Living the Life I Truly Desire: An Anorexia Recovery Workbook

By Dr. Valerie Stipes Lyzmar Cordero LND

This is an artistic clinical workbook for those who are struggling with Anorexia, for parents with children that are struggling with an Eating Disorder or clinicians that work with Eating Disorders. The book is divided by 43 unique and inspiring images, which were created and designed by patients that were struggling from an eating disorder and treated by our Viva Clinic team. Each image has a message to guide you through your recovery process. Each image includes an exercise for you to complete. All exercises are based on psycho-therapeutic models that have been validated to treat Anorexia as well as other psychiatric disorders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982248154

Dr. Valerie Stipes Lyzmar Cordero LND

1st author Dr. Valerie Stipes is a clinical psychologist that specializes in working with high-risk psychological conditions, especially eating disorders, severe depression and patients in the obsessive-compulsive disorder spectrum. She has also vast experience working with pregnant women and sexual therapy. After working in the typical psychiatric hospital setting, she felt moved by seeing the immense necessity that exists for specialized and individualized treatment programs. This need motivated her to start Viva Clinic in 2014. Her clinic differentiates itself by providing individualized and specialized programs for each patient. Dr. Stipes designs a unique plan for each person integrating an interdisciplinary team to treat every aspect that person needs to heal. She believes that patients can fully recover and aims for that with each program she designs. Apart from the clinical therapies, most programs have activities that the patient enjoys or is interested in learning. She explains, “Not everyone enjoys the same things. Discovering or rediscovering what we love to do is a great tool to use during a difficult time in our lives.” Dr. Stipes focuses in her sessions and workbooks on connecting patients to their true self by being more mindful of their emotions, thoughts and inner wisdom. She also works on challenging beliefs as well as thoughts that limit the person to become their full potential. Viva Clinic is located in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico and everyone in the team is fully bilingual offering all therapies in English and Spanish. 2nd author Lyzmar Cordero is a dietitian specialized in treating eating disorders, as well as weight reduction. She has vast experience working with pregnant women, vegetarian and vegan patients as well as people diagnosed with diabetes. She is the founder of Nutritional Impact by Lcda. Lyzmar Cordero. Her office offers different programs from a multidisciplinary approach focusing on meeting each patient’s medical nutritional needs as well as achieving emotional and physical wellness.  She is a strong believer that food is medicine and can significantly impact your health and life. She aims for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle knowing this will improve their life significantly. She has also developed workshops that focus on different topics for each population she specializes in.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Dr. Valerie Stipes & Lyzmar Cordero, LND.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the

written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed

since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do

not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4814-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4815-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909769

Balboa Press rev. date: 06/25/2021

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Contents

Chapter I

MIND VS. SELF

Chapter II

UNDERSTANDING MY ED

Chapter III

IDENTIFYING MY ED

Chapter IV

IS IT WORTH IT?

Chapter V

I RECLAIM MY LIFE

About the authors

Dr. Valerie Stipes is a clinical psychologist that specializes in working with high-risk psychological conditions, particularly eating disorders, severe depression, personality disorders and patients in the obsessive-compulsive disorder spectrum. She has also vast experience working with couples and sexual therapy and is fully bilingual in English and Spanish. After working in the typical psychiatric hospital setting, she felt moved by recognizing the immense necessity that still exists today for specialized as well as individualized treatment options. This need inspired her to start Viva Clinic in 2014. Viva Clinic differentiates itself by providing individualized and specialized programs for high-risk patients. Dr. Stipes designs a unique program for each patient focused on treating every aspect he or she needs to heal. Each schedule includes one on one therapies with an interdisciplinary team aiming to achieve the patient’s full recovery. Apart from the clinical therapies, most itineraries include one on one activities that the person enjoys or is interested in learning. Dr. Stipes explains that Discovering or rediscovering what we enjoy doing is a very powerful tool to use during a difficult time in our lives because it helps us feel connected to ourselves again. That connection to our Self is essencial for recovery. Dr. Stipes focuses in her sessions on making that person feel validated, on inspiring hope of a better life ahead they will work on together as well as teaching them techniques to better manage their emotions, be more mindful of their thoughts and listen to their inner wisdom. She also concentrates on challenging beliefs and thoughts that limit that person to become their full potential. As an author and speaker, her mission is to communicate that full recovery is possible and share with others skills, techniques, as well as what her clinical experience has taught her about recovering and healing.

Lyzmar Cordero is a licenced dietitian with more than ten years of experience in the field of nutrition, where 5 of them were focused directly on children’s nutritional health. Her great concern to continue her contribution to Puerto Rican’s nutritional health encouraged her to create Nutritional Impact in 2014, where she specializes in treating eating disorders as well as weight reduction. She uses nutritional counseling to help patients develop the skills needed to recover. Nutritional Impact offers different programs from a multidisciplinary approach focusing on meeting each patient’s medical, nutritional needs as well as achieving emotional and physical wellness. Cordero is a Public Speaker that creates innovative motivational workshops focused on trending topics. Because she has been a pioneer treating eating disorders in Puerto Rico, she has offered conferences and continuing education around this topic. She has vast experience working with pregnant women, vegetarian and vegan patients as well as people diagnosed with diabetes. She is a strong believer that food is medicine and can significantly impact your health and life. She aims for people to maintain a healthy lifestyle knowing that this will improve their life significantly.

Dedication

For our patients.

Your strength, determination, love, trust and courage inspired every page of this book.

Thank you.

For anyone who is struggling with an Eating Disorder.

Artists & Designers

Raquel Vázquez

Mariana Rocafort

María Isabel Guevara

Beatriz Tañón

Valerie Stipes

Disclaimers

We encourage you to use this book with your therapists or as an addition to your clinical

treatment. This workbook is not an equivalent of therapy or medical treatment.

Receiving professional help from a specialized team is the way to treat Anorexia.

We will be using the pronouns she or her throughout the book. This does not mean

that this book applies only for those who identify as girls or females. Anyone suffering

with any form of Anorexia (restrictive or binge/purge type) or any restrictive eating

disorder can benefit from it. The sole purpose of using one type of pronoun instead of

all is for the reading to flow better and make the message easier to comprehend.

ED is used throughout the workbook as an abbreviation for Eating Disorder.

Prologue

Eating disorders are one of the most difficult to treat mental health conditions. Of the eating disorders, Anorexia Nervosa (AN), has continuously perplexed psychiatrists and other mental health therapists. Although this is not a common condition (0.4% of the population), it overwhelmingly affects more women than men, as it is 10 times more common in women. This is a condition consisting of restricting the intake of food to a point where weight is extremely low and of irrational thoughts and behaviors related to the fear of gaining weight. Therefore, the treatment needs to be interdisciplinary- a primary care physician to ensure physical health, a nutritionist to develop a science-based diet, and mental health professionals. What we know of the etiology of AN guides the available treatments. For some years, this condition was thought to arise from conflicts between the person with AN and the family, so the treatment focus was on family dynamics. Some medications can help with the anxiety and decreasing the intensity of the obsessive thoughts, but it is usually not enough.

With the development of neuroimaging and neuropsychological tests that have helped us understand the brain, we now know that AN is a brain disorder. This is a condition where brain circuits are stuck in patterns of repetitive thoughts and behaviors related to weight and body image. This knowledge has led to new treatments that can help change the connection of these brain circuits and create new patterns of thoughts and behaviors. These treatments are broadly called Cognitive- Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and it is the accepted evidence-based treatment for AN at this moment. Although this treatment is not curative, it helps those with AN take control of their symptoms