What Does Eating Disorder Treatment Look Like?

What is an eating disorder? 

You may be overwhelmed with thoughts of how your body doesn’t look the right way or filled with guilt when you eat something you’re not “supposed to”. Your preoccupation with food and/or exercise inhibits your ability to be present in life, whether that be with friends, family, work, or yourself. You may find yourself hiding food or eating in secret to avoid any unwanted comments or fear of what people will think of you. When this happens, shame and guilt come along and increase the unhealthy eating patterns. You may have anxiety when eating with others or anxiety about eating foods that are not “clean”, “healthy”, or approved by a diet. Facing disordered eating or an eating disorder is an exhausting cycle of shame and guilt because you’re constantly comparing yourself to others and never satisfied with your efforts to change your body or develop the “right” eating habits.

There are multiple types of eating disorders and regardless of what you experience, we know you’re in pain and sick of living like this. Eating disorders affect all kinds of people and do not discriminate. You do not have to be a certain size, color, or gender to experience an eating disorder

How is disordered eating different from an eating disorder?

Today, disordered eating encompasses different unhealthy food and body behaviors for the purpose of losing weight or promoting health. It is common at some point in life for many people due to the common normalization in western society. It’s been made easy to develop an unhealthy relationship with food through messages we receive in society about what the best way to eat is or how to stay “healthy” with a certain way of life or diet. Food can be turned into something to be feared paving the way for disordered food behaviors. Disordered eating can be a dangerous indicator of a future eating disorder so it needs to be taken seriously. Those with disordered food behaviors, regardless of whether they fit the diagnostic criteria for eating disorders, often experience high anxiety when around food. They may track their daily food intake, exercise obsessively at the gym, or avoid social situations in which food will be present.

Individuals that have an eating disorder will exhibit disordered eating, but not all disordered eaters can be diagnosed with an eating disorder. The difference is within the behaviors repeated, the seriousness of those behaviors and the distress they cause to the individual. 

Those who turn to disordered eating, regardless of the severity, often do so to help cope with feeling uncomfortable emotions. They may begin focusing on their weight and food intake to distract themselves from other areas of their lives, or thoughts that make them feel inadequate, with the idea that reaching their goal weight will finally make them happy.

Principles for Treatment And What They Mean

Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is an evidence based, mind and body health approach. Eating intuitively means to try and stop the fight against food, start eating what you want with respect to your body and try to eliminate the concept of “good” and “bad” foods. Intuitive eating is a personal process of honoring health by listening to the direct messages of your body in order to meet your physical and psychological needs. The principles of intuitive eating include rejecting diet mentality, honor your hunger, make peace with food, challenge the food police, discover the satisfaction factor, feel your fullness, cope with your emotions with kindness, respect your body, feel movement with respect, and honor your health with gentle nutrition.

Making peace with food means you no longer have to be conflicted when it comes to choosing what to eat. We let go of the fear and shame surrounding food choices, allow acceptance of yourself and honor your body’s cues. We want you to make love, not war, with food.

Establishing respect for your body

Respecting your body means trying to treat it with dignity and trying to meet its basic needs. It doesn’t mean that you have to accept or love every part of your body at every given time and that’s okay. Actually, this is normal. Trying to accept that you may not always feel comfortable in your body and trying to be ok with that, is a starting point for gaining respect for your body. 

You can also begin to respect your body by becoming aware each time you body shame yourself or find yourself contributing to self-destructive talk. We try and encourage you here at Evolve Therapy in Texas, to become aware of how you treat yourself through mindfulness and psychotherapy skills. We want you to be able to take your negative self-talk and replace it with a neutral or positive statement about yourself that you do believe. 

We all have different body shapes, sizes, and weights. In promoting a Health at Every Size model, we truly believe you can live a life with a healthy relationship with yourself regardless of your size. The more we try not to fit a specific ideal/standard the more we will begin feeling satisfied with our bodies and ourselves.

Acknowledging cultural, racial, and gender differences.

You do not have to be a specific size or weight to be diagnosed with an eating disorder. Anyone who struggles with food and body image deserves to get help. We take that very seriously here at Evolve. Although there is a misconception that eating disorders are only diagnosed for underweight females, that is certainly not the case. 

We see all gender and sexual identifying people, races, sizes, and backgrounds. Eating disorders or disordered eating does not discriminate. In seeing all people, we recognize your life circumstances and how those affect you. We do not have a one size fits all approach because we truly believe treatment needs to be individualized and fit the specific person in need. Our therapists trained in HAES (Health at Every Size) believe it to be a core component of our treatment.

What does eating disorder treatment look like? 

At Elevate, a Texas based therapy practice, we’ll focus on helping you find a better relationship with your body, decrease the shame, and support you through the principles of Intuitive eating, Body respect, and Health at Every Size. Having a connection with yourself is the most important aspect of healing. Whether you suffer from anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, a combination of any or somewhere in between, eating disorder treatment can help you. 

As an eating disorder therapist, I will sit with you during times of pain, then work with you to develop skills to manage that. Healthy coping mechanisms can help you understand yourself on a mind, body, and soul level.