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Here’s our list of the top 5 online news items and stories that have fascinated or inspired us recently.

This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences on their own path to recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, or symptom use. Please use your own discretion. And speak with your therapist when needed.

By Dallas Rising, a former The Emily Program client and woman in recovery

I sat cross-legged on my yoga mat, doing my best to explain yoga’s role in my life. Inevitably, thoughts of my eating disorder surfaced. I talked about my relationship with exercise, my unhealthy compulsivity with high-intensity activity, and severe food restriction. My eating disorder treats numbers as fodder for obsession, so health clubs and gyms aren’t safe for me. Our culture recently recognized the self-punishment associated with “thinspiration,” and instead embraced “fitspiration.” Fewer people recognize the danger of fitspiration, although it encourages an equally destructive and punishing mindset. It celebrates those that ignore physical distress in the name of fitness. Both paradigms frame the body as something to conquer, shape, and control.

by Liza Miller, a college student studying psychology with an emphasis on Gender and Women’s Studies.

“Wait so all of these people are in The Red Sea?”
“No, no. It’s called the REDC. The Residential Eating Disorders Consortium.”

This was the first interaction I had at Lobby Day this year. Considering I was the one asking this question, I was not off to a great start.

To give you some background: I am a twenty-year-old college student studying psychology. So when my dad [Dirk Miller, Executive Chairman and Founder of The Emily Program] invited me to join him in petitioning representatives of members of Congress about eating disorder-related legislation, I felt both thrilled and wildly underprepared.

Many previous studies have attempted to decipher how women perceive the disordered eating behaviors of other women. However, previous researchers have not extensively examined how young women perceive their own eating pathologies. Among college-aged women, eating disorders are extremely prevalent, but many of these individuals attribute their disordered eating to the normal stress of college. Of the very small percentage of women who do seek treatment, an even smaller percentage seek help specifically for an eating disorder. This lack of self-identification is deeply problematic because timely identification and treatment of an eating disorder is essential for maximizing the chances of a successful recovery.

This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences on their own path to recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, or symptom use. Please use your own discretion. And speak with your therapist when needed.

 by Melinda Parrish, plus-size model and body positivity advocate in recovery from Binge Eating Disorder. She lives in Washington, D.C. Follow her at https://www.instagram.com/melparrishplus/.

To some degree, it’s fair to say that the military “trained” me for Binge Eating Disorder.

To be clear, I’m a huge supporter of the military and am incredibly honored to have served. I have a deep reverence for the military and everyone serving. But the reality is that 34% of women in the military suffer from eating disorders, much more than the percentage of women in the general population.

This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences on their own path to recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors or symptom use. Please use your own discretion. And speak with your therapist when needed.

by Liza Miller, a college student studying psychology with an emphasis on Gender and Women’s Studies.

Tucked away in a dark corner of my room, I typed my burning question into Google’s search bar: “am I too fat?” What flashed before my eyes was a slew of tools (BMI calculators, tables, and charts) that could mathematically answer my question and an endless supply of articles that could tell me how to lose weight if the answer was “yes.”

This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences on their own path to recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors or symptom use. Please use your own discretion. And speak with your therapist when needed.

Well, that time of year is upon us. The ol’ guess-I’ll-try-to-squeeze-my-body-into-an-unforgiving-spandex-tube time of year! Some people call it “summer.” I suspect those people don’t have body image issues.

The Emily Program in St. Louis Park, MN is launching an adolescent intensive day program (AIDP) on June 5th. The AIDP will expand levels of care at the treatment center, which currently offers an intensive outpatient program and outpatient group for adolescents. 

Therapist/social worker Alex Montes shared some details about adolescent treatment at The Emily Program and the new intensive day program.