In today's episode of Understanding Disordered Eating, we will be sitting down with the one and only Melainie Rogers. Melainie is a certified eating disorder registered dietitian and supervisor and is accredited by the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals as a clinical supervisor in the treatment of eating disorders. She is the founder and CEO of Balance Eating Disorder Treatment Center™ and Melainie Rogers Nutrition, LLC in New York City. She is also the co-founder and former president of the New York City chapter of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals or IAEDP, advisory board member at the Center for the Study of Anorexia Bulimia or CSAB in New York City, and the co-chair of the Nutrition Special Interest Group with the Academy of Eating Disorders. On top of all that, she is also an active member of several dietetic associations, an author, and a professor.

Make sure to tune in until the end because we will be diving deep in to the misconceptions and the correlations between weight and health.

[00:01 - 9:11] Opening Segment

• I introduce our guest for this episode
• The importance of having a conversation about disordered eating
• Melainie talks about the brief history of the BMI and how it is being used at present
  • BMI as a misleading tool to measure health

[9:12 - 35:01] Improving Health Without Weight Loss

• Obesity as a risk factor of COVID
  • An offensive and lazy way of categorizing people
• The stress from obesity discrimination poses a higher risk than the weight
• Differentiating between correlation and causation
• Dangers of recommending weight loss to improve biomarkers
• Improved biomarkers can be achieved without weight loss
  • Being in a respectful environment without pressure to lose weight
• The importance of having healthy relationship with food and your body
• Educating the people about the bad effects of unhealthy dieting
  • Losing muscle mass
  • Increase in hunger
  • Binge eating
  • Messing up your natural metabolic rate
• Aesthetics vs. Actual Health
  • It's not about how much fat, but where the fat is located
  • Be more careful about visceral fat
• The importance of looking at health at every size
• • Incorporating joyful movement
  • Improving sleep
  • Weight is not only the indicator of good health

[29:07 - 43:49] Other Tools to Treat Eating Disorders

• Bariatric surgery as a necessary tool for some individuals
  • Must have a lot of understanding in the procedure's pros and cons
• Important to bring more knowledge about food and health to the general public
• Neutralizing relationship with food
  • Understanding intuitive eating
  • Tuning eat with what your body feels
  • Replenishing your body with food that it wants and needs
  • Will make you feel more in control of your relationship with food
• Connect with Melainie through the links below
• Quick information about Balance Eating Disorder Treatment Center™
• Final words

Tweetable Quotes:

"We know from a health perspective, that pure weight doesn't really tell us much about someone's health. It may suggest, but it doesn't tell us definitively." - Melainie Rogers

"I think the problem with our healthcare system and with how society has been told, is that society has been told to believe that weight is the number one indicator of health and it is absolutely simply not true." - Melainie Rogers

"What we want to look at then is health at every size, which is no matter what our body shape and size and weight, we can be healthier from that point." - Melainie Rogers

Connect with Melainie Rogers on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also check out her website at www.balancedtx.com or call them at 212-645-6903.

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You can connect with me, Rachelle Heinemann on Instagram, through my website www.rachelleheinemann.com, or email me directly at [email protected].