New Books

Eating Disorders: A Handbook of Christian Treatment. This new comprehensive guide to eating disorders takes the most current medical information and integrates it with Biblical Christianity. Click here for more info

NEW!

Recent posts include:

“Sending Your Recovering Child to College”

“Recovered vs. In Recovery-Take II”

“Coaches and Teachers in the ED Recovery Process”

“Looking Beyond Anxiety”

Featured Treatment Facilities

RADER PROGRAMS 800-841-1515 www.RaderPrograms.com Rader@raderprograms.com

The staff at Rader Programs has been providing multidisciplinary eating disorder treatment for over 25 years. Our staff of caring and experienced eating disorder professionals includes psychiatrists, psychologists, internists, registered dietitians, registered nurses, master level counselors, family counselors, and exercise counselors who recognize the complexity of eating disorders and understand the emotional, physical, nutritional, exercise, family and social components. Our treatment approach is centered on the special needs of each individual and we provide a nurturing, supportive environment to help individuals and their families achieve life long recovery. For a free confidential consultation please call 800-841-1515.

EATING RECOVERY CENTER 877-825-8584 . Denver, Colorado www.EatingRecoveryCenter.com info@eatingdisorders.md

Our mission is to provide holistic treatment that is medically and behaviorally sound in order to facilitate the long-term recovery of eating disorders. The Eating Recovery Center aims to ensure each patient's healthy transition by honoring individual strengths and social supports and to equip patients with life-changing tools so that nourishing healthy behavior will be sustained outside our center.

All services are provided in the center's serene, tranquil environment, complete with massage, individual and family therapy, art therapy, yoga, educational groups, spa bathroom suite and chef prepared meal selections. That, coupled with the medical care and expertise of our full-time staff, provides a balance between therapeutic relaxation and the hard work required for recovery.

• Leadership by national experts Doctors Ken Weiner and Rick Bishop • Inpatient, Residential, Partial Hospitalization and Outpatient services • For adult females and males 17 and older • Licensed as a Behavioral Hospital • 24 hour skilled nursing and medical professionals • Full-time psychiatrists and internists on staff

A key to our treatment is found in weekly team meetings. What sets us apart from other treatment centers is that the patient and the referring professional (when possible) attend the meetings along with the patient's entire treatment team. This level of collaboration between patient, referring professional and our medical staff is vital to achieving long-term positive outcomes.

Treatment Facilities, would you like to be featured here? Contact amy@gurze.net for details.

Inspirational Corner

Photos by Leigh Cohn, ©2008 Gürze Designs More pictures at www.eatingdisordersblogs.com

Leigh and I recently took a week-long horsepacking trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana for a friend’s 50th birthday. It was one of the most amazing, exhilarating, terrifying, empowering, awe-inspiring things I have ever done in my life.

When our group signed on, we really didn’t know what to expect. Sore buns and legs like noodles for sure! But in my meditation the night before we left, a favorite song came to me that goes, “Open up to experience….” And so as we climbed into the Rocky Mountains on that first day, I did my absolute best to open myself to whatever was in store. And I sang a lot!

The truth is I am terrified of heights, and though I knew we would be “riding high” nothing could have prepared me for the initial eight-hour trek over a 7,200 foot mountain pass. The horses were incredible—sure-footed, responsive, and confident—and as we climbed higher and higher, a feeling of trust grew inside me. Trust in my horse, trust in our guides, trust that I can still do things that scare me (and live to tell about them), and the conviction that this new experience was exactly what I was meant to have at this moment in time.

Recovery from an eating disorder requires a similar approach: trust in your treatment team, overcoming fears, believing in your ability to succeed, and accepting the process as it unfolds in the moment.

We rode 60 miles over a period of a week along the Continental Divide and portions of the Lewis and Clark Trail, and camped in two spots which were very different from each other. The first was in a small green clearing in the midst of a forest blackened by last year’s devastating fires. Although the trees were all dead and there didn’t appear to be any signs of life other than the sounds of bugs chomping on dead wood, a carpet of yellow flowers blanketed the forest floor with signs of hope and life renewed. The second camp was quite the opposite, an enormous meadow of greenery and flowers surrounded by pine trees with a quiet stream winding through it. Even the “poop tent” had a breathtaking view. We voted to stay there for an extra day.

It was good for all of us to get away from our regular lives: cell phones, computers, to-do lists, even our everyday thoughts and identities. Again, I was struck by the metaphor of recovery. If you identify yourself as “eating disordered,” a simple but effective change is to instead think of yourself as “recovering from an eating disorder.” Leave that old identity behind. It is a subtle, yet important, difference.

Even as far away from civilization as we were—we saw only two other people in the first six days—it was disturbing to note some food-centric characteristics in a few of our group members. For example, two women constantly bemoaned the menu’s inclusion of what they considered junk foods. One frequently questioned if she was gaining or losing weight. Another “needed” to run up a mountainside on a rest day to get in her missed workout. We saw signs of perfectionism, people fretting over dust, and self-consciousness about being seen in a bathing suit. How sad that even in the midst of such tremendous natural beauty, people weren’t seeing the beauty in themselves.

Happily, by the end of the trip, most of those kinds of concerns drifted away and we each embraced our stronger sense of self and connection to nature. I encourage all of you readers to take a vacation from not only your daily life, but also the ideas about yourself that keep you stuck. Become fearless if only to prove that you can do it and open up to all the experiences that life has to offer. You never know what’s on the other side of that mountain pass!

Additional photos from our trip are in rotation at www.eatingdisordersblogs.com