school, what can they say? People who don’t want to talk about it give all the details. Sometimes they say, I was in the hospital because I had a heart condition. That’s true. That’s often why people are in the hospital because their heart was affected. If they’re not ready to, you know, give the entire reason, and then to their close friends, they can share that with. But we really want to think about what are your kids going to say? Because people are going to ask. So I just wanted to make sure that we talked about that.

Jenni:
Yeah. Such a good point Laura. Thank you for sharing that. There are just so many things that can happen when your child is diagnosed with an eating disorder, unexpected things, from your family and friends, and so thinking about this and planning and knowing what to say and maybe what not to say is a really good exercise. And deciding who to tell and what to tell them, how much to tell them is really a personal decision. And it’s going to depend on the individual family and how much they are considering the wants of their child with the eating disorder.

Learn as much as you can about eating disorders. I’m just kind of reviewing some of our main points here before we leave. Protect your child’s privacy while also protecting your own wellbeing. So finding that balance there. Making sure you are doing what benefits you, your family, and your child the most, not what other people want or need. It’s okay to set boundaries and do what you need and pay attention to the very most important things. And remember, keep in mind, no matter how this goes with talking to your family and friends about your loved one’s diagnosis, all eating disorders are treatable and full recovery is possible. Trust yourself and take it one step at a time, and you’re not alone.

Those were the things that we really wanted to leave you with today. And also a reminder about all of the wonderful resources that FEAST has, FEAST 30 days, and all of our peer support resources.

Thank you so much for being here and for listening, and we hope you’ll join us on our next episode.

Laura:
Thank you, listeners.

Show Notes - Episode 002

Episode 002

Food is Medicine in Eating Disorder Recovery

In this episode of The Other Side of the Plate, hosts Jenni and Laura delve into the crucial role of nutrition in the recovery from eating disorders. As caregivers with lived experience, they highlight the importance of viewing food as literal medicine for those in recovery. They address common misconceptions, the need for high calorie intake, the impact of starvation on the brain, and how caregivers can support their loved ones. The episode also explores how to communicate effectively with loved ones about food and the significance of stopping other activities until proper eating is established.

00:00 Introduction

01:06 Episode Topic: Food Is Medicine

01:48 Understanding the Food as Medicine Concept in Recovery

02:48 Challenges and Misconceptions About Nutrition

07:14 The Importance of All Foods in Recovery

15:05 Practical Tips for Caregivers

24:49 Life Stops Until You Eat

29:28 Personal Experiences and Final Thoughts

34:14 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

SUPPORT & RESOURCES

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

We Only Eat Healthy Foods In Our House – F.E.A.S.T.

FEAST 30 Days – F.E.A.S.T.

Getting Started with Refeeding: A Guide to Moving Forward When You’re Not Sure What Comes Next

Up to the Plate: A FEAST Family Guide to the Importance of Nutrition for Understanding and Treating Eating Disorders

Full Transcript - Episode 002

Episode 002 – Food Is Medicine in Eating Disorder Recovery

A conversation with Jenni Gaines and Laura Cohen from FEAST

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jenni:
Hi everyone, hi Laura. Today our episode is called Food Is Medicine in Eating Disorder Recovery. We’re going to talk about why food is not just fuel or nutrition, it’s medicine. It’s the foundation for healing and without it, recovery just can’t happen. There’s also a phrase we’re going to discuss, and it’s used pretty often in the eating disorder treatment world, and that phrase is, life stops until you eat. We’ll look at that and exactly what that means, not only for your loved one, but also for you.

Laura:
Yeah. This is one of my favorite topics. I could talk about this forever and I really want to get started with that big idea. Food is medicine. And when I hear that sometimes that gets co-opted by the health and wellness world and, you know, talking about different nutrients and if you eat this food, this is going to help you with this, this, and this. That’s actually not what we’re talking about here. So it’s not metaphorically, it literally is food is your medicine. Meaning when someone is in recovery from an eating disorder, food just isn’t optional. It’s not something that you just want to ease into once therapy starts working. Food is actually the treatment and the first step of recovery.

And I want to go back to something I just said right there that I think is really important. And Jenni, I think that you can probably relate to this as well. And when we talk to caregivers, often I will hear from families and I did it myself, as well, they just need to go to therapy, and once therapy starts working, then they’ll be able to eat. And what caregivers don’t understand, understandably, they don’t understand, is that without the proper nutrition to get, and when I say proper nutrition, I’m not talking about nutrients, just food without refeeding. Your loved one’s brain, the therapy really doesn’t work. And it sounds so backwards.

I know even though that was the first thing that I did when my daughter was diagnosed, I thought I had to find a therapist. And one therapist I reached out to, I got really angry at because they sent me this whole long email telling me that they would not take my daughter on as a patient until she was eating adequately because the therapy wouldn’t work. And I was so upset about this person, and lo and behold, now, you know, five and a half years later, that person, I don’t even know who it was, I wish I could find them, was so spot on correct. So food is the first line of treatment. And why? Why is that? Because when the brain is undernourished, it actually doesn’t work properly.

Starvation, even in somebody that doesn’t look underweight, and I will say that again, someone whose body is in starvation could be someone that actually resides in a larger body. They don’t need to look starving. But when someone is in starvation mode, they have really rigid thinking. They could be really depressed. And this is all just the side effects of starvation, a lot of obsessive behaviors. You’ll hear this over and over again, and I know this happened in my situation and with families I work with. And Jenni, I’m sure this happened. You’ve seen this as well.

You’ll see a lot of obsessiveness. Sometimes it may even look like someone has OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and sometimes they do. But you will see in a more starved brain, more obsessive behaviors, needing to touch something five times, needing to do things a certain way, just very rigid, and needing to be done a very certain way. Also being very fearful around food. Food is the scariest thing in the entire world. Something that I used to say to my families to really bring it home is that when your child or your loved one is looking at food, if you have a fear of spiders, you know, snakes and spiders, you know how scary those things are to you or mice, whatever is your biggest fear. Imagine having to look at that multiple times a day. There’s no way to avoid it if you’re trying to, if you have a drug addiction or alcoholism, not that they’re comparable at all, but one big difference is you’re actually removing the thing that they’re trying. You know that the issue is in eating disorder recovery, you actually cannot remove food. You actually need to bring in food, and that’s why it is so hard. So if your loved one seems resistant or their therapist says they’re not making progress. You really want to think about progress is not going to happen until they start eating and their brain starts to heal. It’s healing a broken leg without a cast and walking on it before the bones are set. It wouldn’t make sense that if you had a broken leg to go train for a marathon, right?. I think everyone’s common sense would know we need to work on putting a cast on and letting it heal. But with an eating disorder, people don’t really see that. And that you really need to do that rehab, wear that cast, which is the food. And Jenni, what was your experience with all of that? How does that land for you?

Jenni:
That lands with me right now it all makes sense. But just you, at the beginning I went straight for the therapy thinking this is considered a psychiatric illness. A mental illness. So she needs that mental health help, she needs the therapy, she needs maybe a medication. And I did not understand food as medicine as a concept at all until I started reading as much as I could about eating disorders and learning about them. You’re exactly right. Healing just cannot happen from an eating disorder without food and a lot of food.

And that leads us right into another topic that I wanted to discuss today, and that is. Does the medicine, the food, need to be a certain type of food? Does it need to only be “healthy” food? And what we’re going to talk about today is that all food is good food. And back in the beginning, and Laura, this may or may not have been true for you also, I did have some categories of food in my mind. I had red light foods that I had been trained my whole life were not healthy. That I didn’t need. And so moving into this idea, in order for my daughter to heal from her eating disorder, food is medicine and all food is good food. It took some work on my part. I had to challenge some of my food beliefs and some of my attitudes toward food in order to step up as the best mom that I could be for her during treatment and recovery. And so I think it can be kind of surprising and even uncomfortable to hear that sentence. All food is good.

Laura:
That’s hard, right? It’s really hard. I always say to people, what does that bring up in you when you hear that all food is good food?

Jenni:
Well then I started thinking about, well, are Oreos good food? Are french fries, good food processed, packaged sugar, loaded foods, good food? And at the time I probably wouldn’t have said yes to any of that. And some of the higher fat foods, I mean, I was the mom that had skim milk in the fridge and low fat yogurt in the fridge thinking, oh, this is good. These are good things to have. And all food is good food. It was something I had to gradually get used to. So if you’re listening to this right now and you’re feeling that just major resistance coming up on this concept, I feel you, I hear you and understand you.

You can work on it over time, but what it means in your child’s recovery is that you’re not looking to build the healthiest diet. So you’re not looking for healthy medicine for your child. You’re trying to rebuild their trust with food in general. So that means accepting things processed food, packaged food, sugar containing food, full fat items, all of that is part of the recovery process, becoming comfortable with accepting all food.

Laura:
That’s hard, right? It’s really hard. I always say to people, what does that bring up in you when you hear that all food is good food?

And so you’re trying to remove fear from specific foods, and as Laura was saying, they’ll have a lot of fear around foods when they’re malnourished. And so you may start out with them not wanting to eat anything except for maybe a chicken breast and some broccoli or something like that. And you’re going to be wanting to expose them to their fear foods and help them begin to trust again that their bodies can eat that. And you let go of moral labels, clean or bad. So clean eating can be something that can even be a precursor to eating disorders. And then you have the “bad foods” that people just kind of have a block in their minds about we never eat this or we never eat that. Another thing to consider here is someone who’s becoming a vegetarian or a vegan for the first time as they’re developing an eating disorder and thinking that anything outside of those eating categories is not something that they should have.

And what you really need to do when you’re in recovery or focusing on your child’s recovery is, is to just give the body what it needs to heal. And that’s not always the easiest thing to determine. I think after asking what quality of medicine do we need? Does it have to be a certain type of food? I think my next question Laura, would be, how much of that medicine do we need? So what is my dosage? And so I think that’s something that we can probably get into, but right now we’re just looking at how diet culture has trained all of us to think certain foods are good, certain foods are bad, but in eating disorder recovery, we need to just keep food neutral. So a cupcake and a salad can both be nourishing foods. If your child’s eating something that maybe they would’ve never eaten before, say a Pop-Tart, after months of restricting, that’s really a step forward. So just kind of reframing our beliefs and our attitudes about food so that we can allow food to be medicine for our kids.

Laura:
And it’s such a big topic, and we are literally just touching the surface and giving you that high level overview. One thing, Jenni, when you were talking that I was thinking about was, we may have some listeners whose loved ones have ARFID, an eating disorder that they’re very selective with what they’re eating based on consequence. Whether it’s sensitivity, it could be, you know, they’ve had GI issues in the past and they’re afraid of pain. They could have a fear of vomiting. So just different consequences why they’ve become very selective picky eaters. And I think back to when I have kids that are in elementary school and you go to elementary school and you pack them a snack of Cheez-Its, and I don’t know of goldfish, but that would be really the same thing. Cheez-Its, and you know, maybe something else, maybe a candy bar and you go to school and the teacher says, well, we don’t allow that in our classroom. We only allowed healthy foods and I’ve worked with families that we have to put, it’s called a 504 plan, for those of you that know, but basically put accommodations in that they’re allowed to, that no one is allowed to make those comments. That they’re allowed to bring whatever food into the classroom they want, and it doesn’t need to be healthy.

And my argument with families that will say to me, well, my kid only eats chicken nuggets and pretzels. That’s so unhealthy. I had a patient who was 12, and that was literally what he lived on. And what I said to the mom was, well, those foods that you’re deeming as unhealthy, the chicken nuggets and pretzels have kept your son alive for 12 years. And that was such a big reframe for her. So we really want to be careful about what we call healthy and unhealthy. Because sometimes something you may deem as the most unhealthy thing in the world is actually the healthiest thing at that time. So yes. Thanks Jenni.

Jenni:
No, that’s a really good point. I appreciate you bringing that up there. It’s just a lot of reframes. You said the word reframe and I’m thinking another reframe that I had to do was the amount of food that my daughter needed to recover. Early on we tried FBT and I thought, you know, anytime I’ve ever gone on a diet in my whole life and I’ve gone back to eating. I gained the weight back really quickly when I went back to just normal eating, and I just kind of assumed that’s how this would be. She lost the weight quickly. She’ll gain the weight quickly. What I found out was, you know, I was giving her the medicine, she was eating food and she was eating what I considered to be a normal amount of food. And what I learned was there was our normal amount of food. Our normal, which wasn’t normal for what she needed for treatment and recovery. And I found out, I learned that that increase in metabolism is very common in eating disorder recovery. So she needed a lot more than I was giving her. So yes, I was giving her a dose of the medicine, but the dose I was giving her was not the proper dose. And I think it takes some trial and error to figure that out if you have a treatment team to kind of walk you through that and help you. But with FBT, the way that we were figuring out if it was enough food was monitoring her weight gain. Our first week when I was so proud of, you know, going up against that restriction and the resistance and getting her to eat and she didn’t gain any weight, felt a real failure. But what it was, was just a learning experience and we had to increase the dosage of the medicine is what we had to do. And once we did that, it got a lot smoother.

Laura:
Yeah. It was definitely, it was information, not failure. Right. Information is so important. Right. But yeah, I hear you with all of that.

You know, and one thing that we talk about is, you know, how can I help my loved one without making it worse? I feel that’s the golden ticket, right? If someone could just say that and we’ll definitely have episodes about things to say and not to say, but you know, again, this is just to even scratch the surface. How can I help my loved one, my child? You know who, whatever it may be, your spouse or your child, without making it worse. And here’s just a few little guidelines. Really never comment on what or how much your child eats. I will say that even long into recovery, I would make these comments and my daughter would get really upset and I wouldn’t even realize it. They were often misinterpreted. This could still happen to this day, and we always have to remember, and I cannot stress this enough, when you are talking to someone who’s in either treatment or is in recovery from an eating disorder, the way that they will hear your words, especially a parent, the way that they will hear your words are going to be different than if you said it to anyone else, even if it’s your other child, your other loved one. So no comments. No comments whatsoever about the food, what it looks like, how much, how little just it is, what it is.

I remember once my daughter had eaten a larger portion than she typically did, and I made some, it was a positive remark about, you know, how much Wow, you really ate that rice tonight. That set her into the biggest upset, and I was saying it as a positive. She interpreted it as that evening was me yelling at her that she ate too much rice, which was of course the furthest from the truth. So really staying away from any comments whatsoever about the food and how much and what it looks like or anything? The word healthy is a very, it’s a loaded word. Avoiding, so you really want to avoid praising “healthy choices” or expressing surprise at unhealthy ones, because that is, the eating disorder is going to glom onto that. So if you could lose those words ever in your vocabulary, that would be fantastic. So yeah, no comments about healthier or unhealthy as well as. When your loved one is in recovery and you make a comment that you look healthy or I’m only going to make you healthy, they interpret the word healthy as, oh, you’re going to make me fat. Or, oh, someone says I look healthy. That must mean that I look fat. So it’s all these things you wouldn’t think about. I go on my little side tangent sometimes, Instead you, so then you’re going to say it. I mean, well, Laura, what else can I say?

And I think that these are very personal too, and I think Jenni and I, I think we talked about this at our last episode, that sometimes praising your loved one, that you’re doing a really good job that may feel really yucky to your loved one. And some kids love to hear that. I think a good thing sometimes to say is, you’re really doing a hard thing and I’m proud of you. See how that sounds so different than good job eating all that food today. Right? Just acknowledging that it’s hard. You know, I can see that you’re really struggling. You really struggled with that meal and I’m really proud of you for sticking through it.

Again, food is your medicine and I’m here with you with something you can say. I agree with it. And at times, that reframe of saying that their food is their medicine, even though that’s the title of our podcast today. Sometimes that may not land with someone who’s just very triggered about their food. But I think it also could be a really good reframe. And again, it’s a little bit of shooting from the hip as to, you know, what people are going to find helpful. I the reframe of food as your medicine, and it needs to be taken in doses. Someone else may really not like that. So give it a try. Try it on. If it doesn’t work, then leave it by the side of the road. When your loved one is asking you about ingredients or calories, which they will continuously do over and over and over and over again. You want to become a broken record. That’s one of the skills that we talk about becoming a broken record. We’re not talking about calories or ingredients, we’re just eating and healing. Some people may not want to hear that, but healing, but that’s just an example. But I would repeat that over and over again. We’re not talking about calories or ingredients. Take a bite of your food and then they ask you again, we’re not talking. And if you say it enough, hopefully eventually they’re going to stop asking you because you’re not giving them any more information than that. Your job is really to be the calm in the storm, okay? Right now, as I talked about how the fear of snakes and spiders, food is absolutely terrifying. Your job, the best thing you can do as a support is try your hardest to be the calm in that storm.

Jenni:
Those were such great examples that you gave Laura about what to say, because I would say that’s one of the most common questions that we get at FEAST, whether it’s an email that comes in from a concerned parent or it’s within a support group, but what do I say? Because it seems anything I say is the wrong thing to say. So giving those examples is wonderful. And I love that you said you’re going to kind of be shooting from the hip at first, and if you don’t like something, leave it by the side of the road. That is such good advice, because I definitely said a lot of the things that were not helpful to my daughter, but it was only by trying them that I figured out what did work.

And one of the things that I did was validate how hard it was. Exactly what you suggested, Laura. But another one that I used was, you can trust me. I’m your mom. I would say something like that. Because she was so terrified. I mean, it’s not defiance or being, you know, difficult. No, it’s not that. Yeah, they’re absolutely terrified. And when I looked at it that way, that was really helpful to me. I remember I have three kids and my daughter, the one that had the eating disorder, taking her in to get her vaccinations was so stressful for me because she was a very emotive person. I mean, she really expressed herself. She would scream really loudly at the top of her lungs and enough so that I would dread it every single time I went in. And that actually, that experience with her reminded me that I can sit with her through this and make her, you know, take her medicine and I can tolerate her distress. I can do that and just let her know I’m here with you. I know this is really hard for you. You can do it. It goes back to if you’re questioning at all your ability to get through this with your child. Think back to some other examples of how you’ve been there for them in really uncomfortable situations and you made it through and they made it through that. That for some reason really helped me at the time.

Laura:
I think that’s such a good call out, Jenni, because think about, and ironically my kid was the same way with vaccines. The silver lining to an eating disorder for her. Because there’s always silver lining somewhere. Is that after eating disorder treatment, she wasn’t scared of getting blood anymore and shots because she had to get used to them. But anyway, but what I was going to say was, you know, when you’re sitting in the car, and Lord, I know Jenni and I both have been there and your kid is flipping out about having a vaccine, you don’t turn around and not, you may want to turn around and say, okay, well we’re not going to get that today. Or Yep, you’re not going to do that today. Or, you know, I know you need this medicine that’s going to save your life. I often use, you know, there’s plenty of medications that sometimes, you know, patients have to have and they’re going to have really bad side effects and it’s not going to feel good. But you wouldn’t tell your kid not to take an antibiotic because it doesn’t taste good. You’re making your kid do it. And that is often the analogies that I use with food. They don’t want to do it, but you need to really look at that as this really is their medicine.

Jenni:
Yes. And it’s not going to be easy for you as the parent either. I mean, I remember internally feeling how can I possibly ask her to eat that? That is so much food. And I had to learn, and it took a lot of practice to be the calm in the storm, as you said, Laura and I encourage anyone who it doesn’t come naturally to to keep practicing because it will be something that with enough practice, you will get better and better at. And it’s not only good for them to see that you’re calm, it’s also good for you to learn how to remain calm. And I think we will have many episodes about that. Because there are lots of skills to learn. These are not skills that we come into parenthood with.

Laura:
No, think about when, again, back to that vaccine example, because it was a good one. If you are so anxious sitting there, right, with your kid getting a vaccine, your kid’s going to be a lot more anxious about it. It’s the same thing if you’re sitting down in a meal and I understand feeling anxious because I had that too. But you know, this is, again, we’re going to get into other episodes this way, but if you are in there feeling that anxiety, the anxiety is going to be that much higher. So, you know, really working on our own distress. So yeah.

Jenni:
Yeah. Laura, we started out at the beginning of this episode talking about how we were going to discuss life stops until you eat. And I think we’ve kind of talked around that, but what exactly does that mean? What is life stops until you eat, and why is that important when we’re looking at the concept of food as medicine?

Laura:
It’s such a good question and people don’t really realize the severity or the seriousness of the answer is truly life stops until you eat. That could mean school. That can mean college. That can mean elementary school, it can be middle school, high school, whatever, therapy, socializing. Because food is truly the foundation on which all of this is built. And one thing I really want to be clear, because people are probably hearing that and going, okay, that doesn’t make sense. You don’t understand my kid, and school is everything to them and they have to go play soccer and they have to dance and they have to do all these things. And I do hear all of that. I 100% hear all of that. And again, if your child had a broken leg, would you be sending them to track practice to run? And I know the answer is no. And this is the seriousness that it needs.

What you want to think about is if you are not drawing the line in the sand, that life stops until you eat. You are not taking eating disorder treatment serious enough, and if you as a caregiver are not taking this serious enough, then recovery is going to be really hard because that eating disorder is going to slip into all the cracks. But if you, as the caregiver are nope, everything stops until you eat. It allows them to realize the severity of it. If you say, oh, you know what? They’re going to continue dance season until competition is over, you’re not showing. And then that kid in their brain goes, well, I guess I’m really not that sick. They’re not taking it seriously. I’m going to keep going. And the truth is, if you said, Nope, life stops until you eat. It’s going to suck for a little bit. Excuse my language, and in the end, that’s how you make those steps forward. And I’m not saying it’s easy. There can be some really ugly times. But the good news is once that nourishment starts to return, so does life, you get back joy. You get back energy, you get back some curiosity. And my favorite word, hope, if you guys could see, I’ve got that tattooed on my arm. But without taking this as seriously as it is, you’re just going to be dragging it on. And it really, you know, life stops until they eat shows that seriousness.

Jenni:
So well said Laura. And when you were first talking about it, I was thinking that concept was another hard one for me. Life stops until you eat. I had this extremely academic child, which I think most kids with eating disorders are those high performing types. And she had goals and I didn’t want to interfere with those goals. And she also was in a ballet company and had performances that she was wanting to audition for, but I am so grateful that I did take it seriously and I stopped her life until she ate and she did miss some school and she was out of dance for a very long time. But I think that the stopping will be so much shorter if you truly stop at the beginning and it won’t drag out for as long. So just, I encourage anyone who thinks it seems impossible to know that you’re doing such a good thing for your child when you treat food as medicine and you don’t let there be any exceptions to the eating of that food.

I think Laura mentioned an antibiotic. I just know that if your child had something where they were told to take the pills until they were gone and to not stop until they were gone, they would probably do that and you would make sure they did that. Even if they’re oh, I feel fine. My symptoms are gone. Take that whole bottle. Because if you only take part of it, chances are you’re going to get whatever it is that you went in for the medication in the first place. So that’s another analogy that’s helpful for me. So to treat food as medicine, to figure out what the right dose is, and to stop life just temporarily until they eat.

Laura:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Anything else that you can think of, Jenni, along these lines?

Jenni:
Yeah, I’m just curious. I have a question for you, Laura, because I know you’re a registered dietitian and to me that means you probably know so much more about nutrition than say I do, or the average person does. I’m just wondering how did that prepare you for your child’s eating disorder?

Laura:
Well, I was a registered dietitian and I think that in a lot of ways that hindered my daughter’s recovery until I learned better. Because as a dietitian I was really taught all about healthy food and, you know, all the good and bad food things. And it was really hard when I realized that I had to let all of those food rules go, and really learn the way that I was going to refeed my daughter was with heavy whipping cream butter, olive oil, ice, full fat, ice cream, full fat, yogurt, full fat, everything. And that, you know, fruits and vegetables, only if they had butter on them, or cheese or, you know, kind of mixed in something. That was a really hard concept for me. And one thing I had to really learn was that this is for now, right? This is for this point in time, was that I needed to get the weight back on her body as soon as possible, and refeed her brain and the other things, you know. It’s not her entire life that I’m not going to be focusing on broccoli, not that I’m ever focusing on, although I do really like broccoli. But that just wasn’t the most important thing on the plate at that time. Right? And they’ve got, this is just a snapshot of their time, of their nutritional journey and their time. And that was a really hard concept for me. And it was one that I had to give myself grace to really unlearn all the things that I had always been taught and that were my core values. So yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Because I think that I’m not alone in that. I talk to a lot of parents that really struggle with that. Especially our age group, you know, that we were really brought up in, you know, the eighties and the nineties when it very much was about restricting and fat free and diet foods. So, a lot of unpacking to do.

Jenni:
A lot of unpacking and a lot of unlearning and relearning exactly what you said. And I know that you wrote a blog post for FEAST a while back. We Only Eat Healthy Foods in Our House was the title of it, so I want to make sure and link that in the show notes. I found that before I ever even met you, I read that blog post. It was helpful for me and I think it will be helpful for our listeners today too. And that also made me think when you were talking about, unlearning and relearning and some of the ideas that you had about food before the eating disorder. I just want to highlight one specific food that for me, was something I stayed away from for, you know, from the time I was a teenager until I was an adult, and my daughter got an eating disorder and that’s butter. Butter became my best friend when it came to how am I going to get more nutrition on this plate without more volume, because when they’ve been restricting for a long time, the volume of food, I mean, they can get full really quickly. And so creating more volume in order to get more calories in can become such a challenge. And so I learned from FEAST that I could use really high fat foods, heavy whipping cream. You talked about, I think in your blog post—

Laura:
Heavy whipping cream butter was our staple—

Jenni:
—the high fat ice creams. Yes, those were all our friends, but butter and oatmeal, that was what I would say was the secret weapon for us. I could get so many calories in during breakfast because she already ate oatmeal. I would just load it up. I used to think, how am I going to amp up the oatmeal today? I put four tablespoons of butter in it, put some heavy whipping cream in it, or put some whole milk in it, or half and half, put nuts in it, dried fruit, anything that I could. And so it was the same amount in her bowl. Really didn’t increase the volume very much, but it really packed a punch. And those are just the kind of things that you learn to do, and you don’t know going into this, it’s such a huge learning curve.

Laura:
Yeah. But yeah, we’ll definitely talk about more tips and tricks to add calories in. My biggest goal always was the smallest amount of real estate with the most calories in it. Because they’re full. They get full quickly. So you can have something small, physically looking small, but you’re loading it with calories. You want as many calories per bite as possible.

Jenni:
Exactly. And that was not something I really knew how to do very well going into this. I had to learn. So I guess we’ll leave everyone today with letting them know you’re, if you’re a parent, you’re a caregiver of someone with an eating disorder, it’s a really hard thing to do, but you being there and loving them, learning as much as you can about eating disorders, listening to this podcast, validating them. Just going one step at a time through this. It’s really important. It matters and it makes a big difference, and we’re just so glad that you’ve been here today. We’re looking forward to our next episode already, and it’s going to be when our child is diagnosed with an eating disorder, what do we tell our friends and family? Another really important topic and such a hard one. Another one. We don’t have any idea what to do until we’re in the situation and we’re trying to figure it out. So that’s what we’re going to bring you next time. And in the show notes, we’ll link some good resources on this topic, Food As Medicine. The blog post that Laura wrote that I talked about. FEAST 30 days that we spoke about in our first episode, days five and six, specifically talk about food as medicine and nutrition and the importance of nutrition and eating disorders. We will also give you a guide to Refeeding that’s on the FEAST website and a family guide to nutrition. I think all of those will be really helpful in digging a little bit deeper in this topic. And we thank you very much for being here and we’ll see you next time.

Laura:
Bye everyone.

Show Notes - Episode 001

Episode 001 – Where to Start: Recognizing and Responding to Your Child’s Eating Disorder

In this inaugural episode of The Other Side of the Plate, hosts Jenni and Laura introduce the new F.E.A.S.T. podcast aimed at helping parents and caregivers navigate the complex and often overwhelming world of eating disorder caregiving. Both hosts share their personal experiences as mothers who supported their children through eating disorders; they discuss recognizing the signs of eating disorders, the importance of early intervention, and the initial steps parents can take once they suspect their child may have an eating disorder. The episode stresses the importance of trusting parental instincts, seeking proper medical assessment, and obtaining reliable information and support from trusted resources like F.E.A.S.T. The discussion also touches on the crucial role of nutrition in treatment, how to deal with the shock of diagnosis, and the vital importance of parent involvement in the treatment process.

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

01:03 Meet the Hosts: Jenni and Laura

02:26 Recognizing the Signs of an Eating Disorder

04:17 Personal Stories and Early Signs

14:30 Medical Advice and Pediatrician Visits

21:38 Emergency Situations and Resources

22:47 Importance of Medical Assessments

28:13 Key Questions for Parents

29:29 Understanding Safe School Attendance

30:49 Balancing Physical Activity and Eating Disorders

33:13 The Emotional Impact of Eating Disorders

36:20 Recognizing the Signs of an Eating Disorder

44:56 The Importance of Nutritional Rehabilitation

48:36 The Role of Parents in Treatment

52:58 Final Thoughts and Resources

SUPPORT & RESOURCES

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

AED’s Guide to Medical Care of Eating Disorders

AED’s Emergency Room Guide

FEAST 30 Days

What Constitutes Good Medical Care for Pediatric Eating Disorders? (FEAST Webinar July 2025)

What Does Good Medical Care Look LIke? A Guide for Parents of Children with Eating Disorders (FEAST Webinar Slides July 2025)

Around the Dinner Table Forum

Around the Dinner Table-Facebook group

OR:

► Learn more on the F.E.A.S.T. website:
https://feast-ed.org

Full Transcript - Episode 001

Episode 001 – Where to Start: Recognizing and Responding to Your Child’s Eating Disorder

A conversation with Jenni Gaines and Laura Cohen from FEAST

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Host: Welcome to The Other Side of the Plate, brought to you by FEAST—Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders. This podcast is for moms, dads, and caregivers searching for answers, the kind that can feel so hard to find when your loved one has an eating disorder. I’m Jenni, and along with my co-host Laura, we’re here as caregivers with lived experience who supported our loved ones through an eating disorder.

Together we’ll share personal insights, connect you with professionals, and point you toward helpful resources. And as we say at FEAST: We’re here because we’ve been there.

Jenni Gaines: Welcome everyone to our very first episode of this podcast. I’m Jenni Gaines and I am the director of programs and services at FEAST, and I also have lived experience as the mom of a daughter who has been through the journey of anorexia. And I’m going to now turn it over to my wonderful co-host, Laura, to introduce herself.

Laura Cohen: Hello, my name is Laura Cohen and I’m also a FEAST volunteer and a board member, and I’m also a mom with lived experience helping my loved one through treatment of her eating disorder. I also have been a family or parent mentor for the past three and a half years. So I’ve been helping hundreds of families through the whole process and experience of their loved one going through eating disorder recovery and treatment.

And I’m really excited to do this podcast. Jenni and I have been talking about it for a while, and we keep saying there is a need. We have so much to offer with FEAST and how can we get out to more people with more topics and more experts by experience? So here we are, and I hope that you really get a lot out of what we have to say.

Jenni: Thank you, Laura. And today we’re going to start at the beginning. We’re going to talk about where do I start recognizing and responding to an eating disorder in your child? We’re going to talk about noticing the signs of an eating disorder, taking action when we notice those signs and what to do after a diagnosis.

We’ll start right here at the beginning with that first question that most parents ask themselves. How do you know if your child has an eating disorder? Laura, when you think back to the beginning, what were the first things that made you wonder if something was wrong?

Laura: I look back and I realize that I missed each and every sign, which we’ll get into as we keep chatting.

I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know what was wrong because I was a professional. I had been a registered dietitian in the past. I thought I knew what the signs for an eating disorder were, and I never even put that in my head. But I did notice that my daughter was having a lot of anxiety.

And we thought it was just anxiety and that was it. It never showed up that I saw where I was thinking, oh, she’s going on a diet and wow, she’s just eating this, or she’s just eating that. I didn’t notice any of that or what I thought an eating disorder was.

So I was just trying to figure out what was going on and in the end, she started crying after every meal. And that was weird. And it actually took her telling me—we’ll get into more of this later, but she actually told me.

Jenni: Wow. So she told you that she was having issues before you noticed what they were. Okay.

Laura: Yeah, I knew something was going on, but that was not what I thought was going on. But other warning signs that caregivers often see is a noticeable weight loss. Sometimes, when your kids are getting to those teen years, you may not see your child undressed as much as you did when they were little and running around after the tub.

But when they start to be teenagers, they’re not doing that. And often they’re wearing big and baggy clothes and you don’t realize it. And sometimes it could just be maybe one time you see your loved one with their shirt off and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, I can see how much weight they’ve lost.

So sometimes there is a noticeable weight loss. One thing that we see a lot is dieting—I say with heavy air quotes—or a sudden interest in “healthier, clean eating.” And often parents are really happy to see that. They think that it’s great that their kid has this interest in healthy eating and maybe wanting to lose weight, or “cleaning” because maybe that’s something in your family that the adults do. And then when you see your child wanting to do it, you think it’s awesome. But that often can be a beginning sign of an eating disorder.

Cutting out entire food groups, becoming a vegetarian or vegan. I see this a lot. And your kid will still say, no matter what, this is not an eating disorder. I care about

Together we’ll share personal insights, connect you with professionals, and point you toward helpful resources. And as we say at FEAST: We’re here because we’ve been there.

Jenni: Thank you, Laura. And today we’re going to start at the beginning. We’re going to talk about where do I start, recognizing and responding to an eating disorder in your child? We’re going to talk about noticing the signs of an eating disorder, taking action when we notice those signs and what to do after a diagnosis.

Laura: I look back and I realize that I missed each and every sign, which we’ll get into as we keep chatting.

Jenni: Wow. So she told you that she was having issues before you noticed what they were. Okay.

Cutting out entire food groups, becoming a vegetarian or vegan. I see this a lot. And your kid will still say, no matter what, this is not an eating disorder. I care about animal rights. Yet they’re still wearing leather shoes or carrying a leather pocketbook. So we often really have to think about things globally and really why are they becoming a vegetarian.

Increase in exercise, especially when it’s tied to food intake. Maybe your kiddo just asked for a membership at Planet Fitness, which I think is $10 a month, which most parents would be thrilled about if that’s something that they can financially swing and before you know it, they’re insistent on going every day. Or maybe you have a big barbecue one day and then your loved one wants to go to the gym afterwards, and you start to see these patterns.

Food being left uneaten, especially packed lunches. I will say that was happening in my house. I just thought my daughter was picky. But it definitely was lunches that were not eaten. Different times when she just kept saying she wasn’t hungry. I just wasn’t aware of why. So definitely seeing that lunchbox come home with the food uneaten.

Loss of interest in previously loved foods. So maybe your kiddo was a foodie and would eat everything and anything, and then all of a sudden they’re saying, yeah, I don’t really enjoy ice cream. Ice cream makes my stomach hurt. I don’t really enjoy pizza anymore because it’s too chewy. You’ll just hear a bunch of different excuses and not think twice about it.

Jenni: Thank you for explaining all of that, Laura. I think a lot of us, I know for me, I did not have the obvious signs that you just described. And I didn’t know enough about eating disorders when my daughter was first developing anorexia. Looking back on it now, I can recognize so easily that there were a lot of less common signs or maybe just less well known. They probably are common. They’re just not as well known, and I certainly had no idea that they were signs of an eating disorder.

The one I remember the most, I thought nothing of it. My daughter started becoming so interested in cooking shows. She was watching all kinds of cooking shows. We watched them as a family together because we all thought they were interesting and fun. And she became obsessed with cooking really difficult recipes and was very exacting about the way they were finished. Very perfectionistic about it. And I didn’t notice at the time until after I realized this was part of her eating disorder, but she was providing all of us with this beautiful food and she wasn’t really eating it herself.

I remember one Father’s Day, she even baked the bread for my husband’s Father’s Day picnic and spent the whole day in the kitchen and then she really didn’t eat very much and I just didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it was a really big sign.

Also another thing that you might not see because they’re hiding food and they’re lying about eating. You might not even realize that’s happening, but it could be happening. They might spend extra time in the bathroom after meals, suddenly get up from the table and go straight to the bathroom. And that could be a sign of purging.

Also just the emotional changes around puberty, preteen teenage years. I think all of us parents, Laura, at least I did, I kind of expected all of my kids to have some mood swings, to have some teenage rebellion, a little bit of defiance. Looking back again, my daughter had some major mood swings right around the time she was developing her eating disorder. But because I didn’t see the weight loss yet, I had no idea that’s what it was. I did wonder what was going on.

If you start noticing that they get distressed around food and food experiences, food situations, or they’re avoiding food situations.

Laura: A hundred percent.

Jenni: Yeah. If they are wearing baggy clothes, as Laura said, you may not notice they’ve lost weight already, but they may be cold all the time. They may be feeling really cold. You may notice they are not sitting down when they used to sit down. A lot of times there will be standing and pacing. Doing their homework standing up, writing a paper standing up. Everything that they do, they’re standing up instead of sitting down, and they don’t want to sit down when you ask them to sit down. They could have other forms of compulsive movement and exercise, even secret exercise.

I’ve heard more than one parent at FEAST say that they’ve woken up in the middle of the night to pounding above their heads and it’s their child with the eating disorder doing secret exercise in the middle of the night.

And then also something that probably is not as unclear is negative body image and frequent body checking behaviors. Lots of time in the mirror, looking in every window to check their body as they walk by and saying just really negative things about themselves and their bodies.

And I think one thing I learned and that I’ve heard from a lot of other parents is trust your gut. I would say that’s probably one of the biggest pieces of advice I would give any parent who’s going through this journey. If you are thinking that something is off or something’s wrong, you are most likely right. And it’s really good to listen to that.

Laura, that makes me wonder, I’m really curious. Do you remember a time early on in your daughter’s journey where you either trusted your gut because you’re a mom and you knew something was wrong, or you look back and wish that you had trusted your gut but you didn’t do it?

Laura: Oh gosh, yeah, so vividly. So my daughter, the year that she was diagnosed had—and sometimes you hear things this—she did have a tragedy. She was a gymnast and her gymnastics coach that summer before had dropped dead. So she had a very big loss, was really struggling emotionally, and months went by and months went by and it was like she—I don’t want to say she couldn’t get over it because I don’t mean to sound cold and callous because it’s not that way at all. But it was to the point that it was just continuing to be very upset all the time. And anxious all the time. And she didn’t want to go to therapy. She was very against therapy.

And somehow I don’t exactly remember the details, but she started seeing—I was seeing a business coach and when I was chatting with this coach about my daughter, I was explaining that I don’t know what’s going on with her. And long story short, she said, well, my husband does athletic coaching for gymnasts, you know, more athletic coaching, kind of a sports psychology angle.

So I was thinking, oh, I bet Alexa would do that, you know? Because she wouldn’t go to a therapist. So she met with this guy and I’ll never forget, he called me and said, you know, I just want to talk to you about my session with your daughter. And he said to me, your daughter’s only eating about 500 calories a day.

And I was thinking, oh, I never thought about that. But when he said it, I was thinking, you’re probably right. Again, no one mentioned eating disorder then at all. But it was that first time that I thought about it and I was thinking, oh, I bet that’s why her moods are so bad, because she’s hungry. That’s where it went in my head. It never went to the part of, oh, she’s eating that little. That could be a problem.

And it was interesting because I did bring it up to her that day of saying, you know, I think it could really help your mood if you’re eating more. And I remember driving and she said, “Well, not if I get fat.” And even with that comment, I remember going, oh, that was kind of weird. I still didn’t put it together. So yes, mom, past registered dietitian professional, missed all the obvious signs. So that’s the time that I really, really wish that I understood what my gut was telling me.

Jenni: That was a really good example. That kind of makes me think of something that we’re probably going to get to later, but it’s such a great opportunity to just remind everyone that if your child has developed an eating disorder, it has nothing to do with your parenting. You did not cause it by something you did or didn’t do. And it’s also not your child’s choice to get an eating disorder.

So once we notice these signs, all the signs and symptoms that Laura and I have talked about, what is the next step? The very next step if you are noticing these serious signs and symptoms, the weight loss, the moods is, and if you are already starting to suspect an eating disorder, is to see your pediatrician quickly as the first step.

And from my experience, I highly recommend that if you do strongly suspect it’s an eating disorder, to get your hands on some really good eating disorder medical resources before you go into the pediatrician, because a lot of pediatricians, they have so much on their plates, but medical school does not prepare them to diagnose and treat eating disorders.

So you want to make sure that that first visit when you’re really a worried parent, that you’re actually getting to the core of what’s going on. And so having some resources on hand of what to look for when you go in so they’ll really listen to your concerns, is a really good idea. And FEAST does have some resources that we can link in the show notes.

One of them is the Academy of Eating Disorders Purple Book. It’s a medical standards guideline list of what kinds of assessments need to be done at an eating disorder assessment appointment. I know that I did not have that information when I first took my daughter to the pediatrician. And also my pediatrician was actually really nervous about eating disorders because she didn’t have a lot of experience with them. And so I absolutely didn’t feel I knew what to expect. I put all of my trust in the pediatrician. And I already by that point was pretty sure that she had anorexia just based on her really rapid weight loss while she was away from us for six weeks at a ballet intensive. By the time she got home, all of the signs that I missed before she left were in full blown effect. And I could see by looking at her that she wasn’t okay.

So that makes me wonder. That was my experience. But did you feel prepared when you took your daughter to the doctor for the first time, Laura, and what do you wish you had known going in?

Laura: Yeah, I want to back up for one second. Because as Jenni knows me, I’m real and raw and I just want to prepare people that the pediatrician, I hear more times than not that someone will bring their child to the pediatrician, worried about an eating disorder, and the pediatrician says that their child is just fine because their weight looks okay.

So pediatricians are awesome. We need pediatricians. And sometimes because they don’t have that eating disorder experience, and by looking at someone we know, because we’re professionals, we know that just by looking at someone, you can’t tell if they have an eating disorder. And I know so many stories of just the pediatrician just saying the parents are overreacting, the kid is fine. I’ve even heard stories, the pediatrician telling the parents actually, your child could lose some weight.

So I just want you all to be aware that when you go to your pediatrician that they may tell you there’s nothing wrong with your kid. You are the parent, you know what’s wrong with your child.

So to the question that you asked, was I prepared, I think I’m an anomaly. Because I walked in and I said to my pediatrician, it was over the phone. My daughter has an eating disorder. I didn’t ask, I just said, this is what I’m seeing. I finally figured it out, because he had been working with me as to what was going on with her. He had even prescribed some medication thinking it was anxiety. I said, I figured out what’s wrong. She has an eating disorder. And he said, okay.

But so I did know what to go in with. However, looking back at it, knowing what I know now, I wish that I would’ve advocated for her, for him to have run labs on her right then. Because by looking at where she was, you wouldn’t have known the amount of malnutrition that she had. And the labs were not done right away. So I wish I had that knowledge going in.

You know, one other thing I say to parents is just I walked in and I said, my daughter has an eating disorder. I know a lot of parents who will wait for an official diagnosis to start anything. And there’s nothing wrong with starting to advocate for what your child needs until you get that official diagnosis from someone. Because sometimes that takes a while. I don’t even know when I ever got one or if I did, I just said she had one.

Jenni: That was a great answer because you and I kind of had opposite experiences where there was no doubt that my daughter was going to be diagnosed when we took her in, just based on her significant weight loss. But in your case, I have also heard of pediatricians, especially if you have a child that is naturally in a higher weight body that comes in and the pediatrician could even possibly compliment and say, good for you. You’ve lost some weight. When the parent is there terrified and worried because they know their child is not okay, because this is not the weight that their body is meant to have. And also there will just be some kids whose growth just stalls. So they’re not losing weight, but they also are not growing any taller and they’re not gaining any weight, and that can really delay diagnosis and treatment. And so that’s where that gut instinct comes in. Again, if you know something’s wrong and your doctor’s saying, no, I think everything’s fine. It’s really hard to push up against that medical professional to say, no, please listen. I know something’s wrong. But based on all the stories that I’ve heard through my work with FEAST, there are so many parents who didn’t do that, and they really wish that they had because their kids were a lot sicker than what the doctors realized they were.

Another really frustrating thing, Laura, is some of these appointments take weeks and weeks to get, and your child is continuing to get sicker and sicker as you’re waiting for the appointment. And so one thing I wanted to touch on today while we’re together is what do you do if the medical appointment is delayed?

And this is not something that I was prepared to do at the time. I really didn’t know. How do I monitor my child? I’m just really worried about her. How do I know when to go to the emergency room when I know absolutely nothing about eating disorders? How do I even know the next step?

And that’s where FEAST comes in. As you know, we’re not here as medical professionals. We’re not qualified as medical professionals to give specific medical advice. I can tell you from my personal experience and from my experience with FEAST resources, that FEAST has some wonderful resources that if you just start while you’re waiting for the appointment, you will be worlds ahead by the time you get to that appointment and you’ll know what you’re looking for.

So just briefly, I’m going to touch on when do you consider going to the ER? But again, this is not medical advice. If there are signs of serious medical risk, if your child is fainting, if they have bradycardia, which is a very slow heart rate, they aren’t taking in food or water, or it’s such a significant and dramatic weight loss that you’re really concerned. Those are all reasons to consider going to the emergency room. And again, I recommend the AED Purple book for some medical guidelines on that. And we are going to definitely link in the show notes a program called FEAST 30 Days, which I would say is the go-to start-with resource for parents who are at the very beginning of this journey, and it’s a free email educational program, you’ll get one email in your inbox a day for 30 days, and you’ll get the comprehensive guide on all of the best, the most important eating disorder topics, and you’ll be so much more empowered to start advocating medically for your child.

Laura: So what should a proper medical assessment look like? What should it include? And I think this is really important, you know, back to thinking, does your pediatrician, are they equipped to know what to do? Heart rate is something really important. What people don’t often understand is it’s not just their resting heart rate. But we need other vitals. We need something called orthostatic vitals. And I’m really bad at explaining this, but it has to do with when you sit to stand or stand to sit if your blood pressure drops too much. And that is something that a lot of pediatricians or medical professionals may not know to assess for, but very important when you’re assessing for an eating disorder within the vitals.

We will put this in the show notes. I think you had talked about the AED Purple book. We also have a webinar that we did at FEAST from Julie O’Toole on what constitutes good medical care and eating disorders. Because as you know, Jenni and I have alluded to, it’s not always great care. And it’s not that practitioners are bad practitioners. It’s because they just don’t know. I do feel that, you know, do no harm is what the majority of medical professionals believe in, and sometimes the harm is done when they just don’t realize that either their beliefs or their knowledge are incorrect.

Your child should have labs, a full panel of labs, including electrolytes. One thing that’s super important is their weight history, their growth charts. I have worked with families who, for different reasons, don’t have growth charts. Maybe they’ve grown up in different countries, pediatricians have retired, whatever it is. So it makes it really challenging and we’re always thinking, gosh, we wish we could see that growth chart. But often what you’ll see in someone, let’s say my daughter was diagnosed at 16. Or, you know, say someone’s diagnosed at 15, 16, 17, if you look at their growth charts often, you may see a drop in their trajectory, maybe at 11, 12, 13, but they were not diagnosed at that time. But that could have been the beginning of the eating disorder.

So growth charts are really important because the way that they figure out what your weight-restored weight is. It’s not an exact science, but what they use is they use growth charts. So if your kiddo was always in the 50th percentile for weight and all of a sudden they’re in the 30th percentile. Or maybe they dropped to the 30th percentile when they were 13, but the rest of their life they’d been in the 50th. And then at 13, you remember? Oh yeah, that’s when they went on that little crazy health kick, you know, even if it was a couple years ago, and then they’ve kind of stayed in that 30%. Chances are they need to get back to that 50% to get back on their growth chart. So that’s why historical growth charts are really important. Not a deal breaker. As I said, sometimes you can’t get them. But I know that I got mine by looking in the children’s hospital chart because my daughter had been followed for different injuries. She was a gymnast throughout the years, and I was able to get so many weights from all the different orthopedic visits.

PS some of those orthopedic visits and their stress fractures were also warning signs. Some of them were not. But some of them definitely were. But I was able to get a lot of her weight history just from old charts, and then I put it together.

Again, we can’t offer medical advice. That is not what our role is. We’re not medical professionals. We are experts by experience. So please, make sure that when you look in our show notes and grab the FEAST resources, you can share those with your medical providers, especially if they’re not trained in eating disorders. And we’ve got some good resources for you.

Jenni: Thank you so much for that, especially the emphasis on the weight history and the growth charts. That’s really important. We definitely want to make sure that no one’s going on BMIs and things like that. It really depends on your individual body and your individual growth curve. What is going to be the right weight for you, and it’s going to be a moving target. It’s going to keep changing. Our kids, usually when they develop eating disorders, still have so many years of growth and development ahead of them. And so the target’s not going to stay static. It’s going to keep increasing as they get into, all the way up into their mid twenties really. And that’s something I didn’t really take into consideration. I was looking for if we can just get her up to that growth curve and a little bit above that, that’ll be fine. And you just want to make sure that they stay on that trajectory once they get that back up there.

Laura: My daughter did grow in her twenties

Jenni: and that’s so reassuring to hear for parents to hear. Yeah. So she probably was a little bit height suppressed.

Laura: Yeah. I think she was a late bloomer and height suppressed, but yeah, she grew last year. She’s 21 right now. She was very excited to be taller than her mother.

Jenni: That is very exciting. That’s great.

At this point, I think it’s good to think about what are some key questions that we should be asking as parents if we’ve been worried about our kids, we’ve noticed these signs. We’ve gone to the pediatrician or to a family practitioner, a medical provider, and hopefully we got the medical information and the diagnosis, started along the treatment path. But what else do we need to be thinking about and what are some key questions that parents should be asking right about this time? Laura, do you mind sharing some of those?

Laura: Sure. I mean, the biggest one is, is my child medically stable? And yeah, there’s obviously different levels of that. Because sometimes lab results can look okay, but your child is really struggling. So medically stable is really important. Making sure they do those vitals, those orthostatic vitals.

Is school attendance safe is another important question and the word safe, I think means a lot of different things. Because parents will think that that’s crazy if I’m saying, you know, your child should not be going to school. That’s unheard of. Why would my kid not go to school? And here’s how I explain things. If you’re trying to restore weight on your child, on your loved one, and you know that when they go to school they can’t eat lunch because they won’t eat in front of their friends or they just won’t go to the lunchroom or you know that they’re restricting because no one’s watching it. To me that is not a safe school attendance. If you’re sending your child to school having breakfast at seven o’clock, and then maybe you’re not seeing them till three o’clock and they’re not eating anything or you suspect it, that is not attending school safely. That doesn’t mean they can’t attend school. You just may need to figure out how you can get that lunch in or get some snacks in. So school attendance being safe is really, is my child able to eat? Are they able to get nourishment during school? If they’re continuing to lose weight? School’s going to be one of the first things, or school lunch, that may mean that you pull them, someone has to supervise their lunch. Or maybe if you’re in a situation that you, or someone else in your family can go and have lunch with them, even sitting in the car, then they can go back in. So that’s a little bit more what I mean by attending school safely.

Should they stop physical activity? Definitely something to talk about with your doctor. Sometimes pulling that physical activity really shows that you’re taking the eating disorder seriously. I know a lot of parents that will not pull their kids from sports because they say that the sports are their lives. And I often will say, you know. I hear you. I get that. I know sports are really important and our children have other lives outside of sports, and if that is keeping your child—I always say if your child broke their leg and they ran track, would you still make them run? And of course, the parents said, well, of course not. That’s the most ridiculous question in the world. There is no difference here. I say treat the eating disorder as an injury, and they may need to miss a season. If they’re not able to meet their caloric needs, if your child has volleyball practice but refuses to eat an extra snack, which is the rule, then right there, they’re not ready for a volleyball practice. If they’re not okay to add that extra snack, are they hiding or compulsively engaging in exercise? Again, another thing—are they really at track or at gymnastics? Are they doing extra exercise? Are they coming home? I know people whose loved ones will come home and do an additional workout and the parents think, oh my gosh, they’re so committed. This is awesome. They’re so committed to their sport and don’t really realize that this is actually more of a compulsive exercise. Or are they able to take rest days if you go on a family vacation, do they need to find the gym so they can exercise every day? So those kind of things, Jenni was talking about earlier about when you notice that your kid just can’t sit down and watch a show, or they can’t sit down and do homework. I actually did work with a family that the kid had a pretty big movement compulsion, and she would not sit down to do her homework and all she kept saying, and she’d be standing on her head or she was doing this and that, and she would literally just say to her parents, this is just me. This is just me and her parents fought that. And the truth was, it was all part of a movement compulsion. And it was tricky and we had to do it little by little, but she did not need to be jumping around and doing jumping jacks while she was doing her English homework.

Jenni: Yeah. And when you were talking Laura, it just made me think that for a lot of our kids, school and sports or school and dance and whatever, their extracurricular activities are so important. And they have the type of personality that’s a high performance personality, perfectionist. They’ll always get the good grades, always excel at whatever they do. And so as parents, if we have identified our kids as that being who they are, this can be so difficult for parents to let go of that a little bit. And I think that’s a really important thing to be able to accept that maybe my child’s trajectory is going to look a little bit different, at least temporarily, because we have to prioritize recovery.

And I am speaking from my own experience that it was really hard for me to not allow my child to go to school, to not allow her to be in school for the beginning of her sophomore year, to not allow her to be in the ballet company that she had worked so hard to do, to not allow her even after six months to audition for Nutcracker and to, at the very best, possibly attend and watch all of her friends in the big parts that she would’ve had if she had not gotten the eating disorder. I had to really check myself on those things. I had to truly be okay with, this is going to be something we’re going to have to step back from for safety reasons and for health reasons. And if I could give any positive spin on that, as hard as it was for everyone, those two things, school and ballet, were the incentives that gave her what she needed to recover.

And so I think letting go of those things, knowing that it’s just temporary, they may or may not go back to how they were before, but they will be healthy when they do go back. A lot of parents report that I’ve talked to at FEAST, that their kids don’t go back to their sport. That could have very well been for a very long time, part of the eating disorder. And then there are just as many others-my daughter who danced from age two was her passion and she worked really hard to get back to it. She didn’t go back probably as at high of a level long term as she would have, but she went back and she enjoyed it. And so I just wanted to share that.

Laura: One other reframe I just wanted to say is that, you know, you think you’re taking all this away from your kid because that’s what it feels like, right? It feels we’re punishing them and we’re taking all this away. And how that’s not what good parents do. Right? And I tell all my parents, this is, you have to reframe it, that this is not punishment, it’s protection. Most of us would lay down and do anything to save our kids. And sometimes that’s hard to do with anything. Right? And this is something that, it is 100% not a punishment. It’s protection.

Jenni: That’s a really powerful reframe, Laura. Thank you. I think that’ll be really helpful for parents. So getting that first diagnosis, or confirmation that your worries about an eating disorder are true can be really overwhelming. And so next, let’s talk about that moment, that kind of terrifying moment when you realize my child has an eating disorder. What’s next? Laura, will you share a little bit about your experience when your daughter was diagnosed and what that was for you?

Laura: Yeah. So as I said earlier, I didn’t know what was really going on. My daughter was really struggling with anxiety. She was crying a lot. It was the beginning of COVID, so it was lockdown at this point, and she would just have these emotional breakdowns every night. And often it was after dinner. You know, all we’re doing is we’re cooking because that’s what we’re doing. There’s nothing else to do. So we’re focusing on all these fun activities we could do during meals. And she would just be crying after every meal. And we would actually sit in the green chair that’s right here. And I was showing Jenni before, before we started recording, and I would say every night, okay Alexa, let’s go sit down and talk.

Finally, you know, this went on for a couple weeks and then there was one night that we sat down in that green chair after dinner. Well, I don’t think she ate, but after dinner was supposed to be over. And I said, what is what? What honey? What’s going on? And she looked at me and she said, I’m not eating on purpose.

And that sentence changed the entire trajectory of the past, almost six years. I remember going. I’m going to say a bad word. Oh s-h-i-t in my head. And I knew enough right there professionally that, oh gosh, Laura, you are an idiot that didn’t notice any of this going on. I thought I was going to throw up right there. I was gutted. And my thought was, wow, this is going to be a big thing. So I was shocked. And also it all made sense. Oh, and then as I went to Dr. Google and learned everything, all the dots started to line up.

But it definitely was not something where my daughter started doing healthy eating and dieting that went wrong and it wasn’t anything that, although that happens all the time. But that’s not always what it is. People have eating disorders for many different reasons.

If every single person who went on a diet had an eating disorder, you know, if diets caused eating disorders completely, then anyone who’s ever been on a diet would have an eating disorder. With that being said, people that are programmed genetically to be predisposed to eating disorders, that’s when a diet can turn into an eating disorder. So that’s a really important distinction to understand. It’s not everyone that goes on a diet that gets an eating disorder, but people that are predisposed to an eating disorder who go on a diet are at a very high risk of that turning into an eating disorder.

Jenni: Very good point to make. Yeah, definitely. There are so many different components to eating disorders. It’s now scientifically shown to be a psycho metabolic disorder that doesn’t have one root cause. Just as you were saying, Laura, there are genetic risk factors and there are environmental risk factors, and when I learned about eating disorders, and I looked back on my daughter’s genetics and her environmental risk factors. I could see how it was basically a perfect storm. And I think one of the biggest things that happened, I think I’d already mentioned that she went away to a ballet intensive, a summer ballet intensive, and for six weeks was not where I could see her. And I think what happened was that her energy balance got to where it just went a snowball out of control. She was not fueling enough for the amount of exercise that she was getting and all of those genetic and environmental risk factors kicked in. And it was the perfect storm for her to develop an eating disorder.

This is a great point to emphasize again, that this is not anyone’s fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It’s not your fault. There could be some environmental risk factors mixed in there, but as Laura said, it’s not because, say you have always been someone who’s really health conscious in front of your kids and you exercise regularly and you maybe watch what you eat a little bit. That’s not going to be the reason that your child gets an eating disorder. You may start modeling different behavior once you see that your kids are at risk for eating disorders, but it’s not because of that, that they got the eating disorder. It’s a pretty complex combination of factors.

Laura: Yeah. And there’s definitely a huge, very steep learning curve. And those first weeks, months, definitely weeks are so overwhelming. You know, kind of what I was talking about in my story, I was thinking, oh gosh, what do I do now? And of course the world was shut down then I was thinking, what do I really do now? So I did what every good parent does is you turn to Dr. Google. There wasn’t even ChatGPT back in those days. That’s where I would’ve gone if it was there. And I actually found FEAST really quickly, and that was a place where I was able to really understand. It was very humbling as that was what my profession was supposed to have taught me. But I really did not understand eating disorders past 1989. So, and things are very different than they were in 1989. So I just got really educated because I was so overwhelmed and my biggest bit of advice when anyone is overwhelmed. Doesn’t matter the situation, but definitely this type of situation is any steps forward is helpful. So educating yourself, you know, if you’re going to get stuck and be frozen for a little bit, try to just take that first step, make that first phone call, and we’re going to go into a bunch of different resources, but it’s so normal to just feel so overwhelmed, to feel this is going to be the rest of your life. To feel scared, to blame yourself, to kick yourself. How can I miss it? All of these feelings are normal. So yeah. So tell me about when you have that moment that you’re just completely shocked, Jenni, and you can talk about yours. When I think you said when your daughter came home and you were thinking, oh my gosh. What can a parent actually do to start helping their child and themselves?

Jenni: Yeah, I mean, I was in complete shock and I remember even in my head saying anything but anorexia. I mean, I don’t know why that was one of my first thoughts, but I just was thinking, I think I didn’t know very much about it, but I just knew that it was a really hard diagnosis and it was going to be a battle for her to overcome it.

In that moment of shock, I think it is going to feel the world has kind of been pulled out from under you, and it will continue to feel that way for weeks. And I agree exactly with what you said is to take a step and if you turn to FEAST, it took me a long time to find FEAST and immediately when I found FEAST, when I started reading on the Around the Dinner Table Forum, which is one of the peer support services that FEAST offers. I felt that, wow, I’m not the only one experiencing this. I thought my daughter’s case must have been the worst in the world by watching her behavior. And when I saw there are other moms and dads right now experiencing this, and there are other moms and dads on this forum supporting these people who’ve already been through it and they’re on the other side of it. And it didn’t make it any easier, but for some reason it made me feel I’m just going to borrow their confidence. I’m going to borrow the confidence of the parents that have already been through this and I’m going to look at the things that they did to help their kids get better. And I’m going to try my best. And I, at the beginning, I didn’t know if I could do it. Because it takes a lot of ability to tolerate your child’s distress. And I would say I was not very good at that at first. So there’s some skills you have to learn. But that’s probably a whole other podcast episode.

Laura: Yes. We have a lot of episode ideas coming out of this one.

Jenni: And so, yeah. Laura, what about you? Is there anything that you wish that you had known early on? Before you answer that, I was going to say I also thought my child needs psychological help. That was what I thought. So I was really concerned with getting her an appointment with a psychiatrist. So if I could share one thing I wish I’d known early on, it’s that I wish I had understood how important the nutritional rehabilitation was and that food was going to be her medicine for a very long time and that it was going to take her a lot longer to have her brain healed. I didn’t know that. And I spent quite a bit of time thinking I need to get her counseling and I need to get her on psychiatric medication. And I really needed to be prioritizing the food intake. Food, food, food. So that’s one of the things I wish I had known. How about you?

Laura: Same, same, same. Because as I said before, it was the beginning of COVID. So telehealth was not a thing, but I was thinking, I need to find a therapist right away. I need to find a therapist. And I think that’s actually what I did ask my pediatrician. Because I can’t think where I got the name of this woman who, she was a lovely woman and she had never done a telehealth session. But she offered to take my daughter on. And so over the summer, summer of 2020 and my daughter had a session, you know, every week with her. And it was fruitless. I mean, my daughter wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t do anything. It was the biggest waste of time and frustration. And finally, I remember, I remember walking, I remember exactly where I was, that I had a call with her and she even said to me, you know, I don’t really think that this is going anywhere. So she kind of fired us because she just knew that all the therapy in the world was not helping. So yes, I was so stuck on therapy, therapy, therapy. Because that’s all I knew. And I really should have been way more focused on the food. But yeah, I learned that quickly.

But other things that I wish I’d done early on, well, I did, but educating myself really quickly. I became an expert. Whatever I could get my hands on, I needed to make sure the resources were really good. Once I found FEAST, I was thinking, oh, what is this? So FEAST was a huge one. There’s also a couple of books that I looked up and then through when I joined FEAST and then I went, we have a Facebook group. I became really involved in that Facebook forum, and got different names of different books and that was my lifeline. I needed to find other parents that got it because my friends definitely did not get it.

I had a dear friend of mine who was a fellow registered dietitian, and I was sharing with her all about how I’m feeding my daughter all these really high fat foods and heavy whipping cream and butter and eggs and all of that. And I’ll never forget her saying to me, so Laura, you’re going to replace one problem with another. We’re not friends anymore and a lot of it’s because of this kind of stuff. But I will never forget that because then of course I started to be thinking, well, well maybe she’s right, right? When someone starts to question, because you have your own cognitive dissonance about things, you know, I felt uncomfortable doing all of that. Now I know it was the right thing, but then when someone starts to question it.

So really surrounding yourself with parents that understand it, that are able to tell you that if you went to your pediatrician and your pediatrician told you not to worry about it, and then you talk to other parents and they’re thinking, no, no, no, no, you actually may need to get a second opinion there. So really finding people that truly understand it.

Being engaged. Being engaged in treatment, and being part of the treatment team. I remember when we finally had an appointment at Children’s Hospital. I live in Boston and we’re lucky to have Children’s Hospital here by the time we had, and the appointment took a while. By the time we had that appointment, I knew more than the nurse practitioner about eating disorders and I was educating her. So I do feel that if you’re in that situation that you are knowing more than that provider, or you don’t really agree with what the provider’s saying because they’re telling you not to worry about something. That that’s okay too. Really educate yourself and be part of the treatment team. Because the other thing is if a treatment team or any provider is trying to push you out of treatment, oh, parents shouldn’t really get that involved. That’s very 1980s as well. And parents really should be the primary person. I say parents, I mean any caregiver. And when I say child, it could be male, female. Any eating disorder diagnosis. Want to make sure that we’re talking about everybody, but you know, being your loved one’s advocate and being an expert of your loved one because you’re the one that knows your loved one. Not your practitioner. Your practitioner may meet your child. You know that even whoever it is may meet, you know, these little quick appointments. But if something doesn’t feel right, you know your kid best if they’re telling you to do this. And yeah, you may feel uncomfortable because that’s what’s needed for recovery, but if it’s something that’s just, you know, you’re around the forums and you’re talking, you know, really getting educated on eating disorders and it doesn’t sound right, you are the expert of your child. Make sure your team is going to respect that.

Jenni: Yeah. Laura, so important. Thank you for sharing that. And it, as you were talking, it reminded me of how I kind of lost my confidence as a mom. And so we keep telling everyone, listen to your gut. Trust yourself. I recognize how difficult that is, but something that came up for us where I listen to my gut, but I listened to it after months of not listening to it and looking back, I wish I had acted sooner, but I got that feeling that I was not being allowed into treatment, and that was before I found FEAST. So I didn’t really understand what a comprehensive treatment team looked like . And I got my daughter into treatment with a dietitian and a therapist, and we were doing FBT at home. It was before very much telemedicine was done, but through an FBT therapist who was out of state and we were doing it virtually, and I was following what she was telling us. Little did I know that I should have been all in on that. And I was still trying to get my daughter the help with the dietitian and the therapist thinking I’m doing the whole, you know, surrounding her with everything that she needs. And I started to realize that they were keeping me completely out of the loop and almost encouraging my daughter to not listen to myself and my husband telling her things- your parents shouldn’t be the food police. If you’re not hungry, don’t eat. Listen to your food, listen to your hunger cues. Well, she didn’t have any hunger cues. She was never hungry. Anorexia, they’re never going to say that they’re hungry. And so she was going to listen to that and not eat and go against all of the things that we were trying to do to help her eat. It took me a while, but I listened to that and I knew once I started getting educated, I was being left out of treatment. I was definitely not on the treatment team. And I fired that treatment team and it was really hard to do, but that’s, it’s a learning experience and I think, you know, I don’t beat myself up for that and no one here who’s listening to this should second guess themselves. You learn as you go and it’s definitely a trial and error process, but you’re constantly learning and every little piece that you learn is another piece of the puzzle that fits in and you keep making progress.

Laura: Yeah, definitely.

Jenni: Yeah, so everything that Laura said, learning everything you can, getting support from others who’ve been there before you, on the FEAST forums, and then just understanding you have a really important role in the treatment and recovery of your child, and it’s okay to advocate for that.

So Laura, we’ve talked about so many things today, I think we’re kind of touching on a lot of the important topics, and we don’t really have time to go that deep on it, but if there’s a parent who’s listening today and they’re just starting out on this journey, they’re either worried that their child has an eating disorder or if they’ve just gotten the diagnosis of an eating disorder, what would you say to those parents?

Laura: I think the first thing I would say is, you got this as well as advice that was given to me by another ED Warrior parent was put on your armor because you got to go to battle for your kid and you absolutely can. And the best way to start the battle you’re going to go into. Because I don’t sugarcoat things, is to get educated. There’s so many amazing resources out there. And I would just really read everything you can again, make sure that the resources are legit resources. FEAST does a great job with that. And that’s what I would do. Find parent support, you know, parent support somewhere, and just get educated and just know that you can do this. Recovery, full recovery is possible. And it’s worth it. And you are going to have ups and downs in treatment. It’s going to feel—I felt it was a big game of whack-a-mole that every time I felt I had something figured out, then something else popped up. And it was really exhausting for a really long time. And eventually that game slowed down.

Jenni: Yeah, and I couldn’t have said anything better, Laura, with what you said… we have spent quite a bit of time talking about what do you do when you suspect an eating disorder or you know that your child has an eating disorder and you’re at the beginning of the journey.

So quickly before we go, I’ll just recap what we talked about today are the takeaways from our first episode. Notice the signs and symptoms that we talked about. Trust your instincts. If you think there’s something wrong, there most likely is, and then take action. Take action and take your child, whether it’s an adult child, encouraging them to go to the doctor or a child that still lives in your home, getting them that pediatrician appointment. And if you have to wait. Taking them to the ER if they’re appearing to have any signs of medical instability. And then what Laura has so beautifully described about learning as much as you can, as fast as you can about eating disorders and then getting that peer support.

I would love for you after this podcast to check out the resources on the FEAST Web website. It’s feast-ed.org, so FEAST spelled F-E-A-S-T. ed-org, you will get some great educational resources there and peer support resources and we were talking about taking small actions, just taking that one step forward. I would recommend that that small action be to register for FEAST 30 days. As soon as this podcast is over. And you can do that on the FEAST website, under Get Educated and Under Programs, and click on FEAST 30 days and you can register right there. Do you have anything you want to leave our listeners with today?

Laura: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is you all are not alone. You’re just not, there’s such a supportive community. And I actually got a tattoo a couple years ago and after my daughter was in recovery and the tattoo says you can’t see it, but it says hope on it. And not only is hope my middle name, but I really felt that doing the work professionally that I do, I always want to remind caregivers that there is hope. You know, we will be here. We have a ton of different topics that we want to talk about. We’re really excited about it. Our next episode is going to be talking about food as medicine, the importance of nutrition and eating disorder treatment and recovery. It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart as the former dietitian. So look for that episode and, yeah, I’ll give it to you, Jenni.

Jenni: Thank you Laura, and thank you everyone for being with us on this first episode, and we’re really looking forward to exploring a lot more topics with you in the future.

Host: Thank you for joining us at The Other Side of the Plate. If today’s episode gave you hope or guidance, we invite you to explore more resources and peer support at feasted.org. Remember, you are never alone. For more conversations of hope and help for families facing eating disorders, please join us for our next episode.

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Testimonials

Thank you F.E.A.S.T. You have made the journey through this terrible disorder much less lonely for me and my family. Member insights and expert material give me the courage to walk beside my girl on her road to recovery.

F.E.A.S.T. is a gold-star support organization. Truly remarkable. I am so grateful to you all and can't believe my family's good fortune in being the beneficiary of such comprehensive resources. Our family's experience, while exhausting and challenging, at least has a path forward, one in which there is hope and expertise to light the way.

I shudder to think how much more difficult navigating the eating disorder would have been without all of the FEAST services to guide us! Thank you again and ALWAYS for your dedication to helping families get through this illness!

FEAST’s painfully earned and openly shared wisdom…“We're here because we've been there” was an unwavering beacon for us during dark times. Our daughter is in a better place right now and FEAST was a very big part of her progress and the physical and mental wellbeing of our family.

When my family was struggling to work through my daughter's eating disorder, it was one of the most challenging trials for us. To find an organization and a community like FEAST was an incredible blessing that meant so much to us!

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Testimonials