Eating Disorder Education

FBT-Informed Eating Disorder Treatment: A Course for Dietitians

Deepen your expertise in Family-Based Treatment (FBT) with our comprehensive online course, enriched with monthly live interactions with field experts.

20 CEs for Dietitians.

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Welcome to a transformative learning experience designed to equip dietitians with the specialized skills needed to work with adolescents and their families in managing eating disorders through FBT.

This course offers flexible learning through Teachable, where you can access self-paced modules anytime. Enhance your learning experience by participating in monthly live discussion groups. Available through November 2025.

Do you feel overwhelmed when adolescents with eating disorders come to your practice, unsure of how to engage their families in treatment?

Enhance your expertise and gain robust confidence using Family-Based Treatment (FBT), a thoroughly researched method that actively involves the entire family in the eating disorder recovery process.

This course equips you with the skills to implement FBT, which is recognized for significantly improving treatment outcomes by fostering a supportive home environment.

By empowering families to take an active role, you help build a sustainable support system that reinforces recovery and strengthens familial bonds, making a profound impact on the lives of adolescents struggling with eating disorders.

FBT RD

Here’s what to expect:

FBT

You’ll get

  • 20 CEs for Dietitians
  • Registration includes Monthly Live Study Groups at no cost to enrolled students
  • 100% Online and self paced 11 Part Series
  • Hear and learn directly from a parent who implemented FBT with her child
  • BONUS Module: Method for calculating estimated target weight range for recovering adolescents
  • Course developed by experts at the tops of their fields
FBT

What You’ll Gain From this Course

Lived experience knowledge

Includes perspective and lessons from Katie Maki, RN, a parent with lived experience of supporting her child with an eating disorder


Best practices

Special attention to best practices for returning individuals to their estimated growth curve and identifying target weights


Monthly Live Study Groups

Registration includes Monthly Live Study Groups at no cost to enrolled students

What you will learn

When you complete this program this is what you can expect to achieve

Introduction to FBT and Its Role in Eating Disorder Treatment

Understand the principles of FBT and how it transforms the treatment landscape for adolescents with eating disorders.

Engaging Families in Treatment

Learn strategies to effectively involve families in the treatment process, enhancing the support system for adolescents.

Addressing Challenges in FBT

Navigate common challenges and learn to overcome obstacles in family-based interventions.

Practical Application and Case Studies

Apply what you learn through practical exercises and detailed case studies that illustrate successful FBT scenarios.

Continuous Professional Support and Development

Participate in ongoing professional development through live sessions that foster a deeper understanding and refinement of your FBT skills.

Weight inclusive approach

This course is presented from a weight inclusive approach so that you can practice within your values.

This course directly addresses the challenges dietitians face when working with adolescents with eating disorders.

It offers in-depth training on engaging families effectively, understanding complex family dynamics, and mastering specialized treatment strategies to make a real difference in young clients’ lives.

What Students Are Saying

Course Instructors


Lauren Muhlheim, Psy.D., FAED, CEDS (Lead Instructor)

Lauren Muhlheim, Psy.D., FAED, CEDS is a psychologist, fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED), and certified eating disorder specialist (CEDS) and approved supervisor for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IAEDP).

She directs Eating Disorder Therapy LA in Los Angeles. She provides cognitive-behavioral therapy for adults and family-based treatment (FBT) for adolescents and adheres to Health at Every Size® principles. She is certified in FBT for adolescent eating disorders and is the author of When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder. Dr. Muhlheim has held leadership roles in several professional organizations including the AED, IAEDP LA Chapter, and the Los Angeles County Psychological Association. She is an IAEDP core course instructor. She is passionate about removing the weight bias in evidence-based treatments and training other professionals to deliver such treatments

Katie Grubiak, RDN (Lead Instructor)

Katie Grubiak, RDN graduated from the Coordinated Program in Dietetics at The University of Texas at Austin. She first pursued a career in public health nutrition in San Diego and Los Angeles with a maternal-child focus.

It was in the same underprivileged area of Los Angeles where she was serving nutritionally that she began to combine her passions, teaching dance and guiding families of dancers to public health clinic access at a foundation called everybody dance! which was awarded by First Lady Michelle Obama the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Her involvement in multidisciplinary eating disorder treatment started at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center. Katie developed a unique style of practicing Family Based Treatment that was driven by her collaborations with Dr. Lauren Muhlheim at Eating Disorder Therapy LA. In addition, Katie was the eating disorder dietitian at Optimum Performance Institute in Woodland Hills, California which specializes in DBT-focused mental health residential treatment for young adults. Katie now has her own nutrition and care coordination private practice named NUTRITION ILLUMINATION.

Rebecka Peebles, MD (Guest Speaker)

Dr. Peebles is an Associate Professor in the Craig Dalsimer Division of Adolescent Medicine at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. She is board certified in pediatrics and further specialty certified in adolescent and young adult medicine, and serves as the Director of Medical Research and Quality Innovations in the Eating Disorder Assessment and Treatment Program at CHOP, which she co-founded in 2011.

Her clinical and research expertise is in working with young patients from diverse populations with eating disorder behaviors, across the weight spectrum. She has worked exclusively with children, adolescents, and young adults with disordered eating for the past twenty years, and has published some of the seminal literature describing differences between children and adolescents with eating disorders. She has extensive expertise in their medical evaluation and treatment, as well as their bone health, neuroendocrinology, biobehavioral links and pubertal function, and has been funded for her work by the NIH and the American Heart Association. She has also published quality improvement work in patients with eating disorders in a firm commitment to demonstrating that clinical care and protocols are indeed improving outcomes in the patients we serve. Finally, she has recently published findings of CHOP’s rapid scale-up to telehealth visits for eating disorder patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Renee D. Rienecke, PhD, FAED (Guest Speaker)

Renee D. Rienecke, PhD, FAED, is a clinical psychologist and Director of Research for Eating Recovery Center/Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Centers and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University.

After earning her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan, Dr. Rienecke received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University and completed her clinical psychology internship and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. Dr. Rienecke has extensive experience building and directing treatment programs, including the University of Michigan Comprehensive Eating Disorders Program and the Medical University of South Carolina Eating Disorders Program. Dr. Rienecke is a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a member of the Eating Disorders Research Society, and a faculty member of the Training Institute for Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders, providing consultation to therapists interested in becoming certified to conduct family-based treatment for adolescent eating disorders. Her research interests include the role of expressed emotion in treatment outcome for adolescent anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Katie Maki BSN, RN (Guest Speaker)

Katie Maki BSN, RN, aka “Mamabear”, is the mother of 3 young adult children. Her middle daughter was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa at the age of ten in the fall of 2010. She has been in full recovery for many years.

Throughout the years of battling the eating disorder and beyond, Katie has been a very active peer mentor and advocate for families navigating an eating disorder diagnosis. She has been published multiple times in FEAST (https://www.feast-ed.org/) as well as presented multiple educational sessions on eating disorders for both medical staff and school staff. She lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with her husband of 28 years.

Topics covered in this 11-part course


MODULE 1:

Working with Adolescents and Eating Disorders

Description:

  • 5 Core FBT Principles
  • How to Prioritize Those Principles in Adolescent ED Treatment
  • Teen Development

MODULE 2:

Overview of FBT

  • Anosognosia
  • Parental leverage
  • FBT – 3 Phases
  • Markers of recovery

MODULE 3:

Renee Rienecke, PhD – Family Based Treatment: Then and Now

  • Overview of the history and development of FBT
  • Findings and significance of seminal research studies
  • A look at recent FBT research
  • Adaptations to FBT for disorders such as bulimia nervosa and ARFID

MODULE 4:

Rebecka Peebles, MD – A medical standpoint on returning teens to their growth curves

MODULE 5:

Myths About FBT, Who is FBT For, and Important Considerations

  • How to know who is a good fit for FBT and who may not be
  • Addressing economically disadvantaged families in FBT
  • Supporting ethnically diverse families
  • Adaptations for adults
  • Helping teens with Atypical Anorexia
  • FBT for ARFID
  • Case examples

MODULE 6:

Team Roles Within FBT

  • Who is on an FBT Team
  • Overlapping roles on a team
  • Role of RDN in different phases
  • Team coordination and leading the team

MODULE 7:

The RDN and Working with Teens – what we’ve learned from FBT

  • Setting Goal weights
  • Faster feeding (higher caloric goals)
  • Empowering parents to feed
  • Permission to not meet with teen directly
  • Screening for refeeding syndrome
  • Protocol options for weighing
  • Coordination of medical monitoring

MODULE 8:

Empowering Parents to Feed

  • What meal planning approach to use and the pros and cons of meal plans
  • Using food photos and other technology
  • Increasing Caloric Density
  • Using Incentives
  • Use of Supplements
  • Transitioning to Phase 2

MODULE 9:

FBT Challenges

  • Return to sport guidelines in FBT
  • Split families, divorced families, busy families, parents not on same page
  • When weight gain stalls
  • When original weight target seems inadequate
  • Family empowered care at higher level of care
  • College readiness including assessment, preparation, and contracts
  • Camps and travel
  • Body image
  • Non-FBT supporting treatment centers

MODULE 10:

Calculating Estimated Target Weight-for-Age

  • Learn how to use the 7-step worksheet to calculate mid-parental height with growth data to find an estimated target weight for age introduced by Dr. Peebles in Module 4.

MODULE 11:

The Mamabear approach in eating disorders for full nutritional recovery of both body and brain. How registered dietitians can be a caregivers most significant asset.

  • Learn how one expert-by-experience, mother, and nurse leveraged her unique skill set to save her child from an eating disorder diagnosis at age ten (now twenty-two in full recovery for many years).  This live session will offer a comprehensive understanding from a caregiver’s perspective of what registered dietitians working in Family Based Treatment need to know to support families.

Your Investment

Payment Plan: We offer a 3-part payment plan or single payment option.

Full and Partial Scholarships Available. Inquire by email to [email protected].

Group Pricing: Email [email protected] to request info on pricing for groups of 3 or more.

Non-Member Price

$499

EDRD Pro Member Price

$399

Not yet an EDRD Pro member?

Frequently Asked Questions

The course is accessible to you as soon as you sign up! You will have until November 2025 to complete the course for CE credit.

The course will be available through November 2025. If you do not complete all installments of the payment plan you will no longer be enrolled in the course and you will not receive a refund.

We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, contact us by email to [email protected] in the first 30 days and we will give you a full refund.

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