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  • 1.  Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    ICED 2021 Attendee
    Posted 01 Mar, 2022 00:44

    ***This post was approved by the AED Electronic Media Committee.***

    Dear AED members,

    You are invited to participate in a consultation survey being conducted by the Eating Disorders In weight-related Therapy (EDIT) Collaboration to canvass opinions on the risk factors associated with the development of eating disorder in weight management interventions. The specific aims of this project are to assess opinions on:

    1. Individual characteristics of a person which may contribute to the risk of developing an eating disorders in the context of weight management
    2. Strategies used within a weight management intervention which may increase or decrease risk of eating disorders

    The results of this study will be used to inform research activities of the EDIT Collaboration which aims to determine individual risk pathways for the development of eating disorders during behavioural weight management.

    You are asked to complete a survey via the link below which will take approximately 30-40 minutes. You are able to save your responses and return to complete the survey if you need to. Your responses to the survey are anonymous and confidential.

    The survey can be accessed here https://sydney.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cIaMd8McRHE1gzk and is open until 4 March 2022.

    This study has been approved by the HREC of the University of Sydney [2021/822]. If you are concerned about the way this study is being conducted or wish to make a complaint to someone independent from the study, please contact the university using the details outlined below. Please quote the study title and protocol number.

    The Manager, Ethics Administration, University of Sydney:

    ·         Telephone: +61 2 8627 8176

    ·         Email: ro.humanethics@sydney.edu.au

    ·         Fax: +61 2 8627 8177 (Facsimile)

    For more information, please contact Hiba Jebeile (hiba.jebeile@sydney.edu.au)



    ------------------------------
    Caitlin McMaster
    Research Fellow
    University of Sydney
    Sydney NSW
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    ICED 2020 Attendee
    Posted 03 Mar, 2022 17:31
    Why was a study that presumes there is a way to keep stigmatizing a body size and to keep prescribing weight suppression without harming people posted to this organization?

    Deb

    ------------------------------
    Debora Burgard PhD, FAED
    San Jose CA
    (650) 321-2606
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    ICED 2020 Attendee
    Posted 04 Mar, 2022 09:39
    I was wondering the same Deb. I did the survey and it is extremely concerning. I am wondering what the end game is here? To stigmatize and harm just a little bit? To lessen the probability of eating disorders whilst stigmatizing and setting up another weight cycle?

    If there is an "obesity" prevention or treatment program that can reduce weight long term without traumatizing the individual and setting up a weight cycle, I'd love to know about it. Even "chronic weight management" comes with plenty of cycles and lots of shame. Not to mention exhaustion from dealing with the side effects of surgeries, medications and the chronic stress that comes along with the fear of regain and "failure." 

    All of the programs Ive ever participated in, read about or spoken to survivors (yes, survivors) about come with significant problems. And we keep trudging forward exposing people to unbelievable experiments. 

    And yes, I acknowledge many higher weight people want these interventions. The majority in fact. I once did as well. And, over time each person seeking these treatments begins to look for something else because humans can only take so much harm and trauma.. This is when the Fat community hears from them and we hear the sometimes unbelievable stories. 

    Again, to the AED: are we the Academy of Eating Disorders or The Academy of Eating Disorders & Obesity? We paying members need to know so we can make informed decisions. Thank you. 



    --
    Chevese 
    Chevese Turner (she/her)
    Co-Founder & Co-CEO
    Body Freedom Project
    Founder & Former CEO
    Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA)
    Co-Author
    Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery & Beyond (Taylor & Francis, 2018) 




    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    Posted 09 Mar, 2022 14:52

    I echo the question raised by Chevese and Deb.

    As both a Founder and a Fellow of the Academy, I too ask: are we the Academy of Eating Disorders or The Academy of Eating Disorders & Obesity?

     

    Margo Maine, PhD, FAED, CEDS

    Licensed Psychologist

     

    Author of:   Pursuing Perfection: Eating Disorders. Body Myths, and Women at Midlife and Beyond, with Joe Kelly (Routledge, 2016); Treatment of Eating Disorders: Bridging the Research - Practice Gap. Co-edited with Beth Hartman McGilley and  Douglas Bunnell. Elsevier (2010); Effective Clinical  Practice in theTreatment of Eating Disorders: The Heart of the Matter. Co-edited with William Davis and Jane Shure (Routledge,2009); The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect, with Joe Kelly (John Wiley, 2005); Father Hunger: Fathers, Daughters, and the Pursuit of Thinness (Gurze, 2004); Body Wars: Making Peace with Women's Bodies (Gurze, 2000)

    "The most important relationship a woman has is the relationship with herself. Our self-talk can diminish or empower us. In a culture so demanding and dismissive of women, we need to rebel and stop apologizing for not being perfect, and start telling ourselves we are good enough as we are- SIMPLY GOOD ENOUGH!"-  Margo Maine, 2016 Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame Honoree

    Maine & Weinstein Specialty Group, LLC

    433 South Main Street

    Suite 327

    West Hartford, CT  06110

     

    www.mwsg.org

     




    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    AED SIG Co-Chair
    Posted 10 Mar, 2022 11:08
    As I prepare to give yet another grand rounds talk to a local hospital (including their endocrine physicians and weight management team, hospitalists, ER docs, and PCPs), I wanted to chime in. I read the intention of the study as an attempt to gain data in the interest of saving/helping our patients with eating disorders in larger bodies who flood weight management clinics looking for a cure (and sadly being promised just that by physicians and a medical community that knows NOTHING about eating disorders).

    The sad fact is that more of our patients are seen by endocrine/weight management doctors than us as eating disorder professionals. I believe from interfacing with these docs regularly that the inroad to educating this sector of the medical community is not with lived patient experience, passionate outreach or presentations from eating disorder professionals, but with data. Research specifically on patients in their clinics who are being harmed by their medical negligence. Even medical professionals who say their clinics screens for eating disorders don’t know what they don’t know. They have gaping holes in medical/psychological/sociological knowledge about eating disorders. The lack of medical education about eating disorder and weight stigma continues to harm our patients and the public at large. Physicians are particularly resistant to the principles and data supporting HAES, aren’t interested in the ASDAH, many say they understand weight stigma but their practices say otherwise.
    Not all of their patients have eating disorders. The weight stigma implicit in any weight management/weight suppression/weight control clinic harms those patients too. Exposure to another diet might convert a person with predisposition/genetic/environmental susceptibility to full blown phenotypic eating disorder.
    I see the value in a study like this as a harm reduction measure. A step in what has been and will continue to be an uphill fight against a much larger medical community steeped in the “fight against obesity” and walking hand in hand with the billion dollar diet and weight loss industry. It represents a potential chink in the armor of BMI centric “health” that encompasses the medical community.

    Sent from my iPhone


    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    ICED 2020 Attendee
    Posted 10 Mar, 2022 11:46

    I appreciate your comments Kim. I think what is important to understand here is that 1) this survey is coming from a group that was doing a study on intermittent fasting with children so there was immediate suspicion around the purpose of this study in the fat community and 2) those of us with higher weight bodies are always on guard to harm because we have experienced so much trauma at the hands of weight management. 

    There was no information presented with this study that gave us insight as to how the data would be used and for what purpose. Is this group trying to justify people with eating disorders engaging in weight management? Do they believe they can provide weight management without triggering eating disorders and are trying to prove this theory? 


    So, while I appreciate and believe in the scientific process, we higher weight folx are exhausted with the efforts to send us down the road of being guinea pigs over and over again to our detriment. 



    ------------------------------
    Chevese Turner
    Co-CEO
    The Body Freedom Project
    Severna Park MD
    (410) 570-9577
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: Eating Disorders in Weight-Related Therapies (EDIT) Collaboration Survey

    ICED 2020 Attendee
    Posted 10 Mar, 2022 12:31
      These are great points. My problem is that the people who are doing this study have already published a "review" of non-existent literature here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.12866 and concluded:

    This review demonstrates a reduction in the prevalence of ED, ED risk, and in a range of ED-related symptoms including bulimic symptoms, binge eating, emotional eating, drive for thinness, and eating concern, post-intervention and/or follow-up of up to 6 years from baseline. In line with previous work,12 findings from our review provide evidence that structured and professionally run obesity treatment interventions, with a dietary component, may reduce the risk of ED development in the short and longer term.

    Concern over adolescent dieting has arisen from a number of observational studies which show that dieting in any form is associated with an increased risk of undertaking disordered eating behaviors10, 77 and the development of ED.11 The results of our review are in contrast to these data, and we offer two possible explanations. First, there are likely to be variations in the nature of dieting being undertaken, and second, there may be differing cohorts of adolescents represented in observational studies compared with intervention trials.


    In other words, these are authors of papers using studies with no DE/ED detection and studies with ED instruments normed on white thin girls  in order to deny that weight suppression "treatments" create eating disorders.

    They are the same people who are teaching adolescents intermittent fasting: http://www.fasttracktrial.com.au/. 

    They want to find a way to say that there are individual differences in "vulnerability" or features of a weight suppression program that will not be harmful so they can justify what they are doing. 

    They can't seem to/don't want to hear the lived experience of fat people who have harms from these experiences that NO instruments are detecting at all because no one has given a sh*t about the experience of fat people exposed to these "treatments."

    People without the lived experience are the principle investigators choosing the questions and no funder wants to support research that challenges a billion dollar industry. 

    SO: If you are hoping for DATA from a scientific structure that is designed to defend the status quo, good luck.  It is how it should work, but we are not at the table, and the people who are at the table don't see fat people as a group of people who should exist.  

    Deb



    Original Message