A Talk with CFD Alumnus Rach McPherson: Fighting Diet Culture One Ice Cream Scoop at a Time Center for Discovery is grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with Rach McPherson, former patient at CFD Palm Beach. She currently works in an ice cream shop, encouraging customers to enjoy ice cream by fighting against the diet-culture comments they say. In this work, Rach is directly confronting situations surrounding food that may have previously made her anxious, which is known as exposure & response prevention therapy (ERP). Her story and message for others struggling with an eating diso ..read more

If you’re in a romantic relationship, you may find it difficult to relate to your significant other while in recovery from an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder (BED). An invisible wall stands tall between you and the one you love. They may express that they feel you are distant or hiding something, especially when trying to enjoy a meal together or have a spontaneous rendezvous. You might feel self-conscious eating in front of them or undressing in their presence. While in eating disorder recovery, some challenges you may face are dining out o ..read more

Picture a world where food packaging doesn’t focus on nutrition labels; where fitness influencers and celebrities don’t preach food “shoulds” and “should nots” on social media; and where body trust and intuition take the place of nutrient recommendations. You might wonder, how would I know what to eat? What resources would tell my body what it needs and what it doesn’t? If you can believe it, your body was perfectly designed to seek out and signal for exactly what it needs at each moment in time. When you can quiet all the noise and opinions surrounding food and nutrition today, your body can ..read more

We all have favorite foods. For example, I am a sucker for chicken and rocky road ice cream. If I had a choice, I would eat things like homemade mac and cheese more often than I do (it takes some time to cook), and probably opt for dessert before dinner. These are just a few of my food preferences when thinking about “what’s for dinner.” In the event these foods were not available, it would be fairly easy for me to find substitutes. I could eat potatoes instead of mac and cheese, beef or goat besides chicken. I could even swap out my rocky road ice cream for rice pudding or freshly sliced wate ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on changes in everyone’s day-to-day routine. With stay-at-home orders and quarantine guidance coming to the forefront, in-office work was swapped for remote alternatives, with a majority of the population suddenly working from their homes. Now, because of the increased vaccination rates, our world is slowly returning to a more familiar state of normalcy. For many, this will mean transitioning back to in-office work and a change in the routines we’ve become so accustomed to at home. When you’re in recovery from an eating disorder, this shift in routine may be d ..read more

The New Year is here, and with it, a million New Year’s Resolutions focused on weight loss. Christy Harrison’s new book, Anti-Diet, is here to show you why you don’t need to go on a diet in 2020. With January comes a flurry of New Year’s Resolutions, most of them focused on weight loss and body manipulation. Some of the rhetoric surrounding these resolutions can become a bit tricky though as diet culture and the diet industry at large have become wise to the falling popularity of the term “diet.” Diet culture and the diet industry have done a pretty good job shifting to wellness messaging. WW ..read more

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Discovery Behavioral Health, Inc., an expanding network of evidence-based mental health, substance use and eating disorder treatment centers, has opened a new eating disorder program in Enumclaw, Washington (about 45 miles south of Seattle). The licensed treatment program, branded Center for Discovery, will treat adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 years, who are diagnosed with a primary eating disorder including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. This gender inclusive program will trea ..read more

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Discovery Behavioral Health, Inc., an expanding network of evidence-based mental health, substance use and eating disorder treatment centers, has opened an eating disorder treatment program in Mesa, Arizona, where it is licensed as an inpatient treatment center. Center for Discovery, a 12,054 square foot state-of-the-art facility allows for the treatment of more psychiatrically and medically complex patients. The facility is now accepting patients ages 10 – 17 from anywhere in the US and offers concierge services to co ..read more

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Amid a surging COVID-19 health crisis, the celebration of September as National Recovery Month is more important than ever, especially for the nation’s adolescents as they return to school and face unprecedented mental health and substance use problems, says Peter Fowler, a clinical health professional and the Director of Education with Discovery Behavioral Health. This is a perfect storm for adolescents already struggling with mental illness, and now combined with a global pandemic. Each September National Recovery Mo ..read more

What does recovery mean to me? To answer that question, I think it’s important to explore what I thought recovery meant at the beginning of my journey, when I was standing at the base of what seemed to be an insurmountable mountain, a journey I felt completely ill prepared for. I wanted recovery to be something unrealistic: perfectly smooth, organized, linear, with moments of clarity, a lovely short montage in the story of my life with a great soundtrack playing in the background. I had no one to tell me the truth of recovery: it is work. That it is a daily commitment despite the challenges th ..read more