College Weight Gain: Don’t Fear The Freshman 15!

College Weight Gain in California [image description: 2 young women eating pizza joyfully with other snacks around] depicts potential college students in California who are not afraid of the Freshman 15

Let’s not fear college weight gain—let’s normalize it! College students throughout the US are heading off to their first year of college. Most are excited and also a little anxious. Among the common worries: Will I get along with my roommate? Will I make friends? Will I be able to keep up with the academics? …

Read more

Shopping While Fat

Sharon Maxwell shopping while fat in recovery in Los Angeles, California [Image description: photo of a happy fat woman holding clothing at the Plus Bus in Los Angeles, CA]

Shopping While Fat–And Recovering by Sharon Maxwell, Practice Manager Growing up, I loved the concept of shopping. But as a fat person, I rarely actually enjoyed it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like shopping or finding new things. However, an invitation to go shopping with friends meant that the message that my body was intrinsically …

Read more

Curate Your Feed with Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram

Curate Your Feed With Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram to Support Eating Disorder Recovery in California [Image description: screenshot of instagram post from resilientfatgoddess; a trans non-binary person smiling with the title, "Curate Your Feed With Diverse Body Positive Accounts on Instagram"]

Diverse Instagram Accounts Can Support Recovery by SJ Thompson Belmonte, Resilient Fat Goddex and Lauren Muhlheim, Eating Disorder Therapy LA It’s time to curate your feed to have a more diverse social media feed. “Body positivity can’t be just about thin, straight, cisgendered, white women who became comfortable with an additional ten pounds on their …

Read more

Can’t Horseback Ride Because of Your Size? That Might Just Be a Load of “Horse Shit.”

Horseback riding when fat [Image description: back of a fat person with long flowing blonde hair and a purple shirt, riding a horse]

  By Carolyn Comas, LCSW, CEDS-S, Clinical Supervisor Can you horseback ride if you are fat? Navigating the world in a fat body can be frustrating and may feel disheartening. There are, unfortunately, some activities and spaces that do not accommodate people in large bodies. When someone in a big body encounters spaces that do …

Read more

Can CBT for Eating Disorders Be HAES®-aligned?

CBT plus HAES for Eating Disorders [Image description: large bodied gender neutral person seated and facing a therapist whose back is to the camera] represents a potential client with an eating disorder receiving CBT plus HAES in Los Angeles, California

“CBT Plus HAES”–Never the Twain Shall Meet–Or Shall They? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is the most effective approach for treating adults with eating disorders, including bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The most recent and commonly taught and implemented version is an “enhanced” protocol, CBT-E (Fairburn, Christopher G., 2008). Unfortunately, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for eating disorders …

Read more

How a Health at Every Size(R) (HAES) Approach Can Help With Eating Disorder Recovery

Health at Every Size and Eating Disorder [Image description: black larger bodied woman eating a donut] represents a potential client receiving Health at Every Size Counseling at Eating Disorder Therapy in Los Angeles, California

Eating disorders are not only about body image. Nor have they only recently arisen in response to societal pressures to be thin. In fact, eating disorders date back to at least the 13th and 14th centuries, when it was observed that women were fasting to demonstrate religious devotion. However, today eating disorders do occur in …

Read more

When Eating Disorder Providers Are Steeped in Diet Culture

When Eating Disorder Providers are Steeped in Diet Culture [Image description: photo of an ice cream cone with 3 different flavors of ice cream] Portrays a possible snack for a person in eating disorder recovery in Los Angeles, California

Providers With Weight Stigma “People are concerned about the fact that I’m a therapist and have an eating disorder, and I’m like, ‘You’re concerned about me? I’m concerned about our entire fucking field.’” — Shira Rose, FoodPsych with Christy Harrison This quote has generated a lot of reactions. In this podcast, Shira—who lives in a …

Read more

Parents, Don’t Let Your Kids Diet!

Just say no to kids' diets in Los Angeles, California [Image description: purple scrabble tiles spelling "Just say no to kids diets']

Updated July 2023. Previously published in 2019 as a response to the Weight Watchers Kurbo app for kids. In January 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics released guidelines for treating children and teens in larger bodies with “intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment”–what I call a diet. In case you are tempted to go down …

Read more

Skip to content