faulker053

Against all odds She's not someone you'd expect to recovery. Decades living with an eating disorder, endless barriers to jump over.  But seeing the progress that my patient (I'll refer to as) Amy has made should provide hope to anyone who has long given up. Yes, recovery is possible. Not easy. Not quick. But possible. Please read through the end and share your thoughts with "Amy".  In the last 50+ years, I cannot remember a time in which I was satisfied (even slightly) with my body.   As a matter of fact, I view it as disgusting and embarrassing.   Even at my sickest state, I was convinced I was the fattest one in the room.    In this point of my recovery, I deem it important to reflect on how far I’ve come.   Below is my life’s journey thus far. It is uncertain to me why I have suffered from Eating Disorders for most of my life.    However, in my past, could lay the meaning for all of this.   My mom had EDs always.   My ED could be...

1) Recovery is about weight gain. Period. The simple answer?  It just might not be going the way you planned.  False.  Now don't let your eating disorder get all excited, saying "See! I told you so!" Weight restoration is surely a must for those who have fallen from their usual weight or in the case of kids, their weight for age and BMI curves. That is, their expected pattern of gain based on their age and their weight history. For kids, falling off their usual growth curve suggests a problem. It shouldn't be praised or rewarded, but evaluated. (Pediatricians, did you read that?!) But if someone's weight was high due to unhealthy behaviors such as binging, emotional overeating, or general disregard for satiety, and weight dropped with improved eating and coping, weight gain is likely unnecessary. Simply reaching a healthy range based on the charts also isn't enough. Perhaps your restrictive eating and suppressed weight began as a young teen, and you've liv...

Everyone is so happy. And doing so well, always having a great time. They’re all eating amazing food and managing their weight. They all look so healthy, too. And their kids are always smiling—they have the perfect families. Everyone else is so good at exercising—Map My Ride/Run and other apps prove they’re doing so much better than you running and cycling and walking. Yes, by comparison you hardly rate. Hardly his happiest or his best mug shot. Posted with permission. Or so it seems. It was quite timely that my patient whom I’ll call Beth, described her frustration having spent too many hours on Facebook. (Imagine that. Spending too much time on social media.)  She saw far too many ‘friends’’ photos displaying beach-bound bodies with a confidence she doesn’t possess. Like those ‘before and afters’ from diet ads from Diet Center and Weight Watchers (where the print too small to read confesses that these images are of rarely occurring weight loss that normal people don’t usually exp...

Yes, I'm direct. Today I heard reference to me and how I practice, shared by a patient, spoken by a therapist.  "She's extreme", the therapist reportedly said, referring, no doubt to my reaction to my new patient's eating disorder behaviors and her severely restrictive intake. I bypassed the "let's just wait and see" approach after a mere couple of visits, after noting the wac-a-mole pattern to her "recovery". Stop the laxatives, increase the purging, increase the food, double the exercise. And there weren't the necessary supports at home to help implement change and ensure her safety and her progress.  It's not the first time strong descriptives have been used about me and my management of eating disorders. I've been called  "tough" and "not easy". It's a wonder anyone would choose to come to see me. I sound so scary, no? So let me fess up. It's all true.  My stand against eating disorder behaviors ...

If you share my frustration please share this post with those that need to see it. Dear Insurance Company, I wish you could see what I see. I wish you could know how much work it requires to motivate an adult living with an eating disorder to trust enough to agree to enter a program. Everything is against their entering treatment—taking time off from work if their job will even allow it, getting coverage for their kids, telling people they know when their eating disorder is often their own secret, and enduring the shame of acknowledging that they are actually struggling with this disease—the shame of feeling that they ought to be over this by now. And the shame that comes with not fitting into society’s skewed perspective of what someone with an eating disorder looks like—because even those of normal weight and BMI can live silently with an eating disorder. Image what it’s like to then have your patient dumped from program. Sound harsh? Well that’s how it feels, both to them and to us ...