Drawing on her own lived experience of eating disorder recovery, Tabitha offers parents a deeply honest and compassionate perspective on what recovery really looks like from the inside. She challenges the common belief that recovery can be forced, explaining that what often appears as resistance is, in reality, overwhelming fear — and that many children who seem opposed to change may still desperately want it.
Tabitha also directly addresses one of the heaviest burdens parents carry: blame. She dismantles the idea that eating disorders are caused by past parenting mistakes and encourages families to release guilt that drains energy better spent supporting the future.
At the heart of this keynote is a message of hope. When force fails, influence matters. Through personal stories — including the impact of her mother’s steady, compassionate persistence — Tabitha shows how calm confidence, consistency, and belief in recovery can reach the person behind the illness. Parents leave with reassurance that even relationships fractured by fear and anger can heal rapidly once recovery truly begins.
Tabitha Farrar is a writer, speaker, and advocate focused on eating disorder recovery, particularly for adults. She is the founder of the Eating Disorder Recovery for Adults blog and podcast, where she shares insights from her own journey of recovering from anorexia nervosa, which began in her late teens and lasted nearly a decade. Drawing on her experience and a biological perspective on restrictive eating disorders, Tabitha has developed a recovery approach that emphasizes nutritional rehabilitation, neural rewiring and teaching the brain out of fear of weight gain. She is the author of Rehabilitate, Rewire, Recover!, along with five other books addressing different aspects of eating disorder recovery. She has written hundreds of blog posts and hosted podcasts aimed at helping individuals and families navigate recovery.
Weight restoration is an important medical milestone, albeit an incomplete and sometimes misleading marker of true healing. This session introduces a more accurate clinically grounded framework for understanding what recovery actually looks like.
You will learn to identify the key indicators of robust recovery, beyond weight alone, including: sustained energy, cognitive clarity, medical stability, flexible, non rule-driven eating, reduced intrusive food and body thoughts, emotion regulation that is not contingent on weight or shape, reliable hunger and fullness cues, increased social engagement, and an increased (not shrinking) world.
If a loved one has reached a “target weight“ but many of these markers are still absent, their body and brain may remain under-resourced, leaving them vulnerable to relapse despite what the scale says. This session will help you evaluate recovery progress, more holistically and realistically, so you can distinguish weight restoration from actual recovery and better understand what makes healing sustainable.
Ephrat L. Lipton, ACSW, LCSW, BCD, CEDS, is a board certified therapist and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, as well as a Certified Enneagram Applications Professional. For over 30 years, Ephrat has worked with individuals, couples and families to address mental and behavioral health conditions, including mood, anxiety and eating disorders. She has served in two acute care inpatient facilities, which included the role of clinical director for 10 years, as well as in partial and intensive outpatient programs for eating disorders, depression, anxiety disorders and co-occurring disorders.
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Part of eating disorder recovery is about building the inner strength to face a world that often works against that recovery. Your loved one is developing resilience not just for everyday stress, but for something much more pervasive: a culture saturated with diet messaging and the relentless pursuit of the “perfect” body. The resilience they’re building at home with you becomes their armor against this diet culture. When you create a home environment that consistently reinforces recovery values, you’re giving them a safe harbor that will nurture their continued healing.
As a parent, you are one of the most powerful forces in your child’s recovery journey. The environment you create at home can make all the difference in helping your child fully recover from their eating disorder and truly thrive beyond it. In this presentation, we’ll focus on practical ways to shape your home environment so it becomes a place of genuine support and healing. Together, we’ll look at how to create an atmosphere that builds resilience and feels both recovery-focused and naturally sustainable for your family as a whole.
Danielle Small is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified eating disorder
specialist consultant with extensive experience in the treatment of Anorexia Nervosa,
Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, ARFID, and compulsive over-exercise.
Danielle has been a member of the Monte Nido team since 2013, working at multiple
sites and all levels of care on both coasts. She was previously Clinical Director at
Monte Nido’s Eating Disorder Center of Boston until taking on the role of Clinical
Director at Monte Nido’s Clementine Adolescent Eating Disorder Treatment Center, in
Briarcliff Manor, New York. She then became Regional Director of Clinical Operations
for the Northeast, overseeing all clinical programming and operations for the Residential
and Day Treatment programs in the region. Danielle is currently Vice-President of
Clinical Services working with all of Monte Nido’s teams nationwide.
Danielle’s therapeutic aim is simple; she wants clients to connect with their potential for
growth despite life’s inherent struggles. Her passion is helping individuals reach a place
of self-acceptance, re-connecting them to their intellectual curiosity, and allowing them
to tap into the potential for personal peace. She endeavors to do this with humor,
warmth, and candor.
As parents and caregivers who have supported a loved one with an eating disorder, Laura and Jenni know that the path from diagnosis to recovery is far from linear. In this candid, conversational session, they draw from their own caregiving experiences to examine the surprises, missteps, and moments of uncertainty that caregivers are often unprepared for. Through personal reflection and discussion, they highlight what felt confusing, what they wish they had known sooner, and what they learned through experience.
Designed to feel like a live episode of FEAST’s The Other Side of the Plate podcast, this session aims to increase caregivers’ understanding of common misconceptions related to eating disorders and treatment, support a more informed approach to caring for a loved one with an eating disorder, and help caregivers identify ways to attend to their own well-being while navigating the caregiving process.
Jenni Gaines is the Director of Programs and Services at F.E.A.S.T. and a parent with lived experience navigating a child’s eating disorder. She has served on F.E.A.S.T.’s Board of Directors, including as Board Chair, and is a caregiver support group leader with ANAD/F.E.A.S.T. and a F.E.A.S.T. caregiver mentor. Jenni holds a B.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Texas and a J.D. from Texas Tech University School of Law.
Laura Cohen is a former Registered Dietitian who found F.E.A.S.T. in 2020 when her daughter was diagnosed with an eating disorder. She became a F.E.A.S.T. parent volunteer and went on to work as a Lead Family Mentor with Equip. Laura has pivoted personally and professionally from diet culture to becoming an anti-diet practitioner. In 2025, she co-created and launched F.E.A.S.T.’s podcast, “The Other Side of the Plate,” with Jenni. Laura holds a B.S. in Coordinated Dietetics from Syracuse University, an M.S. in Food and Nutrition from New York University, and an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts from Johnson and Wales University.
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Your loved one with an eating disorder is almost certainly active on social media—but how much do you really know about what they’re seeing and experiencing there? Who are they connecting with? What content fills their feeds? Are they engaging mindfully, or are algorithms pulling them deeper into harmful spaces?
While social media doesn’t cause eating disorders, it can significantly influence recovery. The content served by algorithms can trigger destructive behaviors, reinforce disordered thinking, or—when navigated thoughtfully—actually support healing.
This session will help you understand how social media impacts people with eating disorders and equip you with practical strategies to keep your child safer online. You’ll learn why approaching conversations with curiosity rather than judgment keeps communication channels open, and how to guide your child toward healthier digital habits when complete abstinence isn’t realistic or sustainable.
Alyssa Lucker, DO, serves as the Medical Director for Eating Recovery Center Pathlight and Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders programs in Denver, CO. Dr. Lucker attended Luther College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Nursing, and then completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Miami, participating in the Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Program. She earned her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Colorado. Dr. Lucker completed her Psychiatry residency program and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship program at Creighton University School of Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Caring for someone with an eating disorder places enormous strain on the nervous system. Many caregivers live in prolonged states of threat-responding: hypervigilant, fearful, bracing for crisis, or feeling responsible for preventing harm. Drawing from the MED-DBT model, this workshop explores how biotemperament, fear conditioning, and chronic invalidation shape both the client’s and the caregiver’s nervous systems. We will discuss how caregivers can understand their own physiological reactions through the lens of DBT’s acceptance-based philosophy and Stoic principles such as the discipline of perception, the power of the pause, and the art of responding rather than reacting. Attendees will learn why maintaining their own regulation is not a luxury, it is a treatment intervention that changes the emotional environment in which recovery unfolds.
In this 45-minute session, caregivers will be introduced to a set of practical, evidence-informed skills to support nervous system stability while navigating the intensity of a loved one’s illness. We will cover core DBT skills, including mindfulness and tools for managing uncertainty, reducing reactivity, and increasing effectiveness during mealtimes and crises. The workshop emphasizes the paradox central to MED-DBT: caregivers can cultivate steadiness and compassion while also holding firm, life-promoting boundaries. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how to regulate their own internal landscape in ways that model wise action, reduce escalation, and ultimately help their loved ones heal.
Dr. Anita Federici, PhD, C.Psych, FAED, is a Clinical Psychologist and Founder of The Centre for Psychology and Emotion Regulation, internationally recognized for her work in eating disorders, personality disorders, and trauma. She is a leading trainer, researcher, and systems consultant, known for translating evidence into scalable, person-centred care. Dr. Federici serves as Adjunct Faculty at York University and as an Expert Clinical Educator for the Provincial Eating Disorders Training Program. She has delivered hundreds of invited presentations across academic, hospital, and community settings and is the co-author of Treating Eating Disorders with DBT: The MED-DBT Protocol (Guilford Press, 2025).
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Attendees will learn why parents are not the cause of eating disorders, but are one of the most powerful forces for recovery. Drawing on over two decades of clinical and training experience in Family-Based Treatment, this presentation will explain how parental involvement can directly change outcomes, reduce relapse risk, and interrupt the eating disorder’s hold.
Caregivers will gain a clear understanding of why waiting for motivation or insight can delay recovery, and how loving, decisive parental leadership creates safety and momentum for healing. Participants will also learn concrete ways they can act as agents of change beyond “just feeding,” including how to reduce accommodation, respond effectively to distress, challenge shame, and protect recovery in everyday environments like school, sports, and family life. Parents will leave with a renewed sense of confidence, practical strategies they can use immediately, and a hopeful, non-blaming framework that positions them as central partners in their child’s recovery.
Angela Celio Doyle, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who has spent over 20 years helping children, adolescents, and families recover from eating disorders. She is deeply committed to ensuring families have access to treatments that truly work. Dr. Celio Doyle trains clinicians internationally in Family-Based Treatment and she has seen firsthand how empowered caregivers can change outcomes.
In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Celio Doyle is involved in research focused on preventing eating disorders and expanding access to care through innovative, digital approaches. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the UC San Diego/San Diego State Joint Doctoral Program and completed advanced training at the University of Chicago. She holds an adjunct faculty position at the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology and currently serves as Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Equip.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Can my loved one really get better,” this session is for you!
What does recovery feel like from the inside? What helps when treatment feels impossible? And how do you hold onto hope when the path forward seems unclear?
In this powerful session, you’ll hear directly from people who’ve walked through eating disorder recovery and come out the other side. Our panelists—all ANAD peer support volunteers with lived experience—will share honest insights about what made a difference in their healing journeys.
This isn’t a lecture, it’s a real conversation. Moderated by Liron Cohen (ANAD) and Jenni Gaines (F.E.A.S.T.), the discussion will address the questions parents ask most: What did recovery progress actually look like day-to-day? What role did family play? When did things start to shift? What gave you hope when you felt hopeless?
This session will offer authentic perspectives on what your loved one might be experiencing, renewed hope that full recovery is possible, and practical insights you can bring home to support your child’s journey.
Men of FEAST is a dedicated community for fathers and male caregivers supporting loved ones with eating disorders. This session provides a safe space for men to share experiences, access resources, offer support to one another, and find solidarity in their caregiving journeys.
The sibling group session is open to those 13 years of age and older who have a sibling navigating an eating disorder. Led by peers who have been there, they will offer space to connect, learn, and feel less alone.
Sam Dunn:
Hi, my name is Sam and I’m in my third year leading sibling support group! I graduated from Binghamton last Spring, and I’m currently working as an assistant teacher at a Montessori school. I have an older sister who recovered from anorexia five years ago, and a younger sister who has been struggling with her own eating disorder for about a year. I’m grateful for group for creating a space for siblings to connect and support each other, and it’s been special for me to watch it grow over the years.
Sunday Holland:
Sunday is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology at San Francisco State University. She has been a sibling support group leader with FEAST and ANAD since June 2023, which has provided a hopeful and empowering space to connect with other siblings of individuals with eating disorders. Sunday aims to continue the mission of advocating for community mental health in her future endeavors. In her free time, Sunday loves to practice piano, read, and discover yummy snack spots with friends.