Michelle had always struggled with her weight. She started turning to food for comfort when she was 16 and was being bullied and harassed by some of her classmates.
When she recently, and very quickly, shed more than 180 pounds her friends and family assumed she had done it through diet and exercise. But, the reality was that she was secretly binging and purging five times a day, every day.
The Meadows family of behavioral health treatment centers provides a multidisciplinary approach to treating emotional trauma, addiction, eating disorders, and related mental-health conditions. We provide the highest level of care in a non-institutional, ranch setting. We’re seeking engaged, highly skilled and caring RN’s to help make a difference in the patients we treat. We offer […]
Many people don’t realize that someone close to them has an eating disorder until they become dangerously ill.
That’s because the signs of an eating disorder aren’t always obvious and can go unnoticed for years. Women and girls with eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes. Some will not become underweight and many don’t look malnourished or ill.
By Andrea Sauceda, Internet and Social Media Director at The Meadows
It was 116 degrees on the June day my new co-worker Erin and I went to meet The Meadows’ Equine Therapy program directors for a demonstration. It was also our third day of a week-long new employee orientation process, during which we did whirlwind tours of all The Meadows’ programs and talked with staff about the incredible work they were doing.
By: Michelle Wells
“The statistics are grim,” a therapist had once said, “1 in 5 of you will die.” I sat in the dining room that morning, each table a circle of women, hollow and broken just like me, and accepted my fate as the sacrificial lamb. I would die and save four. It was early in my stay at The Meadows Ranch, perhaps only two or three days in. I knew where I was and why I was there, but the gravity of my situation had yet to register. I was too numb, too thin, and too near death to process much of what was going on around me. My eating disorder had done its job well. I no longer felt anything.