Nutrition Improvement Center
Eating disorder education you can actually use. For families, caregivers, dietitians, therapists, and other professionals navigating anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, ARFID, body image, and recovery. I'm Iris Epstein, RDN, CEDS, CAI. For 25 years, I've helped individuals, families, and professionals understand eating disorders and what it actually takes to move recovery forward. Each week, I break down the complicated parts of eating disorder treatment into practical strategies, clinical insights, and real-world guidance. No shame. No blame. No guesswork. Subscribe free and become better equipped to help yourself—or someone you care about.
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Why Cholesterol Rises in Anorexia Nervosa
When Cholesterol Rises During Anorexia: What's Really Going On Hi Reader, If a recent lab result showed high cholesterol during anorexia recovery, the number probably did not make sense. Less food coming in should mean a lower number, not a higher one. But this is one of the most common, well studied findings in anorexia nervosa, showing up in somewhere between 16 and 39 percent of patients depending on the study, often high enough that it would prompt a serious conversation about medication...
READ POST"Weight restored, still not okay? Read this"
The gap between weight restored and actually okay Hi Reader, I want to say something out loud that I don't think gets said enough. If you're reading this email, whether you are the one in recovery, a parent or caregiver walking alongside someone, or a professional supporting families through this, there's a good chance part of you is waiting for a moment that hasn't arrived yet. Meals are happening. Maybe weight is restored. Labs look normal. And yet something still feels unfinished. Food...
READ POSTWhy does everyone else get to shrink but me?
When Everyone Around You Is Shrinking: Staying Grounded in Recovery During the GLP-1 Moment Hi Reader, Watching someone shrink easily, while you or someone you love is recovering from an eating disorder that requires more food, more weight, and less comparison, is one of the harder moments this particular cultural shift has created. Clients doing the work of recovery and the families and caregivers walking alongside them are both being asked to hold something difficult right now, and neither...
READ POSTWhy a Normal Meal Can Feel Like Too Much
Why a Normal Meal Can Feel Like Too Much Hi Reader, Whether this is happening in your own body, or you're watching it happen in someone you love, it tends to come up early in recovery: a completely reasonable portion of food feels unbearably full, sometimes just a few bites in. There's a specific, physical explanation for this, and understanding it tends to bring real relief to everyone involved. The stomach has a job most people never think about The upper part of the stomach is designed to...
READ POSTThe number on your scale wasn't invented by a doctor
The number on your scale wasn't invented by a doctor Hi Reader, If you've ever stepped on a scale and let the number decide whether you're allowed to feel okay about yourself today, I want to tell you something most people are never told: that number carries way less authority than it feels like it does. Not because I'm trying to talk you out of what you're feeling, but because the history of where it came from might surprise you. A client once told me about the index card she kept her own...
READ POSTWhat My Garden Taught Me About Eating Disorder Recovery
Pictures of my garden What Gardening Taught Me About Eating Disorder Recovery Hi Reader, I did not expect gardening to teach me anything about eating disorder recovery. I started because I needed somewhere quiet to put my hands after a long week of hard conversations. But plants do not rush. A seed does not apologize for how long it takes to become something. It simply keeps its rhythm and trusts the process, even when nothing visible is happening yet. I think about that a lot in this work....
READ POSTThe Appetite Suppressant Trap
The Appetite Suppressant Trap Hi Reader, By now you have probably heard the names. Ozempic. Wegovy. Mounjaro. Zepbound. Maybe you have taken one yourself. Maybe someone you love has. Or maybe you have just seen them everywhere and wondered what all the fuss is really about. I want to talk about them today, but not the way most people do. Before I stpecialized in eating disorders I spent over ten years working as a Certified Diabetes Educator. I watched these same medications change lives for...
READ POSTSecondary Trauma in Eating Disorder Caregivers
When Loving Someone Makes You Sick: Secondary Trauma in Caregivers Hi Reader, There is a particular kind of exhaustion that settles into the body of a parent, a partner, or a caregiver who has been holding someone through an eating disorder for months or years. It is not the exhaustion of a hard week at work. It is something deeper and more disorienting, a weariness that does not lift with sleep, a hypervigilance that has become so constant it no longer feels like vigilance at all. It just...
READ POSTThe sibling in the shadow
The Sibling in the Shadow: The Child No One Is Watching Hi Reader, Every family that walks through the door of an eating disorder treatment center carries more than one story. There is the story everyone can see, the patient, the illness, the urgent need for care. And then there is the story unfolding quietly in the background, in a bedroom down the hall, at a school lunch table, in the silence of a child who has learned that this is not the moment to need anything. The sibling of a child or...
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