Posts Tagged “Education”

You’re a few hours into treatment—or maybe a few days in—when you begin to wonder if you’ve made a mistake. The anxiety you expected to subside has only gotten more intense. You’re not sick enough for this, it says. You can handle this on your own. Part of you is already scanning for the exit.

This can happen even if you felt ready to begin eating disorder treatment. Even if you walked in with real motivation and a sense of hope. However disorienting it might be to experience, a spike of panic at hour twelve or an overwhelming urge to leave at the end of day three are not signs that treatment is wrong for you. Research tells us that the eating disorder voice tends to get loudest when it feels most threatened, and entering treatment is about as threatening as it gets.

Read on to learn why the first days can feel so destabilizing, and what to do when the urge to leave feels the strongest.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, we’re joined by two North Carolina-based Emily Program clinicians, Mem Wood and Elysse Thebner Miller, to talk all things Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, or ARFID.

Mem and Elysse unpack what makes ARFID different from ordinary food preferences, why it can emerge at any age, and how symptoms may affect nutrition, growth, medical stability, and daily life. They describe the three ARFID subtypes, share what treatment actually looks like, and highlight signs that often indicate it’s time to seek support.

This episode also introduces The Emily Program’s new specialized residential and inpatient programming for adults with ARFID in the Raleigh–Durham area—the only dedicated adult program of its kind nationwide.

Many people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) notice that their eating habits don’t follow a predictable rhythm.

Maybe you lose track of time and forget to eat until hunger becomes unbearable. Or you snack impulsively—not out of hunger, but because it feels like the only way to calm down when your brain is buzzing and overstimulated. Or perhaps you’ve found yourself stuck staring at the contents of your fridge, so paralyzed by all of the steps involved in preparing a meal that you end up skipping eating entirely.

You know you need help for an eating disorder—or someone you love does—but you can’t figure out if you can afford treatment, and it’s keeping you stuck.

Insurance policies are written in language that’s deliberately hard to decode. You need to know what your plan covers and what you’ll owe, and getting that information is difficult—especially while you’re also dealing with the stress of an eating disorder.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. This blog walks you through what insurance typically covers for eating disorder treatment, how to determine what your plan includes, and the steps to take to get clarity.

Academic excellence can vanish almost overnight when eating disorders take hold. High-achieving students find themselves unable to concentrate, missing classes, and watching their GPAs plummet. The academic consequences extend far beyond temporary setbacks—they can derail entire educational trajectories.

Learn more about eating disorder treatment and school support for teens and families

When a straight-A student suddenly struggles with basic math problems, or a creative writer can’t finish a simple paragraph, the culprit might not be lack of effort. For students with eating disorders, the brain-school connection becomes disrupted in ways that many families don’t expect.

The impact goes far beyond missed meals affecting energy levels. Eating disorders fundamentally alter how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information—the very functions students need to succeed academically.

Remember: A semester of modified academics is far better than years of struggling through school with an untreated eating disorder.

Learn more about eating disorder treatment and school support for teens and families

We all live in diet culture, a society obsessed with thinness and dieting. Weight and food biases permeate the air we breathe, tingeing our thoughts and actions in ways sometimes hard to notice. Providers, patients—none of us—are immune to these biases. They’re often subtle and deeply embedded, and left unexamined and unchecked, they can manifest in interactions between patients and even the most capable, well-intentioned providers.

In this article, we define and discuss weight and food bias, including its perpetuating factors and health consequences. Learn the impact of weight stigma and how to recognize and counter implicit and explicit bias in yourself, your practice, and in our larger society.

What are weight bias and stigma?

Weight bias refers to negative attitudes, beliefs, or assumptions about others based on body weight or size. Internalized weight bias occurs when these negative weight-related beliefs are absorbed and held about oneself.

Weight bias can lead to weight stigma, or the disapproval of someone based on their weight. Stigma is seeing someone negatively because of their weight, which can in turn lead to treating someone negatively because of it. Stigma manifests in stereotyping, bullying, and discrimination on the basis of weight, as well as exclusion and marginalization in media, professional, health care, and other settings. While weight bias harms people of all sizes, those who live in bodies that do not conform to “normal” body size expectations experience the greatest weight stigmatization.

Continuing a summer tradition, the teachers and patients at The Emily Program’s Durham and Atlanta facilities are watching the metamorphosis of caterpillars to butterflies in our classrooms this month. These furry little creatures go through a great deal of change in two short weeks, similar to the remarkable changes our patients make during their recovery process.

During the academic year, the patients are able to maintain progress in their school’s coursework with licensed teachers in our fully equipped classrooms. However, during the summer months, we get to have a bit of fun in science and art. The highlight of the summer is our metamorphosis unit, when we dig deeper to learn about this dramatic change the insects go through, observe them closely, and paint our own butterflies in the classroom.