Webinars
ANAD’s webinars provide professional insight on a range of topics relating to eating disorders and body image, including telehealth, weight stigma, and gender-inclusive care. Register for upcoming webinars or catch up on previous ones you may have missed! Stay tuned for another live webinar soon!
Is Exercise Recommended for Eating Disorder Recovery: A Discussion
Webinar Summary
ANAD and Montecatini held a discussion on the role of exercise in eating disorder treatment and recovery. ANAD’s Executive Director Kristen Portland was joined by Adrianne DeRosa C.S.C.S. – Exercise Physiologist, Kelly Hee, LCSW, CEDS – Primary Therapist, and Leah Morgan, RD, CEDRD – Director of Nutrition and Wellness for a multidisciplinary look at the importance of integrating the safe exploration of exercise, within eating disorder recovery, for all patients, not just those returning to sport.
Learning Objectives
After this presentation, attendees will be able to:
- Understand current recommendations for incorporating exercise into eating disorder recovery
- Be familiar with and able to use current vocabulary related to exercise and recovery
- Better understand how to differentiate between disordered and healthy approaches to exercise
- Be familiar with the progression of recovery and the recommended levels of exercise at each stage
Be Their Valentine: Fostering Self-Love in Youth of all Sizes
Webinar Summary
81% of ten year olds are afraid of becoming fat. For youth already in larger bodies, this can lead to a damaging relationship to themselves and their bodies that sets them up for a lifetime of body dissatisfaction, a poor relationship to food, and potentially disordered eating or eating disorders. However, there are things we can do to combat this narrative and set kids up with tools that can help them cultivate a positive self-worth. By incorporating a HAES (health at every size) approach and encouraging mindful eating, we can help set them up to succeed in challenging this damaging narrative and foster self-love.
This presentation will walk attendees through the process by which body image is developed and how social norms have changed over time before outlining the impact of that image on those who do not fit the social ideal. From there, we will examine tangible tools that providers and community members can use to combat that narrative, reduce feelings of shame and stigma, and promote a positive body image and self worth in youth. These include HAES (health at every size) approaches, intuitive/mindful eating, and a reframing of our approach to ‘activity.’
Learning Objectives
After this presentation, attendees will be able to:
- Explain the importance of self love in positive childhood development (15m)
- Recognize that being in a larger body is not a moral failing, and understand the damage that perception does to young people (10m)
- List tangible approaches and steps they can take to foster a positive body image in youth (15m)
- Understand the benefits of mindful eating and taking a HAES (health at every size) informed approach (15m)
Presenter
Brittni Bowie, LPC, NCC
Brittni Bowie LPC, NCC has spent the last seven years working in the field of eating disorders. After obtaining her Bachelor’s in Kinesiology, she worked as a Behavioral Specialist with children and adolescents at the inpatient and residential eating disorder levels of care while she earned her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Mount Mary University. She has spent the last five years as a therapist in the eating disorder field in various levels of care. She is currently the therapist for the Resident Child/Adolescent Eating Disorder Recovery Center at Rogers Behavioral Health in Oconomowoc, WI. Brittni is a member of the National Board of Certified Counselors and the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals. She is currently working toward her certification as an eating disorder specialist.
Off the Starting Blocks: Eating Disorder Prevention in Youth Sports
Webinar Summary
Youth athletes are a unique population within the sport community. Their youthful passion and enthusiasm for sport matched with competitive, future-oriented goals make them a population that is both extraordinary and vulnerable. These athletes are excited to work hard and have fun, however their joy for sport risks being tainted by some of the harmful aspects of sport culture. Coaches, parents, mentors, and other authority figures are given the opportunity to create a sport environment for their athletes that perpetuates joy, competition and success, and minimizes perfectionistic pressures, debilitating self-criticism and unhelpful comparisons. This presentation is intended to help provide ideas on how to create a sport culture that more accurately promotes sport passion and performance, which includes eating disorder awareness, communication tactics, and how to best support those who are struggling with mental health.
Learning Objectives
1. Identify the types of eating disorders and their warning signs.
2. Recognize the risk factors for eating disorders that are specific to athletes and the potential consequences of eating disorders.
3. Describe the role of a coach in the prevention and treatment of eating disorders.
4. Identify ways to effectively communicate and support your athletes in order to create well-being, safety, and sustainability in sport.
Presenter
Savannah Fernandez, PsyD – Sport Psychologist
Savannah Fernandez is a post-doctoral therapist and holds her doctoral degree from Loyola University Maryland’s PsyD program, and her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Florida State University. Additionally, she accomplished her pre-doctoral internship at Lehigh University’s Counseling and Psychological Services specializing in sports psychology. Dr. Fernandez has worked together with adolescents, adults, and their families as they navigate various types of concerns including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, since 2016. Dr. Fernandez has long envisioned bringing together her passion for the treatment of eating disorders and sports psychology since entering graduate school, and thus found her home here at McCallum Place’s Victory Program. Dr. Fernandez’s goal in working with others is to help increase self-compassion and self-love as one moves through life’s trials and tribulations. Additionally, she aims to foster self-empowerment, flexibility, and interpersonal connectedness with those around her.
Recovery In Mid-Life: A Conversation with Betsy Brenner and Kate Arvesen
Webinar Summary
Join ANAD volunteer and author Betsy Brenner, and Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center’s Kate Arvesen, MCN, RDN, LD, CEDRD, to discuss the unique concerns that face adults encountering an eating disorder diagnosis and recovery in mid-life. While EDs and disordered eating are often associated with the young, they can affect folks of any age. In this webinar, ANAD executive director Kristen Portland will moderate a discussion between Betsy and Kate about the special concerns that face those recovering in mid-life, incorporating sport into recovery, and why healthy parents are important to raising healthy kids.
Presenters
Betsy Brenner
Betsy Brenner is the author of her recovery memoir “The Longest Match: Rallying to Defeat an Eating Disorder in Midlife,” a recovery speaker, and ANAD peer support mentor. A graduate of Brown University and American University Law School, Betsy was a nationally ranked tennis player, hospital attorney, hospice volunteer, and high school tennis coach. She and her husband, Jeff, reside in Barrington, Rhode Island and are the parents of three grown children.Katherine (Kate) Arvesen, MCN, RDN, LD, CEDRD
Kate Arvesen, MCN, RDN, LD, CEDR has over four years of experience at the Eating Recovery Center of Texas and works in the inpatient, residential, and partial hospitalization levels of care. She has experience with clients of all ages. Kate strives to provide a warm and non-judgmental environment to her clients. She is passionate about helping folks to build confidence around food in order to do the things they love.Treating Individuals with Eating Disorders in the Hispanic Community
Webinar Summary
This webinar is presented with EDCare. Join us to gain practical awareness and effective, culturally sensitive treatment approaches to binge eating disorder in the Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx culture. Improve treatment outcomes by establishing a culturally aware therapeutic relationship and success treating a population that often does not access treatment. This presentation will discuss symptoms of binge eating disorder (BED), cultural approaches, medical aspects to binge eating disorder, and the treatment approaches that have been shown to be effective. Other eating disorders will also be explored as connected to behaviors that may lead to binge eating disorders.
Learning Objectives
- Participants will learn clinical presentations and culturally sensitive treatment approaches to binge eating disorder in the Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx culture
- Participants will learn how other eating disorders and their behaviors are connected to and may lead to binge eating disorder.
- Participants will gain a better cultural understanding of eating disorders within the Hispanic community, barriers to treatment, and treatment outcomes.
Presenter
Dolores DeVargas-Schoonover, MA, LPC, CACII, CEDS/Approved Supervisor
Dolores DeVargas-Schoonover, MA, LPC, CACII, CEDS/Approved Supervisor, is a primary therapist at EDCare. She is a bilingual professional counselor who has extensive experience in working with individuals very resistant to treatment, history of trauma, eating disorders, neglect/abuse, substance abuse, poverty, and homelessness. Ms. De Vargas-Schoonover received her Bachelor of Arts from Regis University in the area of Spanish/Secondary Education, Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from the University of Colorado/Denver. Dolores believes that the family unit is an important component of the recovery process and incorporates Family Systems Theory. Dolores values meeting the needs of each patient’s individual treatment.
Dolores has worked for 25 years as a therapist. Prior to EDCare she was employed at another local facility for 10+ years treating eating disorders, previous 14 years in Child Protective Services in the unit that supported the reunification of families, ongoing private practice at a limited capacity. Dolores is considered an expert at working with dual-diagnosed individuals.
Her interests outside of providing therapeutic services include baseball-Colorado Rockies, spending time with her husband and pet poodle Charlie, visiting extended family in her native state of New Mexico, exploring turquoise jewelry, reading, and occasionally knits.
Joyful Movement and Inclusivity as an Antidote to Diet-Culture
Webinar Summary
This webinar is presented in partnership with McCallum Place Eating Disorder Centers. ANAD believes diet culture is dangerous and is leading to eating disorders. As an eating disorder informed and sensitive fitness professional, it’s important to understand this toxic reality, to protect our patients from harmful messaging permeating into our therapeutic environments. Research supports physical activity as part of eating disorder treatment, so this presentation will provide tools to create safe, supportive and inclusive spaces for our clients to explore movement in a joyful and non-judgmental way.
Learning Objectives
- Identify frequent challenges and concerns that an individual may encounter when reintegrating movement into their treatment.
- Contrast a balanced and joyful relationship to movement vs. one driven by diet-culture.
- Learn how to incorporate the 8 Pillars of the Body Positive Fitness Alliance into the eating disorder treatment and other athletic/movement-based settings.
- Discuss case studies that demonstrate the healing one can cultivate when safety, inclusivity and sustainability are central to an exercise environment rather than the philosophies that are typically dominant in diet-culture.
Presenter
Amanda Schlitzer Tierney, MS, CSCS, CEDS
Amanda Schlitzer Tierney is a NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and holds her Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology from Lock Haven University and her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Chestnut Hill College. Amanda is the former Co-Chair of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology: Eating Disorder Special Interest Group. Amanda has been working with athletes and non-athletes with eating disorders since 2006. Over the years, Amanda gained a wide range of knowledge for this specialized population and found her true passion: helping individuals incorporate balanced exercise into the recovery environment. Amanda’s goal as a Strength and Conditioning Coach is working with individuals to help identify unhealthy exercise thoughts and behaviors and supporting them in redefining their relationship with fitness. She aims to help her patients find a balance between challenging the body and bringing the fun back to exercise. She encourages listening to one’s body cues and adequate fueling to maintain a healthy body and mind. Amanda’s target reaches beyond the patient and she strives to educate athletes, teams, coaches, parents, athletic trainers, and sports medicine personnel on how to work with this specialized population.
How to be Anti-Diet (Parts 1 & 2)
Webinar Summary
Presented in partnership with Reasons Eating Disorder Center, this webinar provides an overview of the statistics on dieting and weight loss, the cultural implications of weight stigma and the risk factors associated with dieting for the development of eating disorders. Using perspectives and information grounded in nutrition education, feminism and social justice, direct work with clients with eating disorders in a variety of settings, and lived experience, the presenters provide a step-by step guide to moving past diet culture and finding balance and peace with food and how it relates to body weight, shape and size.
Learning Objectives
- Name 2-3 ways that dieting can cause harm
- Identify 2-3 nutrition interventions to support clients in being anti-diet
- Describe 2-3 ways that being anti-diet aligns with social justice movements
- Identify 1-2 techniques for cultivating an anti-diet social media feed
Presenter
Claire St John, MPH, RD, CEDRD-S
Claire brings compassion and understanding to her nutritional counseling practice. Claire has worked with men, women and children suffering from eating disorders at all levels of care, leading guided meals, restaurant and snack outings, nutrition groups and multi-family nutrition groups. With a dynamic understanding of eating disorders and how they impact individuals and families, Claire is passionate about repairing broken relationships with food.
Claire holds a Master’s of Public Health Nutrition from Loma Linda University, and after completing her rotations at Eisenhower Medical Center, passed the exam to become a Registered Dietitian. Working with eating disordered clients from the outset, she has developed a method of practice that includes exposure and response therapy, motivational interviewing and compassionate understanding paired with firm encouragement. Helping people reconnect with food and normalize their eating patterns is the most rewarding part of working with eating disordered patients for Claire. Encouraging people to be able to make peace with food, enjoy meals with loved ones and move through the world without fear is why Claire chose the field of eating disorders. Claire enjoys reading, writing, hiking and cooking, and spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, covering the school beat and the City Hall beat. She enjoys learning about her clients’ passions — what they are reading, what they’re studying in school and what their hobbies are, taking a whole-person approach to treatment.
Fiona LaRosa-Waters, BS
Fiona is an experienced behavioral health marketing professional and community relations specialist, and the director of business development for Reasons Eating Disorder Center. She has been working in the eating disorders field since 2011 and has held positions as a professional outreach representative for eating disorder and substance use facilities, a counselor in a treatment center for adult women with eating disorders, and providing outpatient case management and treatment placement services for clients.
The Weight of Stigma in the Treatment of Eating Disorders
Webinar Summary
As clinicians, we use our skills to help clients heal from eating disorders. At the same time, we exist in a culture where diet talk is normative and weight stigma prevails. Each of us has an obligation to become aware of our own internalized weight bias because even with the best of intentions, these types of thoughts, behaviors and assumptions impact the way we treat clients. In this plenary panel, you’ll hear from a doctor, therapist and dietitian about the many ways that weight stigma creates obstacles, and even harms people with eating disorders. Through presentations and conversation, you’ll have the opportunity to consider steps to reduce weight stigma in your practice and/or organization as well as beyond the clinical setting.
Presenter
Aaron Flores, RDN
Judith Matz, LCSW
Lisa Erlanger, MD.
A Guide to the Guys: Treating Men with Eating Disorders
Webinar Summary
Although thought of as a predominantly “female” problem, eating disorders affect a surprisingly high number of men. The aim of our presentation is to provide clinicians with guidance in the treatment of men with eating disorders throughout the lifespan. We will review the unique features of eating disorder presentations in men compared to women, such as the heightened incidence of binge eating and extreme forms of exercise, that have been recently uncovered in a comprehensive study of over 1000 clients with eating disorders. These unique features of eating disorders in men will be used to describe several evidence-based treatment strategies that have shown to produce significant symptom relief in male clients, such as gradual inclusion of avoided foods into one’s diet as well as progressive reintegration into important life activities (e.g., moderate exercise, increased social connectivity). We will utilize a variety of case examples from our own practice to bring these unique treatment strategies to life.
Presenter
Brad E. R. Smith, MD.
Gender-Inclusive Residential Treatment: Breaking the Treatment Binary
Webinar Summary
In the past few years, research has started to catch up to what so many folks already knew: transgender individuals are much more likely than cisgender individuals to experience an eating disorder. Despite this, competent care for transgender people remains a challenge to find in the eating disorder field. This presentation will discuss prevalence of eating disorders across diagnoses and the gender spectrum, the unique expressions of eating disorders within the transgender population, what goes into creating an inclusive environment for individuals of all genders and gender presentations, and ways eating disorder treatment needs to move forward. We will also explore some of the most challenging aspects of eating disorder care for transgender individuals, for example: untangling the web of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia.
Presenter
Emmy Johnson, MSW, LCSWA
Finding Hope in Telling Our Stories: Understanding the Intersection of Discrimination and Shame in the Treatment of Eating Disorders in People of Color and LGBTQ+ Communities
Webinar Summary
People from ethnic minority groups and those in LGBTQ+ communities suffer from eating disorders at similar or higher rates than in the general population. People from these communities must often also grapple with additional stigma and marginalization, resulting in a multiple dose of shame and reasons for experiencing self-hatred. Among other risk factors, a history of macro- and micro-aggressions, discrimination and marginalization, and the well-documented confluence of stressors associated with minority status puts people from these communities at particularly high risk for the development of disordered eating behaviors and their attendant consequences.
Despite the seriousness and lethal nature of eating disorders for all those affected, there remains a tremendous disparity in mental health services utilization among those from marginalized and minority groups. People from these groups are under-identified by professionals and tend to receive and utilize treatment for eating disorders at significantly lower rates. These disparities reflect a profound need for culturally competent assessment and treatment services for members of marginalized communities who are struggling with eating disorders.
Cultural competency among care providers is crucial in providing effective treatment in both medical and mental health settings, and has particular salience in the context of illnesses as complex and multifaceted as eating disorders. It is essential for therapists, dietitians, physicians, nurses, and other allied professionals to possess cultural knowledge and be able to apply such cultural understanding to assessment and delivery of interventions and therapies as a fundamental aspect of overall clinical competence.
Presenter
Norman Kim, PhD
Telehealth Interventions for Eating Disorders: Do They Really Work?
Webinar Summary
Meeting the needs of a wide patient population requires innovative strategies and service delivery models. Telehealth interventions have shown success in providing high-quality and ethical care to patients with eating disorders. This presentation will review outcomes data from virtual eating disorders treatment services over the past three years. Presenters will discuss research findings & patient and caregiver feedback. Participants will gain valuable perspectives on the efficacy of virtual services and how these services can be delivered and utilized with quality and integrity.
Presenter
Casey Tallent, PhD
Jenna Tregarthen
LGBTQ+ Identity & Eating Disorder Recovery
Webinar Summary
This presentation will provide foundational information to those seeking to better understand the experience of LGBTQ+ people who are navigating eating disorder recovery. The presenter will provide information regarding the current trends in eating disorder care for LGBTQ+ people, as well as treatment challenges, and factors to consider in this work. Finally, case studies will be utilized to help individuals appreciate the complexities within this work, and the importance of attending to the intersection of diversity variables and eating disorders.
Presenter
Dr. Julia Sadusky
Use Grit to Achieve Your Goals: An Eating Disorder Pioneer’s Steps to 30+ Years of Full Recovery
Webinar Summary
For three decades, Caroline has been a pioneer with her groundbreaking work in the areas of goal setting, grit, happiness and success. She is recognized as one of the world’s leading positive psychology experts on this research and how it can be applied to one’s life for maximum transformation and growth. Caroline has firsthand experience achieving hard goals—she used “grit” to help overcome her personal battle with bulimia, and today she has more than three decades of unbroken recovery.
In this webinar recording, Caroline draws upon her own experience, as well as her professional research on positive psychology, to share her keys to eating disorder recovery. Through her stories and examples, webinar viewers will learn how to use grit to overcome eating disorder recovery setbacks. Participants will also learn how to use evidence-backed strategies for sustainable eating disorder recovery. Caroline has a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. She is the author of six books, including Positively Caroline (Cogent 2013), Getting Grit (Sounds True 2017) and Creating Your Best Life (Sterling 2009).