Wednesday, December 30, 2009

FREE Registration: NEDAwareness Week 2010 - February 21-27

NEDAwareness Week 2010: February 21-27

Theme: It's Time to Talk About It
Everyone can do...just one thing!



New: FREE Registration, free Educator Packet, Volunteer Speaker List, Activity-of-the-Day Schedule, and Collage Contest! Click here to purchase your kits and materials now.

View the electronic Educator Packet Table of Contents

View the Collage Contest Guidelines. The winning submission will be featured in the NORMAL In Schools Gala Fundraiser! Submission deadline is January 15, 2010.


Click here to view the list of NEDAwareness Week Partner Organizations (in formation). For information on becoming a Partner Organization, email sroman@myneda.org.


NEDAwareness Week reaches millions with messages of hope and recovery

The mission of NEDAwareness Week
Our aim of NEDAwareness Week is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment. Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening illnesses — not choices — and it’s important to recognize the pressures, attitudes and behaviors that shape the disorder.

What is NEDAwareness Week?
NEDAwareness Week is a collective effort of primarily volunteers, eating disorder professionals, health care providers, educators, social workers, and individuals committed to raising awareness of the dangers surrounding eating disorders and the need for early intervention and treatment.

How NEDAwareness Week Works
This year, NEDA is calling for everyone to do just one thing to help raise awareness and provide accurate information about eating disorders. NEDAwareness Week participants can choose from a huge range of ways to contribute: Distribute info pamphlets and put up posters, write one letter for Media Watchdogs, register as a Volunteer Speaker or host a Volunteer Speaker, coordinate a NEDA Walk, or arrange interactive and educational activities such as panel discussions, fashion shows, body fairs, movie screenings, art exhibits and more. As an official NEDAwareness Week participant you can be involved in any way that works with your schedule, resources, community, and interests. These events and activities attract public media attention - on local, national and international levels.

NEDAwareness Week Registration and Kits

FAQ for potential NEDAwareness Week participants

Find events & Volunteer Speakers in your area

We NEDAwareness!: Activity-of-the-Day Schedule


Thanks to our 2010 NEDAwareness Week Partners, more people are participating in NEDAwarness Week than ever before!


Our Partners are promoting NEDAwareness Week and encouraging their constituents to commit to doing just one thing! Partner Organizations are offering discounted merchandise, hosting webinars and group art projects, organizing fun events and more!


Platinum Sustaining Sponsors
Rader Programs
Remuda Ranch Programs

Gold Sustaining Sponsors
Rogers Memorial Hospital

Silver Sustaining Sponsors
CRC Health
Park Nicollet Melrose Institute

Steel Sustaining Sponsor
McCallum Place

Copper NEDAwareness Week Sponsors
Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt
Laureate Eating Disorders Program

Bronze Sustaining Sponsors
Cambridge Eating Disorder Center
Columbus Park Collaborative
Oliver-Pyatt Centers
Pine Grove Women's Center
The Renfrew Center

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

How to Handle My Eating Disorder in Your Home for the Holidays

From the article:  
"There are cookies and hams and mashed potatoes everywhere at the moment. You may have noticed this. You may be watching what you eat. If you have a teenage girl or young woman at your table over the holidays, she may be watching it more.

"For those of us who have struggled with eating disorders, being home for this season -- the combination of food and family -- is an incredibly fraught scenario. Factor in this year's debate about health care, and it's a potentially terrifying threat to us, to your daughter or sister or cousin. Her eating disorder, which is all about secrecy, is at risk of being exposed in the worst way."

Interesting perspective on ED's and the holidays.  One of the biggest mistakes family members can make is to criticize the food choices of people who are just starting to eat normally again.  I remember eating ice cream out of the carton on night after I came home from treatment for the first time, and my mother telling me I "shouldn't eat like that."  It took a long time for her to realize that food = medicine.

My Favorite ED Recovery Related Blogs

Since the year is coming to a close, I thought I'd provide you all with links to my top 5 favorite ED Recovery blogs.

Are you "Eating With Your Anorexic?"
The blog by Laura Collins.  Laura is the author of Eating with your Anorexic, moderator of the Around the Dinner Table forum, and founder of FEAST.

Blogxygen
Written by the lovey Brie!  Brie, I love reading your blog and wish you and your family the best as you work on your recovery *hugs*

Eating Disorder Hope
This blog is has the absolute best contests each month!  I was the lucky winner of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life by Jenni Schaefer this year.  They also provided me with some great stuff for my school packets.

Eating Disorders Coalition News and Information
The absolute best blog for following ED related legislation in Washington, D.C.  I have lobbied with the EDC for three of the past four years, and can't wait to make my fourth lobby day this year!

Feed Me!
This is the blog by Harriet Brown, a very sweet lady.  She is the author of Feed Me!: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image, one of the books I hope to profile here next year. 




Welcoming 2010

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.  Recovery is possible to achieve and maintain.  I'm looking forward to expanding the blog in 2010 to include book reviews and hopefully some updates live from some recovery events!

Love, Kelly

Monday, December 21, 2009

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Disordered Eating May Affect 10 to 15 Percent of Women

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2009) — Several maladaptive eating behaviors, beyond anorexia, can affect women. Indeed, some 10 to 15 percent of women have maladaptive eating behaviours and attitudes according to new study from the Université de Montréal and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

"Our results are disquieting," says Lise Gauvin, a professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Social and Preventive Medicine. "Women are exposed to many contradictory messages. They are encouraged to lose weight yet also encouraged to eat for the simple pleasure of it."

Some 1,501 women took part in the phone survey on eating disorders and disordered eating. Not one participant was classified as anorexic. The average age of these urban-dwelling participants was 31, the majority of respondents were non-smokers and university graduates.

Dr. Gauvin says the study sheds new light on binge eating and bulimia, which are characterized in part by excessive eating accompanied by feelings of having lost control. "About 13.7 percent of women interviewed for this study reported binge eating one to five days or one to seven times per month," she says, noting 2.5 percent of women reported forcing themselves to vomit, use laxatives, or use diuretics to maintain their weight or shape.

The investigation also established a link between problematic eating behaviours and self-rated health. In other words, deviant eating behaviours are more likely to occur in women who perceived themselves to be in poor health.

Another finding of the study was that 28 percent of women complete intense exercise twice a month with the sole objective of losing weight or influencing. "We practice a sport for the pleasure it provides, to feel good, but when the activity is done to gain control over one's weight and figure, it is indicative of someone who could be excessively concerned about their weight," says Dr. Gauvin. "Our data suggests that a proportion of the female population displays maladaptive eating patterns."

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Support Group in Montclair, NJ

Eating Disorders Assoc. of NJ Support Group meets second Sundays and will hold a meeting from 10 to 11:30 a.m. second Sundays at Mountainside Hospital, 1 Bay Ave., Main Bldg., 1st Floor, Montclair. Donation $5. Call Maureen Kritzer-Lange at (973) 313-1691, Ilene Fishman at (973) 509-1400 or 1-800-522-2230 (day) or visit www.edanj.org.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

New Research Videos Contributed by Jane Cawley

Jane is the newest member of the PFN Steering Committee and a co-chair of Maudsley Parents. She has embarked on a unique mission to provide up-to-date information to families in video format. The videos below have been posted to the NEDA website and are worth viewing!

“Understanding Eating Disorders” Thomas Insel, MD, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health provides a brief overview of eating disorder research. Click here to view.

“Anorexia Nervosa in Teens: What Parents Should Know” Katharine Loeb, PhD gives advice to parents, emphasizing the importance of early intervention and family support. Click here to view.

“Cognitive Styles in Eating Disorders” James Lock, MD, PhD talks about cognitive styles as a risk factor for eating disorders and discusses cognitive remediation therapy as a potential treatment. Click here to view.

Eating Disorders and Michelle’s Law By Michael B. Snyder, J.D.

Michelle Morse was a full-time college student from New Hampshire who suffered from cancer yet continued her course load, against the advice of doctors, in order to fulfill the requirement for health care coverage as a dependent. Eating disorder patients are faced with the same dilemma, but treatment or consequences of the illness often simply prevents continued full-time studies.

Michelle’s Mother, AnnMarie first pushed the New Hampshire legislature successfully, then the U.S. Congress, to pass “Michelle’s Law,” which is effective for most healthcare plans (including self-insured plans) beginning January 1, 2010. Michelle’s law requires group health plans to provide coverage for dependents who do not meet the requirements of full-time student status because of a “medically necessary” leave of absence. The rules are simple: a dependent’s treating physician must certify to the plan that the dependent has a serious illness or injury and that the leave of absence is medically necessary, and the dependent child must have been enrolled in the group health coverage on the basis of his or her full-time student status on the date immediately preceding the leave of absence.

Work with your treatment team and insurance company to ensure that even though your child’s treatment may interfere with her or his full-time post-high-school education, it will not prevent continued healthcare coverage.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Eating Disorder Hope drawings for free books and calendars

Visit Eating Disorder Hope for a chance to win new books and calendars each month!  I was the lucky winner of last month's drawing for a copy of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me. 

This month's drawing is for Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer.
Jenni had been in an abusive relationship with Ed for far too long. Ed's name comes from the initials E.D. - as in eating disorder. He controlled Jenni's life, distorted her self-image, and tried to physically harm her throughout their long affair. Then Jenni met psychotherapist and author Thom Rutledge. He taught her how to treat her eating disorder as a relationship, not a condition. By thinking of her eating disorder as a unique personality separate from her own, Jenni was able to break up with Ed once and for all.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

High Mortality Risk for Bulimia Nervosa and Unspecified Eating Disorders

Acknowlegement about the seriousness of EDs other than AN.  All EDs kill!

A large, long-term study extends the finding of high death rates in anorexia nervosa to bulimia nervosa and other eating disorders. Crow et al. (p. 1342) determined diagnoses for 1,885 outpatients with eating disorders evaluated between 1979 and 1997 and searched the National Death Index for matches through 2004. The crude mortality rates for the patients with diagnoses of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and "eating disorder not otherwise specified" were 4.0%, 3.9%, and 5.2%, respectively. Compared to national mortality data for demographically similar groups, the rate for eating disorder not otherwise specified was significantly elevated, suggesting that this diagnosis does not indicate a less severe disorder. In addition, 13 of the 84 deaths identified were due to suicide, and eight of these were among the patients with bulimia nervosa. These findings are discussed by Dr. Walter Kaye in an editorial on p. 1309.