RA Life: National Eating Disorders Awareness Week

In case you did not know, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week is February 24th to March 2nd 2014. I believe that this is a topic that needs to be brought to attention on college campuses. With the different stressors that are popping up in one's life during this time, eating disorders may silently creep up. There is also a struggle to fit in and one might choose the option of an eating disorder in order to fulfill the goal that college society has placed on them. I wanted to make my girls informed of this week because of the importance that this topic holds. As well as, I don't think that this matter gets much attention on my campus. Here are some of the events that I created in order to bring more awareness to my dorm.

Monday

I taped an informational sheet to all of my residents' doors which included the definition of eating disorders, the types of eating disorders, statistics for the drive for thinness, and three keys for listening to your body. All the information that I used was taken from www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

Here is my example

I was originally going to have a mindful eating event occur on Monday, but my special guests had to reschedule to Thursday. Originally, the name was Mindful Eating Monday. 

Wednesday

When I first thought of the idea to highlight this week in my dorm I wanted to do the idea of Mirrorless Monday. As I was originally planning on having the mindful eating event that day, I changed the day and the name to Don't Worry Wednesday. 

While this event has includes of prep, the result is splendid. 

I covered all the public mirrors around the dorm and put this message on all of them, I also put some cut outs from the document "20 Ways to Love Your Body" from www.nationaleatingdisorders.org. This not only helps to give people something to read, but if people don't end up writing on the paper this gives the paper some more umph. 

Thursday 

My mindful eating event was really informative. An extern from the campus counseling center came out and spoke to us. We later had a chocolate meditation that helped us to understand the parts to mindful eating. Really being able to take in all parts of the food that we are eating so that we can fully experience the process. 

Anyways, I hope that you found this to be informative. Please let me in know if you have any questions or would like the Word document templates for future use. Until next time.

Much Love,

Taylor