Associations & Organizations

Eating Disorder Related Resources & Readings

For Parents of Children and Teens with Eating Disorders 

  • Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders (F.E.A.S.T.) is an international non-profit organization of and for parents and caregivers to help loved ones recover from eating disorders by providing information and mutual support, promoting evidence-based treatment, and advocating for research and education to reduce the suffering associated with eating disorders.
  • Maudsley Parents This website for parents of eating-disordered children provides support and a great deal of information about Family-Based Treatment.

Books

The following are some resources to support family members and friends through the eating disorder process:

  • “When Food Is Family: A Loving Approach to Heal Eating Disorders” by Judy Scheel PhD.

    illustrates how the eating disorder is used as a metaphoric voice — sometimes the only voice available to a person with an eating disorder — when relationships break down. It is a hands-on, working guide to eating disorder recovery that will help families understand causes of eating disorders and the impact they have on relationships. They will learn ways to work together to heal, repair, and rebuild positive interactions. Exercises and examples throughout the book demonstrate what to do that will help the entire family change patterns of communication, establish trust and empathy for each other, and learn how to listen to and understand the person with the eating disorder.

     https://www.whenfoodisfamily

  • “Eating Disorders: A Parent’s Guide”, by Rachel Bryant-Waugh and Bryan Lask: As an overview of eating disorders in children and adolescents, this book may be a helpful resources to parents who are seeking to better understand the challenges they may be facing as their child recovers from an eating disorder. Authors give brief and practical advice for navigating the recovery process.
  • “My Kid is Back: Empowering Parents to Beat Anorexia Nervosa”, by June Alexander with Daniel Le Grange: Inspired by her own experience with Anorexia, author June Alexander explores the power of family-based treatment in eating disorder recovery. This book shares inspiring stories of other families who have walked this path as well as includes advice from experts and professionals.
  • “Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder”, by James Lock, MD, PhD, and Daniel Le Grange, PhD: Authors give an overview on current therapy and treatment options for an eating disorder as well as suggestions on how families can become involved in the fight against an eating disorder.
  • “My sisters bones” by Cathi Hanauer. Cassie left for college, she’s seemed different—withdrawn, obsessed with studying, and she barely eats. Billie can’t talk to her parents about it; they act as if nothing is wrong, refusing to see the changes in their older daughter.
    A poignant story of self-discovery, My Sister’s Bones explores the shifting landscape of family, friendship, and love through the eyes of a young girl possessed of a wisdom far beyond her years. In Billie Weinstein we meet a character as funny, vivid, and endearing as any in recent memory, and watch her transformation as she achieves freedom from the seemingly unbreakable web of family ties. 
  • “Help Your Teenager Beat an Eating Disorder”, Second Edition, James Lock, MD, Ph.D. and Daniel Le Grange, Ph.D. (2015). This book for parents includes a comprehensive overview of the Family-Based Treatment approach to treatment, written by the developers of the treatment.
  • “Eating with Your Anorexic: A Mother’s Memoir”, Laura Collins (2014). Any parent who is struggling with a child with an eating disorder will find it helpful to read this mother’s account of her daughter’s recovery using Family-Based Treatment.
  • “Brave Girl Eating”, Harriet Brown (2010). Brown provides another excellent account of a family’s struggle with anorexia and treatment using Family-Based Treatment. In Brave Girl Eating, the chronicle of a family’s struggle with anorexia nervosa, journalist, professor, and author Harriet Brown recounts in mesmerizing and horrifying detail her daughter Kitty’s journey from near-starvation to renewed health. Brave Girl Eating is an intimate, shocking, compelling, and ultimately uplifting look at the ravages of a mental illness

Articles on Eating Disorders

Beating anorexia: what causes the eating disorder – and how to support someone battling it.

MIND & MEDIA

Documentaries on Eating Disorders

Featured on Netflix & CNA “See You Lighter – From viral skinny challenges to online vomit bars, Get Real investigates Hong Kong’s obsession with thinness.”

Eating Disorder Memoirs

50 Must-Read Books About Eating Disorders

Medical Consequences of Eating Disorders

AED Medical Care Standards Guide Often referred to as, “the purple brochure,” this guide from the Academy for Eating Disorders’ (AED) Medical Care Standards Task Force, is intended as a resource to promote recognition of, and risk management in the care of, those with eating disorders.

Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani has written the go-to resource on the medical complications of eating disorders. In her compassionate bedside manner, she demystifies these confusing disorders and distils into a single source everything that patients, families, and eating disorder providers will want to know.

General Eating Disorder Resources

Recovery Apps for Self-monitoring

Both of these tools allow for keeping food records on your smart phone as an alternative to paper food records. They offer additional recovery oriented tools as well.

Eating Disorder Recovery Podcasts

  • One Gender Cafe “Eating Disorders” http://eatingdisorders
  • ED Matters – Gurze/Salucore is a podcast that provides information for people recovering from an eating disorder, their loved ones, and clinicians.
  • Recovery Warriors is a podcast for increasing the resilience of those experiencing depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. Interviews include everything from body trust and intuitive eating to pregnancy and sports.

Cognitive Behavioural Approaches to Eating Disorders

  • Overcoming Disordered Eating – Part A and Part B. Patients undergoing cognitive behavioural therapy for eating disorders can use these online workbooks, provided by CCI.
  • The Body Image Workbook: An Eight-Step Program for Learning to Like Your Looks, Thomas P. Cash, Ph.D. (2008). This workbook specifically targets negative body image issues using a cognitive-behavioural approach.
  • The Appetite Awareness Workbook: How To Listen to Your Body & Overcome Bingeing, Overeating, & Obsession with Food, Linda W. Craighead, Ph.D (1996). This cognitively based workbook focuses on strategies to regain normal eating patterns by reducing eating in response to external cues and emotional factors, and increasing awareness of internal hunger and satiety signals.
  • Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (2012). This book teaches techniques to develop a healthy relationship with food and replace both dieting and binge eating with “intuitive eating.” This book is extremely helpful for chronic and yo-yo dieters and emotional eaters/binge eaters. 
  • 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, Susan Albers, Psy.D. (2009). This book draws upon a variety of evidence-based techniques to cope with emotional eating. The techniques are divided into 5 sections: 1) Mindful meditation techniques; 2) Change your thoughts, change your eating; 3) Soothing sensations to calm and relax the body; 4) Soothing yourself with distractions; and 5) Soothing yourself with emotional relationships.
  • Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, Jan Chozen Bays, MD (2009). 

Helping Children to Develop Healthy Body Image and Healthy Eating Habits

There are several books for parents that provide tips and strategies for improving self-esteem and body image in their children. Some of those we recommend to our clients include:

  • I’m Like, So Fat: Helping Your Teen Make Healthy Choices about Eating and Exercise in a Weight-Obsessed World, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D. (2005)
  • Real Kids Come in All Sizes, Kathy Kater, LICSW (2004).
  • 101 Ways to Help Your Daughter Love Her Body by Brenda Lane Richardson and Elane Rehr (2001).
  • No Weigh: A Teen’s Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom by Signe Darpinian, Shelley Aggarwal, & Wendy Sterling. The book is a teen-friendly guide to eating and body image. It covers important related topics like physical changes of puberty, understanding emotions, stress management strategies, and good sleep and exercise habits. It discusses body diversity and acceptance. Most importantly, it presents a non-diet approach to balanced eating in which all foods are allowed. This is such a critical message for teens.
  • New Moon Girls: This pro-esteem magazine is produced for (and largely by) 8-14 year-old girls. Its website is a great place for girl self-expression.
  • USDA My Plate Clients often seek advice on meal planning. The USDA’s revised meal-planning guideline replaced the old food pyramid with a much more user-friendly plate.

Cognitive Therapy

  • Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think, Dennis Greenberger, Ph.D. and Christine Padesky, Ph.D., Second Edition (2015). This cognitive therapy workbook can be used alone or in conjunction with therapy. It includes worksheets and teaches strategies for monitoring mood, challenging dysfunctional thoughts, and building new core beliefs.
  • Center for Clinical Interventions: These free downloadable Cognitive Therapy workbooks, courtesy of the Australian government, target a variety of problems including depression, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, low self-esteem, procrastination, bipolar disorder, perfectionism, and eating disorders. They can be used alone or in conjunction with therapy. 

Relaxation, Mindfulness, and Meditation Recordings

  • UCLA Semel Institute Mindful Awareness Research Center Mindful awareness is a practice that invites us to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with one’s inner experience. This site provides an excellent introduction to mindfulness meditation through instructional MP3s that you can download. The centre also provides information about other mindfulness-based resources.

Marital, Parental & Other Relationship Resources

Attachment Theory

Attached by Amit Levine.

General Parenting

How to Give Your Child a Great Self-Image: Proven Techniques to Build Confidence from Infancy to Adolescence, Deborah Phillips and Fred Bernstein (1991). This book provides practical parenting strategies for building self-esteem in children.

Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent’s Guide to the New Teenager, Anthony Wolf, Ph.D. (2002). This is a helpful guidebook for understanding and managing the teenage years.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (1999). This book demonstrates strategies for communication with children and shows how you can respect and respond to your child’s feelings and satisfy your own needs.

Siblings without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (2004). This book teaches the skills and techniques necessary to redirect rivalry into cooperation.

Parenting Teens with Love and Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood, Foster Cline, MD and Jim Fay (2006). This guide for parenting adolescents focuses on helping them to become independent and responsible by holding them accountable for their mistakes.

Parenting with Love and Logic, Foster Cline, MD and Jim Fay (2006). This parenting guide focuses on teaching children responsibility and the logic of life by solving their own problems and providing skills for coping in the real world.

Infidelity

Books I recommend to my clients for understanding and working through infidelity include:

  • Surviving Infidelity: Making Decisions, Recovering from the Pain, Rona Subotnik, M.F.C.C. and Gloria Harris, Ph.D. (2005).
  • Infidelity: a Survival Guide, Don-David Lusterman, Ph.D. (1998).

Marital Issues

  • 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts, Gary Chapman (2010). Chapman provides strategies for improving your relationship by understanding your partner’s primary” love language.”
  • The 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work, John M. Gottman, Ph.D. (2000). This book provides research-based strategies for improving relationships and includes practical questionnaires and exercises. The companion website, Gottman, provides an introduction to the Gottmans’ work and includes some quizzes.
  • Hold me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, Sue Johnson (2008). Johnson provides strategies for improving your relationship by understanding underlying emotions and attachment needs. The companion website, Hold Me Tight, provides an introduction and preview of the book.

Third Culture Kids/ Expatriation

  • Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, David C. Pollok and Ruth E. Van Reken (2009). This book is the bible for anyone who has grown up or is living in a cross-cultural community. It should be recommended reading for all parents going on expatriate assignment.
  • Interaction International. This organization helps prepare Third Culture Kids and internationally mobile families for living and working overseas; supports them while overseas, and assists them in transition and re-entry.

Child Nutrition

Art Therapy for Eating Disorders, Addiction, Abuse and Mental Health Disorders Resources

Addiction & Suicide Help Resources

General Mental Health Resources

Assertiveness

CCI provides the online workbook Assert Yourself: Improve Your Assertiveness

Bipolar Disorder

CCI provides the online workbook Keeping Your Balance: Coping with Bipolar Disorder

Depression

CCI provides the online workbook Back from the Bluez: Coping with Depression

Distress Tolerance

CCI provides the online workbook Facing Your Feelings

Generalized Anxiety Disorder/Worry

CBT workbooks I recommend to my clients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder include:

  • Mastery of Anxiety and Worry, Michelle Craske, Ph.D. and David Barlow, Ph.D. (2006).
  • CCI’s online workbook What? Me Worry?. Online CBT workbook

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

  • Stop Obsessing: How to Overcome Your Obsessions and Compulsions, Edna Foa, Ph.D. and Reid Wilson, Ph.D. (2001). This self-help book utilizes evidence-based CBT techniques from the world’s leading experts for overcoming OCD.
  • Overcoming Obsessive Thoughts, Christine Purdon, Ph.D. and David Clark, Ph.D. (2005). This book focuses on CBT strategies for overcoming obsessive thoughts.

Panic Disorder

CBT workbooks I recommend to my clients with panic disorder include:

Perfectionism

CCI provides the online workbook Perfectionism in Perspective: Overcoming Perfectionism

Procrastination

CCI provides the online workbook Put off Procrastination: Overcoming Procrastination

Social Phobia

CCI provides the online workbook Shy No Longer: Coping with Social Anxiety

Self-Esteem

CCI provides the online workbook Improving Self-Esteem: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem

Trauma

  • Writing to Heal, James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D. (2004). This book provides guided writing exercises that help explore feelings related to painful experiences.

General Nutrition

Hotels, Resorts and Spas

Lifestyle Travel Guides

Media

Medical – Health Guides

Medical & Support

Nutrition Analysis

Recipe Substitutions

Sports Nutrition