Coaching and meal support are two relatively new and important signs of progress in eating disorder treatment. One theme throughout this blog describes the experience that eating disorder thoughts are ever present in a person’s life, and treatment needs to find ways to counter the thoughts and behaviors much more regularly during the day.
I have written about using daily food logs as a primary way to enable patients to face their thoughts and feelings. This treatment plan continues to work very well.
Coaching and meal support offer a different way to provide more help through the day. These modalities focus on extra time with a clinical provider either around daily activities or at meal and snack times.
The provider can interrupt entrenched eating disorder thoughts and behavior patterns and increase the time a patient can try to change these patterns rather than reinforce them. The result is that treatment plans extend into more parts of the day and give the eating disorder less leeway and freedom to dominate a person’s life.
For coaching and meal support to be effective, the patient needs to be far enough along in recovery to be willing to hear the messages around eating more consistently and why the eating disorder can be so destructive. If a patient is so fixed on staying sick, extra support still won’t make much of a dent.
These expanded options in treatment allow for providers to create a much more specific plan for each patient. Therapists, dietitians, groups and outpatient programs used to be the only available options. Now coaching, meal supports, online groups, mentors and a variety of mixed programs offer so many more ways to get well.
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