“Feeling Fat”: Weight Liberation and Exposure Therapy Across the Size Spectrum

What are we getting wrong about treating fears of fatness? We will share the experience of “feeling fat” in both a thin body and a fat body to illustrate how the misconception of fatness as a cognitive distortion that requires correction can impede eating disorder recovery for clients of all sizes. This presentation interweaves lived experience and empirical research to present a rationale for exposure-based approaches to body dissatisfaction that are both clinically effective and size-inclusive. Through applying our research in exposure therapy and weight liberation to interactive demonstrations, we hope to introduce stigma-informed interventions that can effectively challenge fears and anti-fat biases (for both clients and clinicians!). Attendees will leave equipped with actionable strategies to foster a weight-liberated therapeutic environment that empowers clients to embrace their bodies, their values, and their recovery process.

A Boor or A Burden? A Collaborative, and Interdisciplinary Session Exploring Lessons Learned and Best Practices for Delivering Virtual Eating Disorder Care

This session includes the presentation of original research findings as well as an interactive, collaborative group discussion component. We will summarize up-to-date findings from research regarding patients’ and participants’ experiences with virtual eating disorder treatment as well as present novel results from a study exploring LGBTQ+ patients’ participation in virtual treatment settings; we explore data from one community with barriers to care and barriers to community development to ascertain relevant lessons that apply more broadly. Presenters will then facilitate small-group discussions on focused questions with the goal of generating provider insights, processing our collective lived experiences, and collaboratively co-creating knowledge to inform and improve patient care and counseling strategies in virtual settings.

Inclusive Healing: Exploring the “Middle Place” of Eating Disorder Recovery

This presentation will explore recovery through a new framework that I call “Middle Place” — the liminal space between acute sickness and full recovery from an eating disorder. For my forthcoming book, “Slip,” I surveyed 716 people from forty-four states and thirty-seven countries about their experiences in the middle place. I also conducted more than 170 interviews with folks who have lived experience, as well as eating disorder clinicians and researchers. My presentation will draw from this data by looking at why it’s important to not only acknowledge the grey spaces of recovery but t remove the stigma and shame around slips (hence why my book is titled “Slip”). The Middle Place is a space where slips happen but progress is always possible, and it welcomes healing in all its forms.

When Food Doesn’t Nourish: Considerations for Attachment Based, Somatically Oriented, and Trauma Informed Care

In this presentation, Annie will present an overview of the Embodied Recovery for Eating Disorders framework and why a somatically-informed approach is essential for ED care. Additionally, she will explore the idea of “diet culture as perpetrator” – looking at fatphobia and healthism through the lenses of complex trauma and attachment injury, and how they create barriers to healing.

Depathologizing Autistic Cultural Experiences of Food and Body

If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person; there is no one set of steps in a textbook that constitute “affirming care.” Yet, collectively, as neurodiversity enters the mainstream vernacular, the autistic community at large is begging allistic (non-autistic) allies to accommodate their differences rather than hold them to neuronormative expectations. In this presentation, we will share about the unique ways autistic folks engage with food, movement, and their bodies and examine both how the eating disorder field has contributed to pathologizing these presentations and how we can do better in differentiating a difference from a problem. Through both personal stories and current research, we will highlight the richness of autistic perspectives and advocate for a more inclusive understanding of the autistic relationship to food through a cultural lens. We will also explore affirming strategies for supporting autistic clients who present for eating disorder treatment.

Revealing The Hidden Challenges of Eating Disorders in Men

Using a conversational podcast interview format, Jason and Eric will draw upon their lived experiences to provide a better understanding of the unique challenges men face in terms of body image, stigma, and eating disorders. This presentation will also explore the societal and community pressures Jason and Eric experience as gay men. Through discussing effective approaches to recovery, lessons in advocacy, and sharing advice for allies, this presentation will better prepare attendees to treat, care, or support the men in their lives who may also be experiencing an eating disorder.

Weight Inclusive Goal Weight Setting: How to Serve a Full Recovery Without a Side of Weight Bias

Weight restoration is an essential component of eating disorder recovery. Research and clinical work have traditionally set goal weights in accordance with either ‘ideal body weight’ calculations never intended for people with eating disorders, or a BMI of 18.5, or a median adult BMI. Given that many people with restrictive eating disorders never reach BMIs this low, and even those who do never lived in such a low range before their eating disorder, this makes little sense. Clients, families, and practitioners often try only to aim for the ‘lowest healthy weight’, failing to understand that many adverse cardiometabolic outcomes correlated with higher weight states are also correlated with weight suppression, weight cycling, and maladaptive weight control behaviors. This team of an physician and a registered dietitian nutritionist will review the research and evidence supporting the need for higher recovery weights for clients, and why we need not fear weight restoration for clients of any size. At the end of this presentation, participants will have a better understanding of goal weight setting through a weight inclusive lens using interactive case vignettes to support clinicians in navigating and compassionately man-aging weight stigma.

Adoptees & Eating Disorders: Clinical Considerations & Lessons from Lived Experience

Adoptees are a marginalized and under-examined group. Research shows that adoptees are at higher risk for eating disorders, however an insufficient number of providers have competency in working with adoptees. With attachment trauma at the root of adoption, it makes sense that many adoptees struggle to eat. Rebecca will discuss the unique challenges and sources of oppression for adoptees, from her own lived experience as a domestic infant adoptee, while also drawing upon her ongoing work serving this population. In this presentation, participants will learn basics of treating adoptee populations, including key language and vocabulary, experiences of oppression and barriers to care. We will discuss the prevalence of mental illness and eating disorders among adoptees and recommendations of how to treat adoptees in an adoption competent and trauma informed manner. This talk will also address the unique hurdles and nuances in working with body dysmorphia/body image distress in adoptees.

The Body is a Sacrifice: How Deconstructing from Purity Culture Impacts Eating Disorder Recovery

Originating within conservative and Christian groups like the Southern Baptist Convention and The Heritage Foundation in the late 1980s, contemporary purity culture quickly spread into secular life in the United States through abstinence-only sex education programs and pop culture influences like Brittany Spears, Selena Gomez, and The Jonas Brothers. More survivors of high-control religious groups are sharing their stories through social media, memoirs, and documentaries, emphasizing the internalized shame, anxiety, and disconnection they experience due to adherence to the movement. This presentation will provide the history and ideology of purity culture, emphasizing its origins in White Nationalism and racial oppression and highlighting its foundation as a political movement. This presentation will also emphasize the role of sacrificing the physical body for political ends in the ideology of purity culture, its impact on body image, bodily autonomy, and emotional disconnection, and how these factors impact eating disorders and eating disorder recovery. The presenter will also share evidence from survivor testimonials as well as personal clinical experience to offer insight into treating and supporting purity culture survivors in their eating disorder recovery.

From Weight-Centered Care to Whole-Body Health: Unpacking the History, Harm, and Future of Medical Training

This presentation explores the historical foundations of weight-focused medicine and its impact on modern healthcare practices. It delves into how medical training has prioritized weight as a primary indicator of health, often leading to biased treatments and negative patient outcomes. By examining the flaws in this approach, we will highlight the social, scientific, and ethical issues it creates. The presentation will conclude by offering strategies for shifting towards a more holistic, weight-inclusive model of care that promotes overall well-being.

Remote Care, Real-Life Barriers: Considerations for Health Equity in Remote Eating Disorder Milieus

Historically, eating disorder treatment has required individuals to leave their communities for months at a time to receive specialized care. With the proliferation of telemental health services, however, eating disorder care is increasingly being delivered through electronic means and reaching a wider variety of patients. This shift has presented novel challenges and opportunities for providers as they assist patients in confronting health-related social needs. Recent literature has attempted to demonstrate the association between health equity and treatment success. This talk aims to review recent literature, highlight trends, and suggest ameliorating factors that could guide future direction and improve treatment outcomes.

Identity-Informed Recovery: Understanding the Role of Social Identities in Treatment

This session provides a comprehensive exploration of the nuanced interplay between various social identities, such as race, gender, and sexuality, in the context of eating disorder recovery. The presentation will delve into the unique ways these intersecting identities influence an individual’s experiences with eating disorders and their journey toward recovery. Emphasis will be placed on practical strategies for attendees to recognize and effectively incorporate these diverse identities into their treatment approaches.

Mirroring and Shapeshifting: Understanding the Unique Interplay Between Relationships and Body Image

Whitney and Deb will provide a brief overview of their unique approach to body image healing and focus in on the seminal chapter of their book, Body Image and Relationships. Long before body image was on anyone’s mind, our first mirrors were our caregivers. Whitney and Deb share their framework for helping clients explore how their early mirroring and adapting in their family of origin impacted their self-perception, their approach to their relationships and ultimately, their body image.

Performative Self-Care to Curating Radical Interconnectedness & Coping for Neurodivergent Folks

Self-care as we know it today in the mental health space often perpetuates neuronormativity, healthism, and hyper-independence, representing exclusionary practices instead of interconnectedness and community care. Providers in the mental health and eating disorder field are vulnerable to perpetuating support strategies and recommendations that can continue to pathologize clients, uphold neuronormativity, and rupture clinician/client relationships.

Presentation participants will receive practical tools and interactive space to consider the colonization of self-care and coping strategy recommendations that contribute to neuronormativity, pathologization, and anti-fat bias. Additionally, the presenter will detail differences in emotional processing, information processing, and sensory differences specific to neurodivergent clients and the impact on coping strategies, self-care, and feeding and eating.

Pathological Exercise, Trauma, and Addiction: When Movement Takes a Dangerous Turn

Eating disorders almost never occur by themselves in regards to diagnoses and maladaptive coping skills. This presentation will focus on an often ignored symptom of an eating disorder which is pathological exercise. In addition it will focus on how trauma can be a precipitating or perpetuating factor for the eating disorder, pathological exercise, and substance. Finally there will be a discussion on creating a comprehensive treatment plan to address the eating disorder, trauma, pathological exercise and substance use utilizing nutritional rehabilitation, medication management, and psychotherapy.

Beyond the Midnight Snack: Understanding and Treating Night Eating Syndrome

Night Eating Syndrome (NES) is listed under the diagnosis of OSFED, yet seems to be overlooked, misunderstood and misdiagnosed due to a general lack of awareness. Similar to other eating disorders, NES can have devastating effects physically and psychologically, especially when the quality and quantity of sleep is continually disrupted. Treatment must be individualized by implementing key interventions, targeting maintaining factors and expanding the interdisciplinary team. Learn how to spot the differences between Night Eating Syndrome, similar eating disorders, and sleep-related eating disorders (SREDS) and offer clients concrete tools to help them break free from the night eating cycle.