College Weight Gain: Don’t Fear The Freshman 15!

Two young women eating pizza joyfully with other snacks around. Are you concerned about the freshman 15? A college eating disorder therapist in Los Angeles explains why this myth is problematic for new college students.

TL;DR The “Freshman 15” is more myth than reality. Research doesn’t support that most college students gain fifteen pounds, and the fear surrounding it does far more harm than the weight gain itself ever could. What often goes unmentioned is that some weight gain during the college years is completely normal and expected, since the …

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Eating Disorders Before and After Bariatric Surgery–What You Need to Know

Eating Disorders and Bariatric Surgery [Image description: purple scrabble tiles spelling "Eating Disorders and Bariatric Surgery"]

Health professionals often recommend bariatric surgery for patients with larger bodies. A large body size, referred to in the medical world as “obesity,”—a term we will not use unless citing medical data— is not the same as an eating disorder. Yet, there is an intersection. A considerable number of people considering bariatric surgery may have …

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Shopping While Fat

Sharon Maxwell shopping while fat in recovery in Los Angeles, California [Image description: photo of a happy fat woman holding clothing at the Plus Bus in Los Angeles, CA]

Shopping While Fat–And Recovering by Sharon Maxwell, Practice Manager Growing up, I loved the concept of shopping. But as a fat person, I rarely actually enjoyed it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like shopping or finding new things. However, an invitation to go shopping with friends meant that the message that my body was intrinsically …

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Curate Your Feed with Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram

Curate Your Feed With Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram to Support Eating Disorder Recovery in California [Image description: screenshot of instagram post from resilientfatgoddess; a trans non-binary person smiling with the title, "Curate Your Feed With Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram"]

Diverse Instagram Accounts Can Support Recovery by SJ Thompson Belmonte, Resilient Fat Goddex and Lauren Muhlheim, Eating Disorder Therapy LA It’s time to curate your feed to have a more diverse social media feed. “Body positivity can’t be just about thin, straight, cisgendered, white women who became comfortable with an additional ten pounds on their …

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Can’t Horseback Ride Because of Your Size? That Might Just Be a Load of “Horse Shit.”

Horseback riding when fat [Image description: back of a fat person with long flowing blonde hair and a purple shirt, riding a horse]

  By Carolyn Comas, LCSW, CEDS-S, Clinical Supervisor Can you horseback ride if you are fat? Navigating the world in a fat body can be frustrating and may feel disheartening. There are, unfortunately, some activities and spaces that do not accommodate people in large bodies. When someone in a big body encounters spaces that do …

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CBT-WI: Weight-Inclusive CBT for Eating Disorders

CBT plus HAES for Eating Disorders [Image description: large bodied gender neutral person seated and facing a therapist whose back is to the camera] represents a potential client with an eating disorder receiving CBT plus HAES in Los Angeles, California

“What is Weight-Inclusive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT-WI? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is the most effective approach for treating adults with eating disorders, including bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The most recent, commonly taught, and implemented version is an “enhanced” protocol, CBT-E (Fairburn, Christopher G., 2008). Unfortunately, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for eating disorders is not always …

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How a Health at Every Size(R) (HAES) Approach Can Help With Eating Disorder Recovery

Health at Every Size and Eating Disorder [Image description: black larger bodied woman eating a donut] represents a potential client receiving Health at Every Size Counseling at Eating Disorder Therapy in Los Angeles, California

Eating disorders are not only about body image. Nor have they only recently arisen in response to societal pressures to be thin. In fact, eating disorders date back to at least the 13th and 14th centuries, when it was observed that women were fasting to demonstrate religious devotion. However, today eating disorders do occur in …

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When Eating Disorder Providers Are Steeped in Diet Culture

A woman’s hand holding a triple-scoop ice cream cone. Are you stuck in a cycle of bingeing, purging, and restricting? An eating disorder therapist in Los Angeles, CA, can help you break the cycle and create new healthy habits for long-term recovery.

Providers With Weight Stigma “People are concerned about the fact that I’m a therapist and have an eating disorder, and I’m like, ‘You’re concerned about me? I’m concerned about our entire fucking field.’” — Shira Rose, FoodPsych with Christy Harrison This quote has generated a lot of reactions. In this podcast, Shira—who lives in a …

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