In a world vying for the demise of “imperfect” bodies, what is the cost to find peace? We have sacrificed time, money, and other resources – and still feel shame. We filter our photos, suck in our bellies, go on fasts and fad diets and still feel inadequate.

For those dedicated to liberation from body shame, obtaining peace may have been gritty, inconvenient, unconventional – but worth it.

In this keynote session, Dr. Joy Cox – author of Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own – shows us how to create belonging in a judgmental world and seeks to remind us that peace is ours for the taking as we refuse to conflate our body size with our worth.

Body shame is the norm, not the exception.

And if your clients aren’t aware of existing within a culturally-sanctioned belief system that moralizes bodies, equates appearance with worth, and conditions belonging on bodily control – they’ll remain vulnerable to body dissatisfaction and susceptible to behaviors like disordered eating that will hurt them in the long run.

In this session, Amy Pershing – internationally known eating disorders expert and author of Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery and Beyond – will give you tools to help your clients grow resilience in the face of messages that their bodies are projects to be fixed. You’ll learn:

• How to talk with clients about the hijacking of their own body wisdom – and how to restore it
• Re-embodiment strategies including parts work interventions and attuned eating and movement
• Tools for challenging diet culture and weight stigma so clients can reconnect with body neutrality

It’s hard to know how to increase your clients’ online resilience when they spend hours on social media platforms – spaces that can contribute to disordered beliefs about bodies and food by amplifying perfectionistic standards, appearance-based comparisons, and rigid food rules.

In this session, Deanna Smith – certified eating disorder specialist consultant and author of The Eating Disorder and Body Image Toolbox – will give you the tools you need to help clients navigate social media based on their body image-based values. You’ll learn how to:

• Inoculate your clients from comparison and validation-seeking triggered by social media use
• Set boundaries and unfollow disordered role models to decrease body dissatisfaction
• Use integrative tools to decrease disordered eating and compulsive self-monitoring

Body image distress can set the stage for disordered eating – and when an eating disorder has taken hold, it not only sustains itself – it worsens rapidly.

Whether you’re an eating disorders specialist or not, you need evidence-based tools so that when you first see the signs, you’re ready.

In this session, Dr. Marcella Raimondo – eating disorders expert whose lived experience with anorexia informs her approach – will show you techniques to address two red-flag client behaviors that are early indicators an eating disorder may be developing: preoccupation with mirrors and avoidance of certain foods. You’ll learn:

• Tools to help clients decrease body checking and develop a more neutral relationship with their reflection
• Gentle exposure strategies to rebuild a balanced connection with foods clients have been avoiding
• DBT interventions to help clients manage emotions without disordered eating

Rules about what can and cannot be eaten often form the foundation of various fad diets, attracting many individuals who wish to “improve” their appearance. But when dietary restriction and weight suppression take hold, your client is at risk of developing an eating disorder.

In this session, Dr. Lauren Muhlheim – “Diet Culture Deprogrammer” and first author of The Weight-Inclusive CBT Workbook for Eating Disorders – will show you weight-inclusive interventions that truly celebrate body diversity. You’ll learn:

• Tools to help clients increase regular eating to alleviate food restriction and its risks
• Strategies to heal body shame and prepare clients to be in invalidating environments
• Modifications for body image exposures so you can offer weight-inclusive care

When your clients struggle with constant thoughts about food or feeling out of control around eating, it’s easy to think they must have a food addiction. But maybe they just haven’t eaten enough?

In this session, Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN – renowned dietician and co-author of the best-selling Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach – will give you tools to understand what’s really driving food noise in your clients and how to quiet it. You’ll learn:

• How to conceptualize food-related distress beyond willpower and pathology
• Practical strategies to support regulated eating so clients can shift out of the diet-binge cycle
• Evidence-informed techniques to respond to common concerns about loss of control or “addiction”

The marketing of GLP-1 medications as weight loss tools to reduce chronic disease is the latest manifestation of a longstanding belief –

That weighing more puts all of us at risk for negative health outcomes.

But what do we actually know about the relationship between weight and health? And about the health effects of weight loss? Should recommending weight loss be a routine part of clinical care?

In this session, Dr. Lisa Erlanger – clinical professor of family medicine and co-founder and president of the Association for Weight and Size Inclusive Medicine – provides scientific and ethical justification for a weight-inclusive, rather than weight-focused, approach to care. You’ll learn:

• How to reduce internalized stigma by teaching clients about the real relationship between health and weight
• Strategies to empower clients to focus on health-supporting behaviors rather than the number on the scale
• Tools and resources to align your practice with weight-inclusive principles

You’re hearing about it – GLP-1s, the so-called miracle drugs that have burst onto the scene promising to end the struggle to lose weight and restore health.

But as research evolves, what’s the truth behind the hype?

In this session, Ragen Chastain – renowned health educator, author of the popular Weight and Healthcare newsletter, and editor of the anthology The Politics of Size – will give you the evidence-based information you need to finally understand GLP-1s. You’ll learn:

• The short- and long-term risks and impacts of GLP-1s
• How to support clients whether they are considering, taking, or stopping these medications
• A framework you can use to evaluate emerging research and media reports

“I’m too fat and need to lose weight to be healthy. I’m thinking I’ll start a GLP-1.”

Though you’re not the prescriber, your client wants to talk with you about weight loss medications. And they expect you to have their best interests in mind.

In this session, Judith Matz – nationally recognized expert on emotional eating and co-author of Beyond a Shadow of a Diet and The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook – will show you the surprising truth that supporting weight loss might clash with your ethical code. You’ll learn:

• Tools for ethically supporting clients as they face body shame within diet culture
• Strategies for talking with clients in an ethical way about weight management interventions
• How to help clients – and yourself – detach from implicit weight stigma and anti-fat bias

Exercise is touted as the solution to most everything, from health problems to stress. It sounds great but leaves out the complexity and nuance of movement in a culture that vilifies fat people, promotes exercise as a way to burn calories and lose weight, and tells us that movement is always a positive thing.

For clients with body image issues, the focus on appearance in many exercise settings can be a deterrent – leading them to not exercising even when they feel it would be beneficial for them.

In this session, Dr. Rachel Millner – eating disorders specialist and fat activist – will show you how talking with clients about exercise is not a neutral act. You’ll learn:

• A weight-inclusive framework for exercise, including for higher weight clients and those with eating disorders
• Strategies to help clients manage anti-fat bias in exercise settings
• Tools to reduce shame for clients who are not exercising at all

Menopausal women have high rates of body dissatisfaction – most of which is focused on increases in weight and changes in weight distribution. And the urge to “fix” these changes through weight loss may actually be harmful, given other physiological changes that occur during this stage.

In this session, Signe Darpinian – eating disorders expert and author of A Women’s Guide to Menopause, Body Image, and Emotional Well-being at Midlife – will give you essential strategies to help your clients approaching menopause to create distance from body image distress. You’ll learn:

• A framework for providing psychoeducation about expected body changes
• Strategies to help clients process grief related to body changes and aging
• CBT and ACT tools clients can use when their body distress is activated

When you're working with clients' body image issues, your own are bound to come up.

And – when not dealt with – they can exert a negative influence on treatment, whether through avoidance, over-identification and blurred boundaries, rescue urgency, premature reassurance, silence, or overcorrection.

In this session, body compassion expert Kanjana Hartshorne, LCSW, C-IAYT, CCFT will give you a framework for noticing and tending your own body image issues so that they do not become your clients’ burden. You’ll learn:

• Strategies for examining your body image history and internalized cultural messages
• A body compassion reflection tool that helps you figure out what’s yours, what’s your client’s, and what belongs to the larger culture
• Techniques for compassionate accountability, ethical presence, and weight-inclusive care