Center for Eating Disorders

12/09/2025

Help support families with children with eating disorders around the globe by donating to F.E.A.S.T. This organization is growing by leaps and bounds and needs funds to expand and strengthen programming. Make a gift today!

Donating to F.E.A.S.T. supports the development of educational programs, resources, and support services for families affected by eating disorders. Your contribution helps extend their reach to more families worldwide, making a meaningful impact in the journey toward recovery.

11/30/2025

From with .repost

Excellent from
Ask yourself the questions posed in the shared post. It helps to examine systemic factors that benefit from our self-criticism/self-loathing and fat phobia.
・・・
who benefits from you believing that hunger is bad, wrong, or something to be avoided?

11/26/2025

For our U.S. followers, some tips from author Kate Summers, on how she navigated the Thanksgiving holiday dinner in past years. Kate was an eloquent presenter at one of our past conferences. Follow Kate's Substack for her thoughtful, honest, and wise reflections on navigating life with disabilities, trauma, and eating disorders.

My personal game-plan for navigating the holidays

11/21/2025

A supportive member of our CED community sent us this poem by Becky Hemsley thinking others might find it inspiring. So we gladly share it here with warm thanks to the sender.

I’ve teeth that stick out just a little too far
I’ve marks on my body where I’ve gathered scars
I’ve parts of my person that wobble and shake
I’ve imperfect skin on my imperfect face

My hair’s hard to manage - it’s coarse and it’s thick
I’ve stripes on my waist, on my belly and hips
I’ve lines on my forehead and some round my eyes
I’ve dimples and dents that now live on my thighs

And I used to hide, I got used to concealing
I knew all my angles and how I should breathe in

But all of the scars are the times I’ve derailed
And got back on track and lived, telling the tale
The lines on my forehead and those round my eyes
Tell the stories of times that I’ve laughed ‘til I cried

And all of the inches and stripes on my hips
Are from carrying, growing and birthing my kids
My dimply thighs that all wobble and shake
Are the times I’ve said yes to the chocolate and cake

The times I’ve decided a moment means more
Than hiding and shrinking like I’ve done before
See I’m happy and healthy and that is what matters
Not whether I’m scarred for I’m thinner or fatter

‘Cause life is a rollercoaster to ride on
It’s here for us all to enjoy not to hide from
It isn’t a dress size or holiday snap
But moments in time that we’ll never get back

So let’s not spend moments that we can’t replace
Concerned with our bodies, our hair and our face
And let us embrace all the life that we’ve lived
Our bodies are breathing - and that is a gift

*******

Becky Hemsley 2022
Gorgeous artwork by Anja Andresen Waage My Art Journal

'Some Body' is from What the Wild Replied: https://amzn.to/4hW3L65
(affiliate link)

11/18/2025

Beautiful, wise nudge toward just being from with .repost
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Reminding myself to not feel guilty for resting and not being productive. I wrote this for my children’s and YA poetry collection years ago “These Are The Words”. But it works a reminder for me as an adult too. 💜

11/09/2025

Thanks to for this excellent post
with .repost
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Fatphobia sucks. And medical fatphobia is particularly dangerous.

It demeans.
It shames.
It inteferes with care and with recovery.

This isn’t something I intend to stop talking about, and I hope you won’t either.

11/09/2025

In “It’s like building a new person”: lived experience perspectives on eating disorder recovery processes by LaMarre et al. Journal of Eating Disorders 2024 the authors interviewed people with personal experience with ED or experience supporting someone with an ED to explore their views on what recovery looks like and feels like.
And the 3 themes mentioned in the graphic summarized their responses.
This matches what we see in our outpatient work with children, teens, and adults with all types of eating disorders.
Recovery involves personal, interpersonal, and systemic change - in how we relate to ourselves, those we count on for understanding and support, and the culture at large.
It may sound daunting, but in reality change on a personal level naturally leads to change in our relationships and how we relate to the world.
We see our clients go through this every day, in their own ways.

It is why we do this work. It is a privilege to work alongside people reclaiming their bodies, tbeir relationships and the way they live their lives.

11/03/2025

Weekly support groups offered by F.E.A.S.T.

💬 This week’s support groups at F.E.A.S.T.:

Monday: Caregiver Support Group at 5pm PT / 8pm ET
• Open to parents, spouses, roommates, and anyone in a caregiving role

Tuesday: Sibling Support Group at 5pm PT / 8pm ET
• Open to siblings 13+ navigating life alongside a loved one with an eating disorder
• A safe, peer-led space to share and connect

Thursday: Caregiver Support Group at 11am PT / 2pm ET
• Open to parents, spouses, roommates, and anyone in a caregiving role

📎 Register here: feast-ed.org/supportgroup-reg

11/02/2025

Learning to listen to the language of your body and your own internal wisdom helps you to develop the muscle needed to push back against the authoritarian style that drives ED thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. Every time you question the ED rules, every time you make a choice in favor of honoring what your body/mind/self authentically needs you create a crack in the ED system. Healing is truly about emancipation.

❤️💜

10/28/2025

Trauma and PTSD (including subthreshold PTSD) are high risk factors for eating disorders. In fact an eating disorder can sometimes serve as a way to manage or suppress trauma-related feelings and thoughts, and the hyperactivation related to PTSD.

Trauma-informed treatment attends to this important interplay, helping the client to see the relationship and gradually learn to manage and tolerate the trauma symptoms without slipping into the ED for trauma moderation. This take time and practice and respect for the role the ED plays.

# traumaandeatingdisorders

10/27/2025

Excellent post shared from about the process of emotional regulation

While we might wish we could avoid unsettling
emotions, healing means building a nervous system that can experience these emotions and process them in an integrative way.
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We’ve been taught to “regulate our nervous system” as if calm is the goal. But calm is a byproduct of safety, not a substitute for it.

Meditation, breathwork, affirmations, and cold plunges can absolutely help shift your state - but if you never address what’s beneath the anxiety, you’re soothing the surface while the root keeps firing.

Real regulation comes from integration: where you’re not just managing symptoms, but creating safety.

10/26/2025

Living with and trying to recover from an eating disorder can often feel like a lonely endeavor. Complicated, chronic illnesses are often difficult for others to understand. And if we feel misunderstood it’s natural to question ourselves, to feel like it is our fault or that we are different.

The thing is, eating disorders occur around the globe, affecting people of all ages, genders, & cultures.

Human beings around the world have eating disorders and are looking for help and ways to recover.

It isn’t your fault that you have an ED. We say this all the time to our clients and loved ones but it is hard for them to absorb this truism. We feed ourselves. If we are eating in a dysregulated way, it must be under our power to “eat right”.

But powerful physiological and psychological mechanisms join forces in the development of an ED. These forces can be tricky to dismantle. And access to specialized treatment and support can be a challenge.

If you are trying to recover from an ED, please be compassionate with yourself. You are on a path with countless others around the world. Keep seeking support, keep taking one more step, and most of all be kind to yourself.