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Online Course: Complete Guide to Parenting Eating Disorders Successfully
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Recovery is a return to self, often a larger, more assertive and complex self than the one that used eating behaviors to numb our emotional needs.

Recovery doesn’t give us back a previous version of ourselves. It gives us a fuller, more present, and more assertive person than before.

But we recover into the very same family and society that seeded our desire to stay small and numb. This is why stopping eating disorder behaviors can be relatively easy short-term, but harder to maintain.

Sometimes the question is not can we recover, but can our loved ones accommodate who we become when we recover.💕

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Parents who heal themselves help their children heal.

We don’t need to be perfect parents to be great parents. What’s most important is that we take time to reflect on how our mental models, disorders, attachment style, and behaviors impact our kids. The simple act of reflection can transform our parenting.

Too often, we get stuck in our own automatic ways of thinking. If we were victims as children, automatic thinking can easily lead us to think our kids are victimizing us with their behaviors.

Our kids are not victimizing us with their behaviors. They are only seeking ways to gain our love, attention, and affection. It may seem like a bizarre and hurtful way to go about it, but it’s completely subconscious and perfectly human.

Taking the time to reflect on our parenting propels us to be better parents. If we just take one step towards helping our kids live fulfilling lives, this is it.💕

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You want to do something! You want to get this parenting thing right! I get it! I do too!

But here’s the thing: we have spent waaaayyyy too much time as a culture thinking about “healthy food” and keeping our kids at “healthy weight” and not nearly enough time thinking about healthy relationships.

Parent-child attachment is deeply, fundamentally tied to lifetime health. Scientifically, attachment science is clear and unequivocal. Meanwhile, nutrition science is constantly changing due to the inherent challenges of measuring nutrition.

Parents who build healthy attachment with their kids will have healthier kids. Period.

And the good news is that if you know how to sneak spinach into a smoothie, you can definitely sneak healthy attachment into your relationships.

It’s liberating to find out that we parents can do something to positively impact our kids’ lifetime health! Yay! So go forth and learn about attachment!

A great podcast for more information about attachment is Therapy Uncensored. Start with episodes 59, 60, and 61🎧

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An eating disorder seems like it’s about food behavior and body image, but it’s a mental disorder based on mental distortions.

We have huge rates of treatment failure and iatrogenic (medically-caused) exacerbation of eating disorders based on the fact that we continue to treat the behavior as the path to healing.

For parents, the behavior is terrifying and scary. It’s natural to want to stop the behavior so that we can stop worrying about our child’s health and safety.

Education about eating and building trust with food and the body is important, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that we don’t heal if the only intervention is food and body image work.

The behavior is a symptom. The disorder is how the person has learned to survive as a self and as a child in a family system.

Treating the symptoms of an eating disorder is not the same thing as treating an eating disorder.💕

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It makes sense that we think what we feed our kids matters so much. The media, doctors, and well-meaning educators and parents everywhere are eager to talk about sneaking kale into smoothies, banning sugar, insisting on organic foods, and other nutrition and feeding strategies.

But it turns out that beyond meeting basic caloric and nutritional needs, the food we feed our kids matters much less to their lifelong health and wellness than the love we feed our kids.

A cultural over-emphasis on food is skewing the way our kids feel about food. It also fools us into thinking that the best way to show our love is through food.

It’s complicated. But here’s the thing: If you have time and resources to grocery shop and prep and cook and serve all that fresh food, go for it. But it’s also OK if we serve frozen foods, packaged foods, and simple, repetitive foods. And it’s better if we don’t glorify certain foods and demonize others.

Minimize food stress, planning and prep and invest that time being with your kids, telling them what you admire about them, recognizing their five distinct laughs, holding them when they cry, knowing their friends’ names and the current dramas unfolding, and being a constant, secure base they know they can rely on and trust.

Build your relationship every day. Don’t stress if the food doesn’t meet Instagram faux-wellness standards.

Your affection and attention make the single biggest impact on their lifetime health and happiness. Don’t worry so much about the food.

A connected relationship with you is what’s really, really, super-healthy for your kids💕

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Your child’s pant size is not what you need to worry about. Even if you do worry, there’s nothing you can ethically do about it. Their pant size is their pant size. That’s it.
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Your relationship with your child, and their attachment behaviors with you, those are things you can worry about and work on. Your child’s ability to make friends, manage friendships, and feel close to people are things you can worry about and work on.
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Learning to love and be loved. Learning to rely on people. Learning to show up for people without sacrificing your self. Those are all critical health behaviors that parents should worry about and can actually do something about.
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All the worry over pant size and broccoli and kale and processed foods pale in comparison to the massive undertaking of building loving, safe relationships. We can do this, but we can only do this together🌈💕

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Many parents view their larger kids as uncontrollable and lacking willpower, and they desperately try to control their kids to make them smaller. Most of this is subconscious and well-intentioned. But it’s also very, very harmful.
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Most healthcare professionals approach kids in larger bodies as if their weight is a signal of eating “too much” and not getting enough activity and immediately focus on reducing weight even though there is no scientifically safe method for doing so. Most of this is subconscious and well-intentioned. But it’s also very, very harmful.
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Parents and healthcare providers will say their concern for weight is about “health,” but that’s just self-deception. People who want kids to reduce weight are doing so because of weight stigma and fatphobia.
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What’s most important for lifelong health is not the size of your pants, but the quality of your relationships with other people.
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Let’s raise awareness of weight stigma so that we can reduce weight-based harm and violence against kids💕

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Most people keep a bathroom scale because they want to lose weight. They see the bathroom scale as the ultimate validation of their weight loss efforts. When dieting inevitably leads to weight regain (often plus more), the bathroom scale becomes a source of daily shame and self-hate.
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If you have a bathroom scale in the house, think about what it would mean to throw it away. What would you lose? What would you gain?
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If you have kids in the house, what does having a bathroom scale mean to them? How are they using it? What purpose does it serve? How does being able to weigh themselves every time they go to the bathroom impact their health? What does seeing a bathroom scale tell them about your relationship with your body?
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By the age of 5, kids already know the basic tenets of diet marketing. They are already indoctrinated into diet culture. They already believe that they are responsible for their body’s weight, that they must restrict their body to reduce their weight, and that they are responsible for any failure to remain thin.
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Parents have to exert a huge effort to counteract the societal messages that surround our kids. We must constantly educate, inform, and support kids so they don’t fall prey to diet culture’s destructive messages.
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For me, this is a constant and uphill battle. These beliefs run so deep, and are literally everywhere. Educating kids about body trust, body respect, intuitive eating and Health at Every Size is a daily effort because everything in our culture preaches the opposite.
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This is not what most of us had in mind when we envisioned parenting. And yet it is what we must do to help our kids be free from body hate, disordered eating, and eating disorders💕

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“I feel fat” is a cheap stand-in for all sorts of feelings.
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The most instinctual response to “I feel fat” is “you’re not fat!” or “I think you’re perfect!”
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But that just perpetuates fat stigma and doesn’t address the underlying feelings.
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Sometimes I play a game of replacing “I feel fat” with other body features like “I feel long hair,” or “I feel brown eyes.” It’s pretty funny how ridiculous it sounds when we use other features in place of “fat” and realize that we can’t feel our features - they just exist.
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“I feel fat” has become the only way lots of us know how to express uncomfortable feelings like discontent, anxiety, sadness, and loneliness. It’s up to us to help kids build their emotional literacy and stop focusing all negative feelings on their bodies.
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There is no perfect response to “I feel fat,” but I’ve found that asking for the feeling works pretty well - not the first time, but keep trying, because something opens up around the fourth time.💕

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Lots of people believe that shame and control are effective parenting tools. They think we need to dictate what and how much kids eat. They think we need to “watch” our kids’ weight and make sure it doesn’t get “too high.”
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But shame and control backfire and exacerbate the very “problems” they were meant to solve.
✖️The #1 response to control is rebellion.
✖️The #1 response to shame is hate (of oneself and/or others).
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Parents: don’t be afraid to raise your kids with kindness, respect, and affection. Don’t be afraid to appreciate your child and approach them with curiosity. Learn about body autonomy, and let them make their own choices about what goes into and what they do with their bodies. And please practice the art of non-judgment and unconditional acceptance when it comes to their weight💕

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I’m an expert at intentional weight loss. I’ve read hundreds of books, consumed thousands of articles, counted millions of calories and vigorously adopted at least 20 different “healthy lifestyles.”
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And that’s why I know for sure that healthy weight loss is not a thing for me, and for most of us.
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Intentional weight loss is associated with:
✖️Weight cycling
✖️Weight gain
✖️Slow metabolism
✖️Eating disorders
✖️Digestive disorders
✖️All of the health complications associated with “obe—y”
✖️Increased chance of having a child with disordered eating/eating disorder
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So I’m with Alex @empoweredeatingrd - healthy intentional weight loss is not a thing.
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My life and my health are so much better now that I truly believe that.💕

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Trauma doesn’t have to be a massive, catastrophic event. In fact, lots of trauma is invisible, unconscious, and unrecognized.
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When a child reports trauma, it’s hard for parents not to fall down the rabbit hole of shame and blame. A lot of parents are understandably confused and terrified by childhood trauma, and will deny or disagree with their child’s experience. But doing this causes so much pain and suffering, and puts the parent-child relationship at risk.
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If a child reports trauma, parents should seek support for themselves. They need a safe place in which to explore their own feelings about their child’s trauma.
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You did the best you could. Now, do something more. Reach out and learn more about childhood trauma. Understand the ways your child perceived life and experienced trauma even as you did your very best to protect and love them.
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You gave them the best parenting you could at the time, and now there is more work to be done.
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It may feel hard and heavy, but there is still time to help your child heal, and to heal your relationship with your child 💕

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We may think we know what our kids should eat, how much they should eat, and how often they should eat, but our kids’ bodies are their own.
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We may believe that our knowledge of nutrition overrides their desire for food, and we may want to limit the foods that bring them pleasure and satisfaction, but our kids’ bodies are their own.
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We may think we must restrict and control kids to make them healthy, but the research shows otherwise. Parents who restrict and control food and worry about their kids’ weight are more likely to have kids with poor body image, disordered eating, and eating disorders. That is definitely not healthy.
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Parents who raise their children to eat intuitively will raise healthier kids and, by the way, will also have healthier relationships with their kids.
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So please, remember that your kids’ body belongs to them💕
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P.S. Trusting kids’ bodies doesn’t mean feeding them Doritos and donuts all day, every day. It just means serving a wide variety of foods, including those that we typically think of as “bad.” It means eating without being afraid of food and fat. And it means respecting and trusting the body as wise and knowledgeable. Be patient and trust the process! An intuitively-fed body will ask for fruits and veggies as well as all sorts of delicious foods!🥗🍕🥑🍜🥒🍟
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P.P.S. This isn’t easy, I know. Try reading Intuitive Eating (@evelyntribole) to reset your own relationship with food, and Ellyn Satter’s books to learn about feeding kids in a whole new way.

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Bring Pringles and all foods out of the shadows of shame. Because when we eat all foods in the light of day, in front of our loved ones without shame, they don't need to be inhaled in a dark room behind a locked door.

When we allow all foods into our lives and accept and honor our desire for them, we no longer hoard and binge eat them. They become just another food. Possibly a favorite food, but no need to sneak.

For most of us, sneak-eating becomes completely unnecessary when we remove the shame of consuming the food in the first place.

Parents who want to stop your kids from sneak-eating, counter-balance the need to sneak with free and easy access all foods. It's scary and counter-intuitive, but it works.

Please don't "confront" your child with their sneak eating. Please don't dramatically present 10 empty cans of Pringles and demand answers.

Consider the source of the need to sneak and binge, and address the source kindly and compassionately. Let's nourish our kids and give them what they need rather than restrict so they live in the shadow of an eating disorder.
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*If you create a truly judgment-free food environment and stock and allow all foods in your home, and your child still sneak-eats, then talk to a professional about what else could be going on.💕

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People magazine profiled teens who lost weight for “health reasons,” and my blood went cold. Of course they also wrote about @kurbohealth positively, and frequently splash our supermarket aisles with before and after weight loss stories, so why am I surprised?
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With articles like these in major national publications, it’s understandable that kids and their parents, coaches and teachers believe they must lose weight. But intentional weight loss is a known risk factor for weight cycling, weight gain and eating disorders regardless of the reason for the intentional weight loss.

It doesn't matter if you do it because your knees hurt or you think girls won't like you if you're fat. It still has the same outcome.

These teens do not need "the right" diet program. They don’t need to show how much they care about themselves by losing weight. What they need is adults who will help them incorporate and enjoy healthy behaviors and build their self confidence at any weight.
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Shame on @people for this article. It’s sad that the media continues to promote such a harmful behavior. It’s shameful when they exploit kids and tell parents that intentional weight loss is a sign that these kids really care about themselves. Sickening.😞

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Relapse is not failure. Relapse is a part of working towards something. Relapse is a symptom of being human. And that’s OK. Recovery does not need to be perfect. We don’t need to be perfect to recover. We just need to keep on showing up on the trail and accept what’s in front of us.💕

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