Shownotes
Episode 004
A Roadmap to Key F.E.A.S.T. Resources
In this episode of 'The Other Side of the Plate,' host Jenni Gaines provides an in-depth look at crucial resources offered by FEAST, an organization dedicated to supporting families dealing with eating disorders. The episode covers educational programs such as the 'FEAST 30 Days' program, the 'FEAST Caregiver Skills Toolkit,' and the 'Family Guide series,' which provide vital information on managing eating disorders. Jenni also highlights peer support options like caregiver and sibling support groups as well as the 'Men of FEASTt' community for male caregivers. The episode aims to offer caregivers actionable insights, emotional support, and a sense of community, emphasizing that they are not alone in their journey.
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Jenny's Personal Journey and Key Resources
03:16 FEAST 30 Days Program
08:20 Caregiver Skills Toolkit
12:57 Family Guide Series
15:21 Peer Support Resources
18:57 Online Communities and Email Support
22:59 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
SUPPORT & RESOURCES
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FEAST website:
Resources:
FEAST Caregiver Skills Toolkit
Getting Started with Refeeding: A Guide to Moving Forward When You’re Not Sure What Comes Next
Caregiver & Sibling Support Group - F.E.A.S.T.
Around the Dinner Table-Facebook group
Email Support:
Transcripts
Host:
Welcome to The Other Side of the Plate, brought to you by FEAST—Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Eating Disorders… Together we'll share personal insights, connect you with professionals, and point you toward helpful resources. And as we say at FEAST: We're here because we've been there.
NOTE:
The content contained in this podcast is not a substitute
for professional or medical treatment, and it may not represent
the views and beliefs of FEAST. Always consult a medical
professional for medical advice and treatment recommendations.
Jenni:
Hi everyone, it's Jenni, one of your co-hosts for the Other Side of the Plate podcast. If you're a parent or caregiver supporting someone with an eating disorder, chances are you've felt overwhelmed and scared and just plain exhausted. I understand because I've been there. I remember a time when I wished that someone would help me find the information and support that I needed.
I had no idea what a steep learning curve I had ahead of me, and I didn't know enough to know what exactly I needed as far as knowledge and support. So if you're caring for a loved one with an eating disorder and you aren't sure where to look for resources or even what resources might be useful, this episode is for you.
Today I'm sharing some of the key resources that F.E.A.S.T. offers, including educational programs and peer support services, so you'll know where to turn when you need information, support, and insight. Links to everything I mention will be in the show notes. Okay, let's take a look at some of the F.E.A.S.T. resources now and what they have to offer.
For me, I know in the beginning I was really concerned with finding reliable information, and yet I had no way of knowing if the information I was finding when I was searching was anything that I could actually rely on. I remember spending countless hours searching for information about eating disorders and how to help my daughter.
Luckily, F.E.A.S.T. has created resources for parents like me and like you who need education and support, now. These resources are for parents and caregivers who need a lifeline in this storm. The transformative educational and peer support resources at F.E.A.S.T. were created to educate, empower, and help parents and caregivers feel connected with the community that truly gets it.
In the beginning, it is so hard to know what you even need to know. The F.E.A.S.T. website is a great place to start: feast-ed.org. You can find all of our educational programs and peer support services there, along with blog posts, upcoming and past webinars, answers to frequently asked questions, and more. Let's take a look at some of the F.E.A.S.T. resources a little more closely.
F.E.A.S.T. has done such an amazing job creating some really practical, structured resources for caregivers. I'd like to start by highlighting three of our educational resources, and those are F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days, the F.E.A.S.T. Caregiver Skills Toolkit, and our Family Guide series. These three educational resources take complex concepts and make them something that caregivers can take and actually start using today.
I'm sure you've heard me talk about F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days in previous podcast episodes. I consider it F.E.A.S.T.'s flagship program. You might be wondering, what do you get when you register for F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days? First of all, you can register at no cost. The program consists of 30 lessons that arrive by email to help you build knowledge and confidence one day at a time, along with resources on each topic to go deeper.
I wanna give you a little bit of an idea of what some of those topics are. You get lessons on mealtime strategies, dealing with extreme behaviors, the genetics of eating disorders, how eating disorders affect the brain, and one of my favorites, what to expect when your child has an eating disorder. Those are just some of the 30 topics that you'll get.
And something before I forget, I wanna let you know if there's a certain topic you're really looking for and you don't wanna wait, you're able to advance to the next lesson at the bottom of each one of your emails. So you could actually read all 30 lessons in one day if you wanted to. Also, F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days is now available in Spanish.
Let's go back and look a little bit closer at Day 12, which is "What to Expect When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder." I wanna bring this one to your attention because it describes three concepts that I wasn't familiar with when I started my caregiver journey. The three concepts we'll look at now are: one, recovery isn't linear; number two, there will be resistance to treatment; and number three, there isn't a set time for recovery.
I'll go a little bit more into detail. We'll start with "recovery isn't linear." In fact, I would describe recovery as messy. I didn't know in the beginning that it wasn't a straight line through treatment to recovery. If I were to describe it, instead of calling it a straight line, I would call it a very squiggly line at that. And there were some setbacks. It's even normal to have relapses in the course of eating disorder recovery.
Concept number two: "there will be resistance to treatment." I had the idea going in that something must be wrong because my daughter doesn't wanna get well. Once I understood that it was okay to begin treatment even without her being motivated and that nothing had gone wrong, it really helped me to move forward.
Also, "there isn't a set time for recovery." I think all of us wanna know when we start this process, how long is this going to take? And truly what I found out, and what F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days will help everyone understand, is that it's going to be an individual journey for each person and for each family.
So you can probably tell that I highly recommend F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days.
The next educational resource that I want to highlight is the F.E.A.S.T. Caregiver Skills Toolkit. F.E.A.S.T. 30 Days gives you the what—all the information you need—and the Caregiver Skills Toolkit gives you the how. It is packed with skills that will give you what you need to know on how to manage many of the challenging situations you'll face.
It's a series of 26 videos, each about seven or eight minutes long, delivered by eating disorder experts who provide easy-to-apply skills. The toolkit contains five main categories of skills: Mealtime Skills, Boundary Setting Skills, Distress Tolerance Skills, Emotional Management Skills, and Crisis and Medical Intervention Skills.
Let's look at each category. Under Mealtime Skills, you’ll learn how to use the magic plate method, how to prompt your person to eat, and how to expose fear foods. Under Boundary Setting, you'll learn how to avoid accommodating the eating disorder and how to use leverage.
Distress Tolerance Skills are next, and there are eight different videos. I would say from my experience, these are one of the most important sets of skills you can learn. My natural instincts as a parent were to do a lot of things that are not helpful with eating disorders. I had to learn new skills. Some of the skills in the toolkit are how to practice radical acceptance, how to use validation and holding firm, how to use distraction, and one of my favorites, how to use the broken record technique.
The broken record technique is really interesting because when you first hear about it, it sounds so simple. It doesn't seem like it could possibly be effective, but once you learn it, it's amazing how much it helps. It can help you stay calm and firm, it eliminates the need to come up with the right thing to say, and it provides you with a plan of action when it's hard to know how to handle resistance. Just like any of these skills, I learned that I had to practice them. But it gets easier over time.
Under Emotional Management Skills, you'll learn how to decode bad body thoughts and respond to hopelessness. Under Crisis and Medical Intervention Skills, you'll learn how to be an effective medical advocate and how to deal with suicidality.
In addition to those, another educational resource I want to talk about is our Family Guide series. We have guides on multiple topics, but the two newest are on the topics of Getting Started with Refeeding and Using Leverage. Both are designed to give caregivers concrete steps and confidence.
Here's an excerpt from the Family Guide on Getting Started with Refeeding: “People with eating disorders don't choose this path. It is something that happens to them. They often do not know what is happening, and they have little to no insight about what is happening. They can't, quote, 'just eat' or make scary thoughts go away.” I really love that excerpt because it shows the perspective of the person with the eating disorder.
And here is a little bit from F.E.A.S.T.'s Family Guide on Using Leverage: “When your loved ones have to choose between their eating disorder and other important things in life, they grow stronger and the eating disorder weakens. Fighting for something and/or avoiding a negative consequence gives your loved ones permission to eat and comply with treatment, even when the eating disorder voice bullies them not to.” I think that's a really powerful statement. This guide really helps you see your child and see how you are helping them by using leverage.
After those educational resources, I'd love to move on to the wonderful peer support resources that F.E.A.S.T. offers. You just need to talk to someone who's been there.
First, we'll start with the free online virtual support groups. F.E.A.S.T. partners with ANAD to provide caregiver support groups twice weekly on Monday evenings and Thursday afternoons, US time. These support groups are 75 minutes long, and they're led by trained volunteers with lived experience. I'm one of the leaders, and many times we get the feedback that when someone attends, they feel less alone, less isolated, and more hopeful.
In addition, we also partner with ANAD to provide free sibling support groups. These are just for siblings, for ages 13 and up, and they're led by their peers. Some siblings say that the sibling support group is the first place they felt seen and heard since their sibling's eating disorder.
And for dads, partners, and other male caregivers, there are the Men of F.E.A.S.T. groups. These are offered twice monthly. The goal is to provide a safe space for men to share their experiences, access resources, and truly support one another.
If you're looking for group peer support, but support groups aren't for you, F.E.A.S.T. has other offerings. Our online peer support communities may be a better fit. We have two: the Around the Dinner Table Forum and our very active Facebook group.
The Around the Dinner Table Forum has been a vital community for many families. It's a moderated online group that you can join, and it's available worldwide. It was amazing because, honestly, I didn't even post on the forum, and yet it was a lifeline for me. I was able to go in, read questions and responses, and it was as if I myself had asked the questions.
And if you enjoy a faster-paced group, our Facebook group is a really active space where you can connect with many other caregivers. This group has over 7,500 members. To give you an idea of how helpful this Facebook group can be, I'd love to share some recent feedback that was posted: “This is by far the most supportive, kind, and helpful group I've ever seen on Facebook. Thank you for all those brave enough to share.”
And if support groups and online communities aren't quite what you're looking for, I'd like to highlight one more of F.E.A.S.T.'s key peer support resources. F.E.A.S.T. has an amazing email support team. That's a group of trained volunteers who can respond to your questions with encouragement and guidance. Please email our parent support team. I'll make sure to put that email address in the show notes.
We started out today's episode, and I talked about how overwhelming it can be. I hope that while you were listening, one or more of the educational programs or peer support services stood out to you. No matter the age of your loved one, their diagnosis, or where you live in the world, F.E.A.S.T. is here for you.
Caring for someone with an eating disorder is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. The good news is you don't have to do it alone. Every resource at F.E.A.S.T. exists to support you and your family. You can find links to all of the resources I mentioned today in the show notes, and if you know another caregiver who could use these resources, please share this episode with them.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us for our next episode where Laura and I will have a conversation with Judy Krasna, Executive Director of F.E.A.S.T. and expert by experience.
