Food for Thought

4 Ways Parents Can Address Harmful Family Commentary This Holiday Season

When your child has an eating disorder, established family norms like discussing diet and weight can impact their recovery in harmful ways. During the holiday season, these often innocent but triggering behaviors may intensify, especially during family gatherings where food plays a central role as a medium through which loved ones bond and connect.…

Winter Blues: Navigating Depression and Eating Disorder Recovery During the Holidays

For a long time, Equip Peer Mentor Kelsey Gilchriest didn't understand why her mood would dip so low around the winter holidays. At times, the seasonal shift made it difficult to spend time with family and find joy in her usual hobbies. The sadness also made her relationship with eating even more challenging — a feeling known far too-well for many people with eating disorders.…

What the Facebook Whistleblower Taught Us About Social Media and Eating Disorders

Anyone who’s ever scrolled through social media (approximately 3.5 billion people) is likely aware that much of the content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can be problematic or triggering to anyone struggling with body image let alone an eating disorder. But it wasn’t until this October of this year that the public confronted the fact that not only are these platforms failing to crack down on accounts with harmful, often extreme dieting and body image content — they’re actively promoting them, according to insiders.…

Equip Team

Family, Food, and Festivities: Eating Disorder Recovery During the Holidays

For many, the start of the holiday season may evoke a spectrum of different emotions: the joy of quality time with friends and family, the stress of planning, and gratitude for a new year. But for those navigating eating disorder treatment, another emotion may arise: panic.…

Beyond the Food: Redefining the Meaning of Thanksgiving While in Eating Disorder Recovery

For many, Thanksgiving is a day centered around wholesome traits like family, friends, gratitude, and food. For those struggling with disordered eating and Thanksgiving to be a particularly challenging time.…

5 Ways to Shut Down Diet Culture Commentary During Thanksgiving

Eating disorder recovery can be a tumultuous experience any time of year, but navigating the holiday season — a time typically rife with food-centered celebrations — can be especially thorny. Thanksgiving in particular can be a challenging day for those struggling to improve their relationship to food and/or their bodies; those in recovery may have to interact with family members or friends who don’t fully understand or know about their recovery journey. Bracing for unsolicited and potentially hurtful comments on top of an atypical meal can be tough — but there are ways to get through the day and continue thriving in recovery.…

The Eating Disorders You May Not Know About

When it comes to the various types of clinical eating disorders (i.e. the types of disorders that are considered “official” diagnoses per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), there are just a few — but there is still a great deal most people don’t know about eating disorders. Many have heard of anorexia (characterized by food restriction, malnutrition, and a fear of weight gain) and bulimia (episodes of overeating, otherwise known as bingeing, followed by purging). Even though it’s the most common eating disorder, fewer people are as familiar with the nuances of binge eating disorder (BED), characterized by recurrent binges accompanied by a feeling of a loss of control, as well as shame, distress, or guilt.…

Kristina Saffran

We Already Knew Social Media is Detrimental for Eating Disorders. Now Let's Get Everyone Access to Care

In light of the Facebook whistleblower events that have taken our society by storm this month, I have simple words to share: we’ve known this all along. In the eating disorder field, we’ve known for over a decade that social media has harmful, harrowing, and preventable effects on young people. We’ve known that the mere act of holding a phone – which most young people do for more than 7 hours per day – exposes young people to toxic messages and images steeped in harmful diet culture that can lead them to tailspin into serious, and often secretive, eating disorders. I should know because I developed anorexia at 10 years old after the experience of watching my babysitter diet.…

Lauren Gerber

Equip Now Provides Eating Disorder Care to Half the US Population!

Virtual eating disorder treatment provider nearly doubles footprint with launches in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois …

Michelle Konstantinovsky

A Disease of Privilege or Poverty? The Research on Socioeconomic Status and Eating Disorders

Equip Family Mentor Jayme Nimick says she doesn’t just think poverty had a direct impact on her son’s eating disorder — she knows it did.…

Eating Disorders 101: Signs, Symptoms, & Diagnoses

Despite the increasing awareness, visibility, and discourse around eating disorders, societal stereotypes and preconceived notions still abound. “The stock photo on most media articles about eating disorders is a sad, thin, white woman on a scale, and the image that comes to mind is a skeletal body damaged by severe malnutrition,” says Equip’s VP of clinical programs, Cara Bohon, PhD. “But those images only represent one segment of a population and a single diagnosis. Not only that, but viewing eating disorders this narrowly does real damage to those people struggling with these illnesses who do not look like those images — and that's actually most people with eating disorders!”…

Michelle Konstantinovsky

New Research Reveals the Devastating Realities of Eating Disorders — Here’s What Families Need to Know

Research Reveals the Devastating Realities of Eating Disorders — Here’s What Families Need to Know …

Michelle Konstantinovsky

Jewish and in Recovery: How to Approach Fasting During the High Holidays

As summer winds down and fall approaches, the holiest days of the Jewish calendar are upon us: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The former, known as the Jewish New Year, is typically marked by festive customs and symbolic feasts. The latter is the “Day of Atonement”, a somber day of reflection and praying for forgiveness, perhaps best known for the fast that accompanies it. Jewish people who observe Yom Kippur typically eat their last meal with friends and family before sundown on the eve of Yom Kippur, and then abstain from all food and beverages until sunset of the following day. …

Lauren Gerber

Equip Expands its Eating Disorder Care to Pacific Northwest

Equip is now seeing patients in Washington and Oregon, expanding its current footprint to six states as it continues to transform eating disorder treatment…

Michelle Konstantinovsky

Back-to-School Weight Commentary: How to Support Your Kids

The return to school is never exactly seamless for kids. But this year, the return to in-person schooling is poised to be emotionally taxing in unprecedented ways. For students who’ve gone through puberty or experienced weight changes for various reasons over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impending unsolicited commentary will leave them especially vulnerable. …

Oona Hanson

My Kid Is Getting Better, so Why Do I Feel Worse?

*This article originally appeared on feast-ed.org…

Michelle Konstantinovsky

Why Do Latinx Folks Fall Through The Cracks of Eating Disorder Care?

Born and raised in the Dominican Republic, Equip Medical Assistant, Genesis Taveras says eating disorders were rarely — if ever — discussed. So when one of her friends developed anorexia, she and her peers were left in the dark about the diagnosis. …

Michelle Konstantinovsky

How Eating Disorders Show Up (But Often Aren't Seen) in AAPI Communities

Growing up, Equip Peer Mentor, Grace Sung Un Kim, saw her family face an abundance of obstacles. One point of attempted comfort, however, came in the form of food. “As the daughter of non-English speaking, Korean immigrants who physiologically experienced famine post-Korean War and then poverty immigrating to the United States, food has always been a love language that eclipsed cultural and linguistic barriers,” she says. “The plates full of triangular cubes of chamoe 참외 (Korean melon) are tantamount to a million ‘I love yous’ never verbally expressed.” …