So is weight loss an important measure of whether eating-disorder treatment is working? Even getting past the eating-disorder corners that don’t address overweight, the answer is apparently not.

During her opening remarks at the Binge Eating Disorder Association national conference last Friday, founder Chevese Turner argued for a definition of recovery that doesn’t include it. Later, during a researchers’ panel, Denise Wilfley of the Washington University School of Medicine, chimed in, saying that “if someone is having a stable weight, that’s a very important outcome.”

It’s too facile to call it political correctness, but I noted a strong effort by some speakers at the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s national conference last weekend to say the right thing. Here are some examples:

* ”There’s no such thing as junk food.” I’m not sure whose ox is gored by saying otherwise! My goodness, junk food not only exists, we celebrate it! It’s such an example of shared insanity. We would never eat actual junk, but we eat junk food and consider it a pleasure (guilty or otherwise).

Perhaps it’s only self-flattery when I say that one of the ways in which I contribute most to discourse is my honesty. Believe me, there’s enough I don’t disclose, but I believe in the power of disclosure to move myself and others forward, even when I don’t look great in the process.

I’m going to test that again in this post.

As a result of attending the Binge Eating Disorder Association’s national conference over the weekend in Bethesda, Md., I’m revisiting some of my biases, which include:

In my last post, a researcher found a more specific predictor of binge eating disorder (and other conditions) than most people would have assumed. In this post, the researcher is Timothy Brewerton, a psychiatrist in South Carolina, and he spoke on trauma.

Before Friday morning’s presentation at the BEDA national conference by Marian Tanofsky-Kraff, I would have assumed that binge eating in children is an excellent predictor of developing binge-eating disorder and other conditions.

As I've described before, registered dietitians scoff at the idea of food addiction almost monolithically, a circumstance I got to observe again last weekend at the Binge Eating Disorder Association national conference in Bethesda, Md.

Midway through Day 2 of BEDA’s national conference, I continue to try to learn from those around me. This case in point: There is candy everywhere.

I writing from the ballroom of a Bethesda, Md., hotel this morning, awaiting the second day of the national conference of the Binge Eating Disorder Association. Yesterday was interesting and rewarding, and I hope to share a few things I learned over the next few posts.

But I begin with what struck me most from day one, what I regard to be a collection of tribes within this group.

There's a gross moment or two in this, but its direct comparison of drug pushers and Big Food is right on target to me. Its paid flacks will not only disagree but feign outrage, but that's what they do. The fact is, a substantial portion of what Big Food concocts and purveys is as health-threatening as illegal drugs.

I use Pocket to save articles to read later. It is helpful but also a crutch with its own faults, or, I should say, a crutch for my own faults to lean on. Which is to say, I put stuff in my to-do basket, and there it sits, not getting done.