Not an Eating Disorder. Not “Just” Addiction. What About the People In Between?
FREE LIVE WEBINAR · FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2026 · 12:00 PM PT
For decades, eating disorder specialists and addiction clinicians have worked from opposite playbooks — one blames restriction, the other blames ultra-processed foods. Patients who don’t fit neatly into either camp get caught in the middle, handed conflicting advice that erodes trust and stalls recovery. This session offers a different way of seeing it.
The “Gray Area” Nobody Treats Well
Most people struggling with food don’t live at the extremes. They’re somewhere in between — restricting and then losing control, or drawn to certain foods in a way that feels bigger than willpower. Depending on which specialist they see, they’re told opposite things. One says stop restricting. The other says these foods are the problem. Both can be partly right. Neither, alone, explains the whole picture.
This webinar introduces a peer-reviewed framework that reconciles the two — tracing how the same early-life roots can lead down two different paths, and how to tell which path a given person is actually on.
What You’ll Learn
- Why the “restriction vs. addiction” debate misses most real patients — and the dimensional model that resolves it
- The two developmental pathways — one closer to the OCD/anxiety spectrum, one closer to the ADHD/impulsivity spectrum — and why they can show up in the same person
- How generational trauma and adverse childhood experiences act as a shared upstream root for both eating disorders and ultra-processed food use disorder
- A practical timeline-based way to assess where someone falls on the spectrum — useful whether you’re a clinician assessing patients or a person trying to understand your own history
- Why one-size-fits-all food rules fail — and what individualized, trauma-informed nutrition looks like instead
Who This Is For
Anyone who’s struggled with food — if you’ve cycled between restriction and loss of control, or felt like the usual advice never quite fit you, this is a new lens on why.
Clinicians, practitioners, & researchers — dietitians, therapists, physicians, and recovery professionals who see patients that don’t fit the standard boxes and want a framework (and a referral partner) for the gray-area cases.
About the Presenter
David A. Wiss, PhD, RDN, FMCP is a mental health dietitian nutritionist and Functional Medicine Certified Professional who bridges nutritional science with root-cause analysis. Over 14+ years he founded Nutrition in Recovery and the Wise Mind Nutrition app, and now leads FxMed Mental Health, which combines specialty lab testing with mental health consultation. He has authored 30+ peer-reviewed publications on ultra-processed food addiction and eating disorders, and his work has been cited in National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
Save Your Seat — It’s Free
Live on Friday, July 17, 2026, at 12:00 PM PT. Can’t attend? Register anyway, and we’ll send you the full recording.