Learn about the diagnostic details of the 8 formal eating disorder diagnoses and 4 unofficial diagnoses (orthorexia, diabulimia, bigorexia, drunkorexia)

Understand the complexity of each individual person’s experience of their eating disorder and the impact of trauma, genetics, environment, underlying unmet needs, coping strategies, etc.

A review of common severe and/or life-threatening symptoms and conditions that can result from an eating disorder

Understand and learn how to identify the various points along the spectrum of disordered eating and differentiating disordered eating from eating disorders

Grow your capabilities around guiding clients to identify goals for recovery on their own terms, how to measure both physical and mental markers of recovery, and the usefulness and  limitations of existing research.

Descriptions of various treatment settings: inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, outpatient;  length of stay, stepping-up and stepping-down in levels of care.

What are key responsibilities and differences in the role of the RDN at various level of care settings.

Overview of facilitating groups, types of groups, and various objectives for running nutrition groups.

How to determine the most appropriate level of care for your patient, making referrals and treatment center recommendations, and the RD role in stepping a patient up to a higher level of care. Also what to do if your patient is unwilling or unable to access higher level of care.

Considerations for how to create a sense of safety and a foundation for a trusting relationship by understanding who your client is and why they are seeking support

Learn how an eating disorder assessment varies from a standard nutrition assessment and the depth and breadth of what you need to cover and document

Know what screening tools exist and when/where they may be useful.

Various practices and viewpoints on addressing baseline weight and weight monitoring. Differences in working with adults versus younger patients.

How and when to consult with other treatment team members, who is part of a treatment team, including requesting documents and common mental health co-occurring conditions to know about.

Learn how meal planning and building a nutrition plan in ED treatment often varies significantly from “standard” nutrition prescriptions and approaches. A look at common GI considerations, very high calorie needs, tips for increasing meal density, pacing of increasing or decreasing calories, tracking intake and more.

Throughout your time with a client you will learn to consistently revisit goals, behaviors, patterns and fears that are involved in their eating disorder. We will cover behaviors to address and ways to approach in session.

Overview of what “weight restoration” means and who it applies to, adjusting nutrition needs and recommendations, hypermetabolism, and more.

We will cover examples of common behaviors you will address and discuss in ED nutrition counseling sessions. Also learn about common “triggers” that can activate or increase a client’s desire to use behaviors.

What is patient-centered care, and why is it so important in eating disorder treatment? We will provide an overview to various commonly used therapeutic modalities.

Understand important considerations you can bring in to your work to support clients around ongoing or a history of trauma, marginalization, heath care and weight-related trauma and experiences of stigma.

Understand how racial, class, size and other forms of discrimination play a role in eating disorder diagnosis, delay of treatment, challenges for recovery and overall experiences for our clients.

What makes this work so fulfilling and challenging and where you can go from here in your career pathway.