ABSTRACT
A dietitian or eating disorder-trained coach can help the patient learn shopping and cooking skills. Nutritionists often demonstrate and/or explain how to make rice, pasta, or sautéed vegetables. Nutritionists build the structured meal plan to meet the patient’s current diagnostic and clinical needs. In every case, nutritionists explain the rationale for ratios and portions. Nutritionists find that patients manage balanced eating more successfully when nutritionists make it less complicated, more structured, easier to remember, and easier to repeat. The meal plan gives patients firm guidance and direction for when and what to eat. The chorus of eating disorder thoughts, voices, and abuse are major culprits behind a patient’s delayed, skipped, chaotic, or compromised breakfast. Recovery from an eating disorder is disruptive and disorienting. A clinician’s words may be “heard” or hit home in dramatically different ways from one week to the next.
