Tracy Welchoff is a psychologist at the Narins Eating Disorder Center, a partial-hospital program where patients get full-day care.

"I am typically the person who does the initial evaluations for people who come in, need an assessment and recommendations and answer questions and things like that. Joy is the one who makes them feel welcome as soon as they come in the door," Welchoff said.

Welchoff helps treat most eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and various combinations. She says eating disorders, like many psychiatric disorders, are genetically based.

"So people may have a genetic vulnerability to developing an eating disorder and other co-occurring conditions…anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD...things like that can really complicate the picture," she said.

Skills like these are taught at Narins Eating Disorder Center to patients with eating disorders. Welchoff says a common sign of an eating disorder is a change in eating behavior.

"Either refusing food or changes in mood at the table or not wanting to eat with other people. It can be having a lot of guilt around eating, feeling ashamed, feeling self conscious, things like that are often the first things that people notice," Welchoff said.

She says changes in functioning level or isolating can be other signs. In addition to those skills, Welchoff says that he goal at Narins is to teach patients how to have a balanced meal from a large variety of foods.

"We want people to eat food that tastes good and say yum, rather than worry about I shouldn’t have or feeling guilty and really teaching people that there is no moral value to food. Food has no moral component to it.. It just is “yum” or “mmm no thanks," she said.

Some other things patients at Narins Eating Disorder Center want you to know about eating disorders - health is not defined by weight, eating disorders don’t have a look or body type, eating disorders don’t arise from a lack of willpower and there are a lot of factors that cause them, it can effect all ages, genders, races, and cultures.

"It’s really important to try to change your perception of yourself in your body, not change your body because changes are there’s nothing wrong with your body," Welchoff said.

Welchoff says her patients want people to know that it’s not selfish to take care of yourself.