Main Line Center For Eating Disorders

Main Line Center for Eating Disorders provides evidence-based, multidisciplinary care for children, adolescents, young adults and their families struggling with eating challenges and co-morbidities.

We are a team of Certified Family Based Treatment providers and Eating Disorder Specialists who are passionate about delivering treatments that work - because achieving holistic recovery from an eating disorder is possible.

Services Offered

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children . adolescents . young adults

Main Line Center for Eating Disorders is committed to making your family’s eating experience more peaceful. We treat clients ages 5 to 30 who are medically stable for outpatient level of care.

We believe in the importance of supporting the client as well as the entire family (when relevant) as we work towards recovery. When possible, we encourage caregivers and other family members to be involved in treatment.

children . adolescents . young adults

Main Line Center for Eating Disorders is committed to making your family’s eating experience more peaceful. We treat clients ages 5 to 30 who are medically stable for outpatient level of care.

Every client we treat at Main Line Center for Eating Disorders will receive care that reflects our core values.

Evidence-Based

Evidence-based treatments are proven by research to be effective. The leading evidence-based treatment for pediatric and adolescent eating disorders is Family-Based Treatment (FBT). Amy and Dr. Benner are two of less than 10 Certified Family-Based Treatment providers in the region and Kerri Heckert is a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist - Approved Supervisor, the only internationally-recognized advanced credential signifying competence in treating eating disorders.

Multidisciplinary

Main Line Center for Eating Disorders believes in utilizing the strengths of all members of the care team, including caregivers. As a multidisciplinary team, we coordinate care to optimize both the treatment plan and your experience as a client. We collaborate closely within our team, but also with physicians, psychiatrists, coaches, counselors and anyone else supporting the recovery effort.

Weight-Inclusive

A weight-inclusive approach to health care recognizes that everyone has the potential to achieve optimal health and well-being, regardless of their weight or BMI, when they have access to non-stigmatizing health care. This approach challenges the assumption that a specific BMI corresponds to a specific set of health practices, health status, or moral character, and instead prioritizes recommendations, treatments and interventions that focus on wellness over weight. Rather than viewing weight as a behavior, the focus shifts to self-care behaviors such as eating food that is nutritious and satisfying, listening to internal hunger and fullness cues and engaging in joyful movement. This approach seeks to reduce weight stigma and create a comfortable health care setting, where patients can discuss their health concerns openly and without fear of judgment from health care providers.

There principles of weight inclusive care are:

Do no harm.
Honor body diversity - the natural differences in human body shape, size and composition
Ensure optimal health and well-being is provided to everyone, regardless of their weight
Maintain a holistic focus on health rather than a predominant focus on weight/weight loss
Encourage progress-focused improvements to quality of life.
Critically evaluate evidence for weight loss treatments
Create healthful, sustainable behaviors
Increase access to health care and social justice for all individuals along the entire weight spectrum.

Main Line Center for Eating Disorders values body diversity and believes that weight or BMI in no way are sole determinants for diagnosing disease. We believe that recovery should be accessible to bodies of all shapes, sizes and genders and provide respectful care that aims to improve overall physical and mental health.

Anti-Diet

The anti-diet movement challenges diet culture, a system of beliefs that is toxic, dangerous and oppressive but normalized. It believes bodies can be healthy at any size, food rules and restriction interfere with the joy, fun and flexibility of eating and that one does not need to pursue thinness to achieve wellness.

Main Line Center for Eating disorders recognizes the influence diet culture has played in many of our lives and seeks to offer a path to a more intuitive eating style for the entire family. We teach clients and their families to honor hunger and fullness cues and aim to bring more joy and peace to the eating experience. We prioritize food neutrality – the idea that, with exception to certain diseases and allergies, no food is inherently good or bad, no food will cure or kill you and your self-worth is not dependent upon what you do or do not eat.

Idealizes thinness and equates it to health and moral value. It falsely recommends weight loss to achieve health and prevent or cure health issues.

Promotes health enhancing behaviors like joyful movement, stress reduction, adequate sleep and a positive social support system without any expectation of weight change. Healthcare should be weight inclusive and equally accessible to all bodies.

Promotes weight loss at any
cost to mental and/or physical well-being despite a wealth of research showing that:

Almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years
Dieting increases the risk of developing an eating disorder
Weight cycling has negative health outcomes

Trusts intuitive eating cues, honoring hunger and fullness and eating a wide variety of foods that are both nutritious and delicious. All foods are allowed into your eating world and restriction, both internal and external, are not limiting factors determining what and how much you eat.

Demonizes certain ways of
eating while elevating others. Foods
are categorized as “good” and “bad” so people are forced to be hyper-vigilant about what they eat or feed their families, feel guilty about making certain food choices and find themselves unable to honor their intuitive hunger or enjoy their eating experience.

Focuses on food neutrality -
the idea that, with exception to certain diseases and allergies, no food is inherently good or bad, no food will cure or kill you and your self-worth is not dependent upon what you do or do not eat. There are some foods that do more in your body and some that do less, but that doesn’t make one food morally better or worse.

Perpetuates fat phobia, the oppression of people whose bodies don’t conform to the thin ideal. Both subtly and overtly, it celebrates some bodies as “good” and criticizes others for being “bad.”

Celebrates body diversity - bodies come in all shapes and sizes and all bodies are good bodies. Embraces body positivity, and if that feels too challenging, focuses on body neutrality. It celebrates what your body can do over what your body looks like. It avoids disparaging comments about your own body of the bodies of others.

Prioritizes weight loss, calorie
burn and body change as the primary positive outcomes of movement and exercise.

Enjoys the feel of moving your body for fun, health, stress relief, performance improvement, strength and socialization without any body change expectation.

Leads clinicians to recommend
that children’s BMI’s stay in a narrow range of “healthy” in order to prevent disease.

Values all body sizes as being healthy, capable and worthy. Believes that BMI does not determine health or fitness and one’s body size can in no way be the single factor for diagnosing illness.

Being anti-diet is brave work in a society that's obsessed with eating less, weighing less and taking up less space. Click here to learn more about how to ditch diet culture!

DIET CULTURE

Idealizes thinness

Idealizes thinness and equates it to health and moral value. It falsely recommends weight loss to achieve health and prevent or cure health issues.

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Health-improving behaviors for all bodies

DIET CULTURE

Promotes weight loss

Promotes weight loss at any cost to mental and/or physical well-being despite a wealth of research showing that:

Almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years
Dieting increases the risk of developing an eating disorder
Weight cycling has negative health outcomes

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Promotes intuitive eating

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

DIET CULTURE

Good foods & bad food

Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. Foods are categorized as “good” and “bad” so people are forced to be hyper-vigilant about what they eat or feed their families, feel guilty about making certain food choices and find themselves unable to honor their intuitive hunger or enjoy their eating experience.

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Food neutrality

Focuses on food neutrality - the idea that, with exception to certain diseases and allergies, no food is inherently good or bad, no food will cure or kill you and your self-worth is not dependent upon what you do or do not eat. There are some foods that do more in your body and some that do less, but that doesn’t make one food morally better or worse.

DIET CULTURE

Fat phobia

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Body diversity

DIET CULTURE

Exercise to burn calories and shrink body

Prioritizes weight loss, calorie burn and body change as the primary positive outcomes of movement and exercise.

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Joyful movement

Enjoys the feel of moving your body for fun, health, stress relief, performance improvement, strength and socialization without any body change expectation.

DIET CULTURE

BMI determines health/disease

Leads clinicians to recommend that children’s BMI’s stay in a narrow range of “healthy” in order to prevent disease.

ANTI-DIET CULTURE

Weight inclusive

Values all body sizes as being healthy, capable and worthy. Believes that BMI does not determine health or fitness and one’s body size can in no way be the single factor for diagnosing illness.