Information for Inspiration.
A resource for Intuitive Eating, eating disorder recovery, and body acceptance
Becoming an Eating Disorder Dietitian: Best Resources for Building Your Skillset
Most dietitians will work with eating disorders, whether they realize it or not. Yet few of us receive real training in our dietetic programs to do it well.
I would love to see our field lift up, empower, and support other dietitians who have an interest in working with this population to gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to do that!
If you are that dietitian who maybe doesn’t know a whole lot about working with eating disorders yet, but you want to learn more, below are my recommendations for truly excellent resources and support to get you started.
What is Intuitive Eating, Really?
I remember when I picked up the book Intuitive Eating for the first time. It blew my mind.
The idea that weight was not inextricably linked to health, that pursuing intentional weight loss was correlated to future weight gain, that dieting was a primary predictor of eating disorder development, and that meticulously measuring and tracking every morsel of food that crossed one’s lips was disordered eating was all brand-new information to me.
So much of my training to become a dietitian centered around how to help people control their food more. The notion that, a key to building a healthier relationship with food was actually to control less was kind of mind-boggling.
I’m a Non-Diet, Weight-Inclusive Dietitian: Here’s What That Means
If you’ve been around my corner of the internet for any amount of time, you’ve likely seen me using phrases like non-diet, weight-inclusive, and intuitive eating to describe how I approach my work as a registered dietitian.
I realize, though, that these words can seem ambiguous. Social media and real-life conversations both have highlighted for me that not everyone interprets these words the way I do (and the way I intend when I use them).