Project HEAL Q & A- Part One

A few posts ago, I wrote about the EDC- the Eating Disorder Coalition. The EDC is focused on "research, policy and action"-- working to promote systemic change and allocating funds in order that people suffering from eating disorders will have access to the care that they need! One of the many reasons that this is important is that currently, treatment for eating disorders is not very affordable for the average US resident. Residential treatment can cost more than $1000 per day; as most treatment centers admit patients for a minimum of 30-45 days, treatment can end up costing someone more than double the cost of a college education. Money can be a very limiting factor for people who need and want to be treated! For this reason, in addition to many others, I was very impressed by Project HEAL when I learned what this non-profit organization was doing.

Project HEAL made a very strong impression on me when I first heard about the work that they were doing to help people suffering from eating disorders. I saw a story on ABC News a few months ago about a young girl who was suffering from an eating disorder and could not afford treatment. Project HEAL came alongside her family and paid for her treatment. I was interested in finding out more about Project HEAL, so I used one of my favorite resources- google:).

Project HEAL (Help to Eat, Accept and Live) is made up of three young women- Liana Rosenman, Kristina Saffran, and Becky Allen- who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders, as well as raise funds to provide scholarships to individuals who need treatment. I wanted to find out a little bit more about the girls behind the group, what they are doing to raise awareness about eating disorders, and how we can support them in their efforts. As it turns out, they are three amazing young women who are striving to use their personal experiences with eating disorders to help others in their struggles. Here is the first part of my conversation with them.

Me: So, how did you all meet and what inspired you to come together and create Project HEAL?

PJ: It's actually a funny story. Liana was in Long Island Jewish Eating Disorder Treatment Center when Becky was there. When Becky was discharged she was there with Kristina. She kept in touch with both of them after her treatment there as they were a huge support system! About a year later she and Becky decided to have an "LIJ Halloween Reunion". We invited the people we were in treatment with, roughly about 20 girls, but it ended up just being the three of us. Since then our bond has only grown.

Becky originated the idea for Project HEAL. She was at a healthy weight and far along the road to recovery. Mentally, she was pretty strong, but once in a while would still look in the mirror and question whether she truly looked good. The idea was a very "spur of the moment" type thing. One night she was thinking, "Life shouldn't be like this. People shouldn't be so overly focused on their physical appearances." That, combined with witnessing people being turned away from treatment because their insurance would not cover them and their parents could not afford to pay out of pocket, led her to develop the idea for Project HEAL. After outlining its goals -- to raise money for eating disorder sufferers who otherwise would not be able to afford treatment and to educate the public on the dangers of eating disorders -- she called Liana and Kristina to see if they would be interested in jump starting this organization with her.

Me: I noticed on your website that you all have been able to give out four scholarships for treatment- that is really remarkable!!! What are some of your hopes and dreams for Project HEAL? What are some things that you all want to see happen as a result of your dedication and hard work? I saw Liana's interview on CBS and thought the benefit concert was a great idea!!

PH: Project HEAL's long term dream is to open a treatment center! We have so many ideas, from how [each] day [in treatment] is planned, what food will be served, and even the design of it! We are hoping to spread our message even further. We want to help as many people as we can! Project HEAL sends approximately two applicants to treatment a year. We hope we can raise this amount. We are looking to begin planning a benefit concert in the near future! We have been in touch with Jessica Simpson, and are hoping this will work out!

Our most immediate goal is to open chapters of Project HEAL at high schools and colleges. The idea would be for the students in these chapters to fundraise for Project HEAL and to educate their peers on the dangers of eating disorders.

To read the rest of the interview and hear about how you can get involved, check back soon!

The Joy Project

Help those suffering from eating disorders by voting for the Joy Project in Pepsi's Refresh Project! Pepsi has organized this project as an opportunity for people, businesses and non-profits to share ideas that will make a positive impact on communities. Anyone can submit an idea, as well as vote! And, there are only 2 days left to vote before they start a new month over and , so if you are interested, you may want to check it out soon!! The Joy Project is currently ranked #64 and needs some more votes (quickly) if they are going to receive some funding!!

The Joy Project is seeking 25k to fund a program called Roots of Recovery- the money is being used to rent a meeting space to conduct their meetings and activities, as well as fund the activities and meetings! They are not providing therapy or nutrition services, and are not licensed clinicians. However, they are interested in providing support, education and research- all things that are needed in the field of eating disorders! If you are interested in finding out more about the Joy Project (or voting), follow this link. To check our the Joy Project's website, follow this link.

EDNOS

I have posted in the past (here) about 'eating disorders not otherwise specified' -- commonly referred to as EDNOS. As a diagnosis, EDNOS is not very specific-- if one does not meet the criteria for anorexia or bulimia, then he or she is lumped into the EDNOS diagnosis. In this way, it can sometimes be seen as the 'kitchen sink' diagnosis. This can be problematic for many reasons-- mainly, a single diagnosis used for people that experience a range of different behavioral symptoms (binge eating- no purging, purging- no bingeing, night eating, etc) is not necessarily effective when it comes to treating the eating disorder. There was an article published in the NY Times awhile back that I have been meaning to post that you can access by following this link which addresses this very issue. I would encourage you all to check this article out! It helps to bust a few common eating disorder myths and provides a little more background on EDNOS. For more info on EDNOS, follow this link.

Jenni Schaefer on Recovery

It's been a busy few days for me and it's time for bed, but I read a great piece today on eating disorder recovery written by Jenni Schaefer that I want to point you all to! It is a pretty challenging read for those of you who may be contemplating giving up your eating disorder, for those of you who are in recovery, and for everyone in between. Follow this link to check it out, or see below for a copy/pasted version.

Eating Disorder Recovery: Easier On The Other Side

If you are waiting for recovery to be easy, pull up a chair. You will be waiting for a long time. Ed (aka “eating disorder”) will gladly sit by your side and wait with you. To sabotage your success, Ed will even act like he supports certain aspects of your recovery.

If you like to read, Ed will say, “Just read this book about recovery, and you will be fine.” He will let you read the book, and congratulate you on doing it, but he won’t let you follow any of the guidance inside that will actually help you.

If you enjoy being around people, Ed will say, “Go to that therapy group, and get some help there.” Ed will let you go to the group, and may even let you participate, but he won’t let you talk about what you really need to talk about in order to heal.

If you like to surf the Internet, Ed will say, “Here’s a great website for you. Go ahead and join the online recovery forum.” He will let you join the online forum, and he will convince you that logging on is more important than eating.

Books, groups, and online resources can all be very helpful tools in your recovery. Just remember that recovery takes full commitment and real action. Real action is not simply opening a book, walking into a group room, or logging onto some website.

If you read a book about recovery, fully commit to the ideas in it that will make a difference in your life, not just the things that are easy to do. If you are in group therapy, talk about the issues that, deep inside, you know you need to discuss. If you are active in an online recovery community, use the positive support from online pals to hold yourself accountable to taking real action in your recovery. It’s not enough to just look at the tools—you really do have to use them.

Real action means drastic change. It also means realizing that Ed will sit by your side and try to sabotage you every step of the way. Ed will even use content from recovery books, groups, and websites to try to fuel his cause. Be aware of this and guard against it, and do what the books, groups, and websites suggest that is pro-recovery. Now that’s action.

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says, “Half measures availed us nothing.” If you only do eating disorder recovery half way, at most, you will get a half way recovery from your eating disorder. In my experience, you won’t even get that.

During early recovery, I believed that insight would inspire change. I thought that if I just knew enough about eating disorders, and understood myself, I would get better. I learned as much as I could from all of the resources available to me, and I waited for a magical change. I waited for the urge to binge to just go away. I waited to fall in love with my body. I waited for my fear of food to simply subside. And Ed waited right along with me.

I waited. I waited, and I waited some more. I would still be waiting today if intense pain had not pushed me into taking some real action. In my personal experience, pain and discomfort have most often been the motivating factors to get me to change. (For the record, I don’t think it has to be this way. That is why I write about my experiences. I hope that other people won’t have to reach the same level of pain I did before making changes.)

In my recovery, taking action meant tackling the food directly. I stopped purging after bingeing. I also did my best to not binge, which meant tolerating uncomfortable feelings (to say the very least). I ate without restricting. My body changed accordingly, and I felt awful. I felt so bad that I told my mom many times that I would rather be dead than to live that way any longer. I hated the way my body was changing, and I hated how it made me feel inside even more. I felt like a different person entirely --- someone I didn’t know or like. I felt trapped.

When we fully commit to recovery, we are signing up for hurt. Full commitment means we no longer make decisions based on how we feel in the short run (turning to Ed for immediate gratification), but instead we make decisions based on our long-term goals of health and a full recovery. In the beginning, success can actually feel fat and miserable. So stop waiting for things to be easy and start looking for the hard part. Tackling the difficult, ironically, is when the “easy” will find you. If you push through the pain and move all the way to the other side, you won’t have to keep facing the same hurt over and over again. You will be well on your way to freedom.

Life is, in fact, much easier on the other side of the eating disorder. I am not afraid of food, I don’t get the urge to binge, and I love my body. Yes, I said “love”! Today success feels strong and joyful, no longer fat and miserable. I can’t wait for you to get to this point, too.

And you can’t afford to wait either! So, stop waiting and start changing.

Appointed to the Ambassador Council of the National Eating Disorders Association, Jenni Schaefer is a singer/songwriter, speaker, and author of Life Without Ed and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me. She is a consultant with the Center For Change in Orem, Utah. For more information, visit www.jennischaefer.com.

The FREED Act

There used to be a character on Saturday Night Live named Stuart Smalley, who was the host of a fake self-help show (pictured above-haha). I never really watched it because I was young when it was on, but I have seen highlights of it on different SNL highlight shows. Anyways, the character in this sketch is obsessed with twelve-step programs, and is involved in a number of them. He isn't a trained therapist, just someone who is trying to overcome his own addictions and help others on this same journey. His famous line, as you can see from the picture above, is something that he would look in the mirror and repeat to himself as a positive affirmation: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me!" He had many catchphrases that poked fun at 'psychobabble' and self-help lingo. He even turned this sketch into a movie called Stuart Saves His Family--I had to watch it for a class once and write a paper on it :-).

Anyways, in an ironic twist of fate, Al Franken, who played the role of Stuart Smalley, is known also for his political work- he is currently a senator in the state of Minnesota and is advocating for eating disorders! Amy Klobuchar, also a Minnesotan senator, and Tom Harkin, a senator from Iowa, have teamed up to introduce a new bill which Franken is sponsoring. This bill is called the FREED Act (Federal Response to Eliminate Eating Disorders) and it's goal is to "allocate research money to the National Institutes of Health to better investigate the causes of eating disorders and improve treatment methods. The research would also seek to improve public data on eating disorders, including morbidity and mortality rates." This quote was taken from an article published in The Minnesota Daily and the article in its entirety can be read here. The gist though is summarized in a quote Franken gave to the paper- he said, "We don't know nearly enough about diagnosing, treating and preventing these diseases. [This] legislation is a major step forward in understanding eating disorders and how to stop them from destroying lives."

To put things into perspective, the NIH (National Institutes of Health) allows $1.20 towards research per person with an eating disorder, contrasted with $159 towards research per person with someone who has schizophrenia (whose prevalence is significantly less). That is pretty staggering!! Last week was lobby day for the Eating Disorders Coalition, and this was an exciting day for eating disorder advocacy! I have no political agenda that I push when I write my blog- however, I think it is important for us to know the facts and to be educated, and to be able to act if we feel moved to do so! To read more on this act and what it aims to do, follow this link. If you are interested in finding out how YOU can advocate for increased eating disorder funding for research, prevention and treatment, follow this link to write to your Congressperson!