Anxious Therapists “Drift” from CBT Principles for Eating Disorders
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an empirically supported treatment strategy for people struggling with eating problems, such as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa. However, research suggests that many clinicians do not adhere to, but rather drift from, the core principles of CBT for eating issues. “Why do many clinicians fail to apply empirically supported treatments?” asked Glenn Waller of the Eating Disorders Section of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College in London. “They often state that the... Read More
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Thanksgiving is a holiday for cultivating gratitude for all the good in our lives. It’s also an opportunity to participate in a ritual of breaking bread with loved ones, a celebration of our connection to others, sharing the plentiful food that we are fortunate enough to have.
Yet as Thanksgiving approached, several of my clients who see me for help with their eating-related problems expressed apprehension about the upcoming holiday. Their worries focused mainly on the plethora of food they anticipated would be at the meal, and some described family gatherings at which food was around at all... 
Eating and food issues can have a significant impact on someone’s quality of life (QOL). “This is of particular relevance for the atypical 
Last Friday, I gave a presentation at my state professional organization’s fall conference entitled, “Illicit Lovers and Unwanted Guests: Treating Eating Disorders in Individuals, Couples and Families.” My organization, the North Carolina Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, comprises Marriage and Family Therapists who address all sorts of different problems that bring people to therapy, including, but not limited to, issues that cause problems in relationships.
The field of Marriage and Family Therapy sees people as creatures of relationship, and is based on the following notions:
We... 
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Eating is a coping mechanism for many individuals. Some people use it to minimize pain, others to fill a loss. “
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Women struggle with eating issues at various ages, and research suggests that over the course of their lifetimes, women maintain relatively constant levels of body dissatisfaction. More recent findings reveal that middle-aged women are among the fastest growing segment of the population with eating problems and body image issues today. “Findings consistently indicate that midlife women desire to be thinner, diet despite being a healthy weight and engage more frequently in avoidant behavior associated with 
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“Weight suppression (WS) refers to the difference between highest past weight (since reaching adult height) and current weight,” said Michael R. Lowe of the Department of Psychology at Drexel University. “Because the average body mass index (BMI) of individuals with 
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Intervention programs for eating and food issues have been designed to target the root of sociocultural attitudes toward personal appearance, namely internalization of the thin-ideal (media). Different methods have been used to measure the effectiveness of programs aimed at targeting media internalization, however the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire (SATAQ3) is quite often used with adolescents.
“Media internalization has been found to be directly predictive of eating pathology and to operate indirectly through increasing other risk factors in the dual-pathway... 
One of the most prevalent and harmful misconceptions about eating disorders is that they are all about vanity. Many people believe that sufferers are vain, beauty-obsessed brats that could easily recover if they'd simply stop looking in the mirror and get over their need to be pretty. This isn't even close to the truth. As someone who has been personally offended by this belief, I wanted to share my story and my thoughts to hopefully shed some light on the vanity myth.
Before anorexia took hold of my life, I believe I had a pretty unusual level of self-esteem when it came to my body and looks.... 
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Women with substance use issues are more likely to also struggle with eating issues than women without substance issues, and similarly, women with eating issues are at increased risk for 
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Most women conform to feminine norms, while men conform to masculine norms. But female college athletes strive to achieve both. “Past research has focused on how conformity to societal gender norms constrains and influences men’s behavior,” said Jesse A. Steinfeldt, of Indiana University-Bloomington, and lead author of a study that investigated how this dual role influenced women’s body image. “A higher emphasis placed on conforming to masculine norms has been linked to more health risk behaviors and fewer health promotion behaviors; binge drinking; and greater endorsement of rape... 
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Eating problems, specifically anorexia and bulimia, are issues that most people believe only occur in women. But statistics show that the number of men who suffer with 
I was thinking about the phrase, “Food is love;” thinking about how this idea came to be. I often hear people say that food was a means by which their mothers or grandmothers expressed their love for family members. Sometimes their stories conjure up images of warm kitchens filled with wonderful smells and family members connecting over delicious meals. But sometimes, they’ll tell me things like, “She would keep putting food on my plate, even after I said I was full,” or “It would hurt her feelings if someone didn’t eat everything she gave them.” When I hear things like this, I... 
