Whew…I love conferences, but they take a lot out of you! Ergo, a skipped blog post yesterday, as I caught up on work, picked Dug up from dog camp, ran statistical analyses for my thesis and started sending emails out to the fabulous women I met in Houston.
Tuesday morning started with another session on the gut microbiome, “Know your Gut Instincts: Microbiota and Metabolic Profiling.” Not quite as good as the session I attended Monday, but speakers John Milner, PhD and Elaine Holmes, PhD presented some great information.
From there, I was torn (torn!) between “Nutritional Approaches to Detoxification: Separating Fact From Fiction” and “Food Matters: The Connection Between Nutrition and Psychotherapy.” I opted to learn about detox, and speakers Gerard Mullin, MD and Kathie Swift, MS, RD gave an amazing presentation (which will be part of the background for a future Times column), but my mentor, who works with a lot of eating disorder patients, went to the nutrition and psychotherapy session and said that was also amazing, so I guess I’m going to have to buy the recording when it’s available.
For me, the conference ended on a truly inspirational note. I went to the session on “New DSM V Binge Eating Diagnosis and Implications for RDs/DTRs,” and I’m not kidding when I say that I laughed, and I cried. The first speaker, Chevese Turner, was inspiring. Not only is she open about her personal struggles with poor body image, dieting and binge eating, but she went on to found the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA) to help raise awareness of what, at the time, was not classified as a “true” eating disorder (i.e., there was no formal diagnosis code). The second speaker, Jessica Setnick, MS, RD, CEDRD, is one of those people you might describe as “a pistol.” She was a blazing ball of energy, and she is smart, intuitive, passionate and compassionate about helping people overcome disordered eating. I could have listened to her all day…and I am confident she could have talked about the topic all day.
This interview Setnick did with Jennifer Neily, Chair of the Nutrition Entrepreneurs Dietetic Practice Group, on what eating disorders look like, doesn’t quite capture her full personality, but touches on some of the points she made in her talk. (You can find more interview segments on Neily’s YouTube channel.)