Rebecca Tilden, MCN, RD, LD, CEDS
Registered Dietitian | Certified Eating Disorders Specialist | ARFID & Pediatric Feeding Specialist
Rebecca Tilden is a registered and licensed dietitian and Certified Eating Disorders Specialist with particular expertise in ARFID, picky eating, pediatric feeding concerns, and eating disorders in children, adolescents, and young adults.
Rebecca sees some of the youngest clients at Dallas Nutritional Counseling and is our go-to dietitian for children and families navigating ARFID and significant picky eating. Her warm, gentle, and compassionate approach helps her connect with children while also working closely with the parents and caregivers responsible for supporting nutrition at home.
Her experience spans every major level of eating disorder care as well as medically complex outpatient nutrition, giving Rebecca the clinical foundation to work with feeding and eating concerns that don't always have a straightforward solution.
Our Go-To Dietitian for ARFID & Picky Eating
ARFID and significant picky eating can be incredibly complicated. A child may eat a very limited number of foods, struggle with sensory sensitivities, have little interest in eating, fear vomiting or choking, experience gastrointestinal symptoms, or have medical or developmental factors that make eating more difficult. And sometimes several of those things are happening at once.
Rebecca is specifically trained and experienced in treating Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) and works with children, adolescents, and young adults whose limited intake, variety, or feeding concerns are affecting nutrition, growth, health, or everyday life.
Rather than assuming the solution is simply to get someone to “try more foods,” Rebecca looks at what may be making eating difficult for that particular person.
Her work may include improving overall nutrition adequacy, increasing food variety, addressing sensory barriers, developing individualized food exposures, accommodating legitimate feeding needs, supporting growth, using supplements or fortified foods when appropriate, and collaborating with other professionals when feeding concerns extend beyond nutrition alone.
The goal isn't to make every child eat every food. It's to help them meet their nutritional needs while gradually expanding what feels possible around eating.
Working With Parents & Families
When a child is struggling to eat, parents often feel an enormous amount of pressure. They may be worrying about growth or nutritional deficiencies, preparing multiple meals, negotiating over bites, trying to determine whether to push or back off, and receiving conflicting advice about what they should be doing. Rebecca understands that helping a child often means helping the entire family.
Her approach with parents is collaborative rather than prescriptive. She takes time to understand what meals actually look like at home, what has already been tried, what the child can currently tolerate, and what feels realistic for the family.
From there, Rebecca helps parents better understand what's driving the feeding concern and develop practical strategies for supporting nutrition without making every meal revolve around conflict or pressure.
Her warm and gentle style can be especially helpful for families who have already been through stressful feeding experiences or feel as though they've tried everything.
Thinking Outside the Box When Eating Is Medically Complicated
Rebecca is also comfortable working with medically complex nutrition concerns in the outpatient setting.
She has experience supporting clients who use enteral nutrition, including feeding tubes, as well as parenteral nutrition such as TPN, and understands that sometimes meeting someone's nutritional needs requires more creativity than a traditional meal plan.
Medical conditions, gastrointestinal symptoms, sensory needs, fear, appetite, medications, developmental differences, mental health concerns, and eating disorder behaviors can all affect someone's ability to eat.
When obstacles arise, Rebecca is particularly good at stepping back and getting curious. Rather than repeatedly asking a client or family to follow a plan that isn't working, Rebecca is willing to adjust the plan.
That ability to think creatively is especially valuable in outpatient care, where families have to make nutrition recommendations work in the context of school, work, medical appointments, sensory needs, family schedules, finances, and everyday life.
Extensive Eating Disorder Treatment Experience
Rebecca's expertise in ARFID and pediatric feeding is grounded in a broader background in eating disorder treatment.
After completing her graduate training, Rebecca moved directly into specialized eating disorder care, working with patients across inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization (PHP), and intensive outpatient (IOP) levels of treatment before joining Dallas Nutritional Counseling. Her higher-level-of-care experience exposed her to a wide range of eating disorders and levels of medical and nutritional complexity.
Today, Rebecca works primarily with children, adolescents, young adults, and adults in their twenties. In addition to ARFID and feeding concerns, she works with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, restrictive eating, disordered eating, compulsive exercise, and other concerns related to food and body image.
Her experience across levels of care helps her recognize both what can appropriately be managed in outpatient treatment and when a client may need additional medical monitoring, a more intensive treatment team, or a higher level of support.
Working With Rebecca
Rebecca brings a warm, gentle, and compassionate presence to nutrition counseling. She listens carefully before jumping to a solution and recognizes that progress—particularly with ARFID, feeding concerns, and eating disorders in younger clients, can't always be rushed.
At the same time, gentle doesn't mean passive. Rebecca is thoughtful about identifying what needs to change and finding an approach that gives the client the best chance of actually being able to make that change.
She is particularly skilled at balancing the different needs in the room when working with families: listening to the child or adolescent, taking parents' concerns seriously, considering the clinical picture, and helping everyone work toward a common goal.
For families who have spent a long time feeling confused, worried, or stuck around food, Rebecca provides both clinical expertise and a calm place to figure out what comes next.
ARFID & Feeding Education for Professionals and Families
Rebecca's work with ARFID and feeding concerns extends beyond individual nutrition counseling.
She regularly provides education for both families and professionals on ARFID, picky eating, and feeding concerns. Rebecca has co-presented multiple ARFID trainings and workshops, participated in ARFID consultation groups for professionals, and co-presented a parent education webinar on picky eating.
She has also participated as a panelist at the Arkansas Eating Disorder Summit, contributing her perspective on eating disorder nutrition care.
Teaching other professionals is a natural extension of Rebecca's clinical work. Her presentations emphasize many of the same principles she brings to individual care: understanding what is driving the feeding difficulty, recognizing medical and behavioral complexity, and developing interventions that are individualized enough to work outside of a textbook.
An Unconventional Path to Dietetics
Rebecca didn't begin her career expecting to become a dietitian. She initially earned a Bachelor's degree in Business from Saint Louis University and spent several years working in advertising and sports business. Over time, she realized she wanted a career that allowed her to work more directly with people and make a more personal impact.
That decision brought her back to school and eventually to nutrition. Rebecca earned her Master of Clinical Nutrition from UT Southwestern Medical Center before beginning her career in specialized eating disorder treatment.
Her previous career continues to bring a different perspective to her clinical work. She understands what it means to change direction, learn something entirely new, and approach problems from more than one angle.
Areas of Expertise
ARFID
Picky eating and pediatric feeding concerns
Children and adolescents
Young adults
Anorexia nervosa and restrictive eating disorders
Bulimia nervosa
Binge eating disorder
Disordered eating and chronic dieting
Family nutrition counseling
Parent and caregiver support
Food and meal exposures
Sensory-related feeding concerns
Medically complex nutrition care
Enteral nutrition and feeding tubes
Parenteral nutrition/TPN
Higher levels of eating disorder care
Compulsive exercise and movement concerns
Sports nutrition and eating disorders
Vegetarian and vegan nutrition
Multidisciplinary treatment-team collaboration
Professional education and ARFID training
Education, Credentials & Licensure
Rebecca earned her Bachelor's degree in Business from Saint Louis University before returning to school to pursue nutrition. She earned her Master of Clinical Nutrition from UT Southwestern Medical Center.
She is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Eating Disorders Specialist (CEDS).
Rebecca is licensed to practice dietetics in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida, allowing her to provide virtual nutrition counseling to clients in multiple states when appropriate.
