To the Family Member Who Worries I Am Not Helping Your Loved One’s “Weight Problem”

Learn About Our HAES Approach Dear Family Member, I understand your fears. I get it. You want the best for your loved one. You want him or her to have the best and healthiest and fullest life possible. I do too. You believe that helping your loved one to lose weight will help achieve these …

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Family-Based Treatment Can Help Depression and Self-Esteem Too!

FBT Depression and Self-Esteem

  Family-Based Treatment Family-based treatment (FBT) is the leading evidence-based treatment for teen eating disorders. It represents a paradigm shift from older treatments that focused on helping teens become independent from their parents in order to recover from their eating disorders. In FBT, parents are central members of the treatment team. Parents are charged with …

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Are We Setting Recovery Weights Too Low?

Recovery Weight

Defining Eating Disorder Recovery Plenary on Defining Recovery At the 2018 International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) in Chicago, I attended a plenary, Recovery from an Eating Disorder: How Do We Define It? What Does It Look Like? And Should It Always be the Focus? During this plenary, Anna Bardone-Cone, Ph.D. spoke about the essential …

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On Empowering Parents—Not Pathologizing Them

Empowering Parents

I often write about the importance of including parents in the treatment of adolescents and young adults. My work is informed by my training in Family-based Treatment (FBT). A central component of this treatment is empowering parents to help their ailing children with eating disorders return to health. When asked why families should be the …

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How To Choose A Supplemental Nutrition Shake

Nutritional Supplements for Eating Disorder Recovery - Katie Grubiak, RDN in Los Angeles, California [Image description: Photo of a smiling, red-headed, white woman, Katie Grubiak, RDN, eating lunch and surrounded by all the nutritional supplements we tasted]

By Katie Grubiak, RDN at Nutrition Illumination (formerly at EDTLA) Choosing a nutrition shake to support eating disorder recovery can be a daunting process. In a previous post, we discussed the role of supplemental nutritional shakes in eating disorder recovery. Sometimes, patients in recovery will be unable to restore their nutrition entirely with food. Families …

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Who Gets Treated for Eating Disorders in Los Angeles?

low cost eating disorder treatment Los Angeles County

Affordable Eating Disorder Therapy Update June 2021: We are so excited to have our own in-house option for low-fee eating disorder therapy for people in California with our graduate externs. Eating Disorders Affect People at All Income Levels This NEDAwareness week (2018), I’ve been thinking a lot about the theme of “Let’s Get Real.” One …

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Nutritional Supplement Shakes in Eating Disorder Recovery

Child Drinking a Nutritional Supplement [Image description: drawing of a girl drinking a milkshake from a cup] Depicts a potential girl with an eating disorder such as ARFID in Los Angeles, California drinking a nutritional supplement

By Lauren Muhlheim, PsyD and Katie Grubiak, RDN Nutritional supplement shakes commonly support eating disorder recovery. In this post, we will discuss what they are and how to use them. In our next post, we will taste-test the different brands and formulations of nutritional shakes on the market, share our opinions, and help you decide …

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How to Communicate With Your Psychiatrist About Medication

How to Communicate with Your Psychiatrist

In my work with patients who have anxiety and/or depression, I often recommend a consultation with a psychiatrist regarding medication. I believe in the value of psychotherapy; that’s why I became a (non-prescribing) psychologist. However, I find the careful use of psychiatric medications as a helpful aid to psychotherapy. For best results, you must communicate …

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Checking Our Own Weight Biases as Parents

  Weight bias is a preference for thinness. In the words of psychologist Ashley Solomon, Psy.D., CEDS, “Weight bias is insidiously interwoven into the fabric of our culture.” Like many of us, I grew up in a family that possesses a great deal of weight bias. When I gained weight just before puberty my mother …

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Raising the Bar: Competence in Outpatient Eating Disorder Treatment

Authors of Scope of Competence for Eating Disorder Treatment with reviewer, Dr. Portney [Image description: Alli, Dr. Portney, and Dr. Muhlheim at ICED 2016]

Is Your Therapist Competent to Treat Your Eating Disorder? When my friend and colleague, Alli Spotts-De Lazzer, M.A., MFT, LPCC, CEDS, asked me to join her in writing an article on competence for therapists treating eating disorders, I jumped at the opportunity. Psychotherapists are ethically bound to treat within their scope of competence. Yet how …

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