With increasing prevalence, addiction treatment programs are finding themselves approaching a new challenge in their milieus. It is yet unclear whether eating disorders are occurring at higher rates of frequency or if we are just getting better at identifying and assessing for them (Holderness, et al., 1994). Regardless of the answer to this question, those [...]

Have you ever dieted? More than once? Most of the methods we may have tried to control our eating have not worked long term. This article will explore why diets don’t work, show how diets lead to eating disorders and present some ideas  to consider that do work. Diets don’t work. Let me contradict myself [...]

I have one real home. It is my body. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, my body is where I live. I might move into a new house, but I can’t move into a new body. For more than twenty years, I was at war with my body. I did not [...]

Addictive personalities, in the rehab and treatment community are plentiful. Individuals who latch on to multiple methods of blocking pain and “numbing out” to life.  “I’m sober for 13 months now! But I’m binging and purging multiple times every day.” “I’ve recovered from my bulimia, but I’m drinking like a fish”. “I finally got clean [...]

“How would you define recovery in one word?” Kelly asked. “Free,” I answered. Kelly is a young woman struggling with an eating disorder. She was talking with me, because I am recovered from anorexia and bulimia. I have been there. “Free” means a lot more than simply freedom from destructive behaviors with food. It means [...]

When we struggle with disordered eating it is often difficult to believe that food is not the issue that is causing us grief.  Certainly our struggle appears to be centered around what we are doing (eating compulsively, bingeing, and purging) or not doing (starving) with food. It seems as though, whether we are dieting or [...]

When I tell my dental colleagues that bulimia nervosa is a dental disease they look at me like I come from a different planet.  A dental disease, they ask?  Isn’t bulimia one of those eating disorders that were mentioned in dental school?  Don’t therapists and counselors deal with bulimia and anorexia? How is it a [...]