BEING AND BECOMING COUNSELLING AND WELLNESS SERVICES
Counselling for Emotional and Disordered Eating
Compassionate and specialized support to help you understand your relationship with food, reduce stress or emotional-related eating patterns, and develop more flexibility and ease around eating.
Counselling for Disordered Eating Can Help You:
FIND BALANCE
MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD
TRUST YOURSELF
This isn’t the relationship with food that you want.
You do not need to have an eating disorder to be struggling with food. You may feel stuck engaging in chronic dieting, or eating that is driven by emotions, stress, habit or boredom. You long for greater ease, peace or freedom in your relationship with food. You might envy those who trust themselves around food and who are able to eat without anxiety or anguish. You worry you will never have a healthy or satisfying relationship with food.
You are not alone. Help is available.
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Preoccupation with food is one of the most common experiences of individuals struggling with eating concerns.
“Food noise” is a term commonly used to refer to all of the intrusive thoughts an individual has about food. These thoughts may involve a running internal commentary evaluating your eating choices and behaviours, worries or anxieties related to eating (e.g., having to eat out, eating in front of others), comparing your eating behaviours to others, or experiencing intense cravings.
Food noise can take up a massive amount of mental energy and for some individuals can feel all consuming.
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For many people with eating concerns, meal times become a source of stress. People may worry about making the “right” choices or about losing control of their eating. Anxiety about having to eat in front of others, or anxiety about eating in an environment outside of one’s control are also common.
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Individuals with eating concerns often experience significant shame around their eating behaviours. Individuals who have difficulty following their own food rules, who experience binge eating, who eat when they are not hungry, or who eat to the point of physical discomfort often experience significant feelings of guilt about their eating behaviours.
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It is normal to occasionally reach for food for reasons other than hunger, however, individuals with eating concerns may find themselves frequently and compulsively reaching for food when they know they’re not hungry.
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Many people with eating concerns have difficulty stopping eating. They may feel the need to clean their plate, have difficulty recognizing their fullness cues, feel sadness at the idea of stopping, or feel powerless to stop eating.
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Many individuals with eating concerns experience, or will go on to experience, binge eating or loss of control eating. Binge eating is defined as eating a large amount of food in one sitting accompanied by a feeling of losing control over one’s eating.
Signs you may be struggling with disordered eating:
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Food can be an incredible source of comfort. Most people use food to comfort themselves at times. Turning to food for comfort becomes problematic when you have few other strategies to comfort yourself and find yourself having to rely on eating to self-regulate or self-soothe.
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Diet mentality teaches us that certain foods are “good” or “bad” but in reality this thinking is often a major contributor to disordered eating.
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People who view foods as “good” or “bad” often feel like they have to make up for what they have eaten, or plan to eat, in some way. This may take the form of “saving calories” in order to eat something you deem as “bad” later, restricting your eating (amount of food, types of food, frequency of eating) to make up for having eaten something you view as “bad” or “unhealthy,” or engaging in other methods of compensating for what you have eaten (e.g,. exercising, purging).
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Dieting and disordered eating ar often accompanied by rigid rules about how an individual “should” and “should not” eat. These rules often contribute to two possible outcomes:
Insufficient food intake which can negatively impact energy, ability to focus, mood regulation, health and/or ability to function
Binge eating or loss of control eating
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Many people with disordered eating or eating concerns have difficulty knowing when they are hungry or full. Sometimes individuals will only recognize later stages of hunger and/or fullness and struggle to recognize earlier cues from their body.
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Almost everyone experiences food cravings. Frequent cravings that you feel powerless against can be a sign you have problematic thinking or behaviours around food.
DISORDERED EATING THERAPY IN BURNABY
What is Therapy for Disordered Eating and How Does it Work?
Most people lose balance and flexibility in their relationship with food at times. When this loss of balance and flexibility becomes the norm, you would likely benefit from taking a closer look at your relationship with food. There are many ways that your relationship with food can become problematic. Some people become dependent on food for emotional comfort. Others may find themselves repeatedly reaching for food when they’re not hungry. Some people develop rigid rules around food about what, when or how much they will allow themselves to eat. Despite these differences, most people struggling with disordered eating experience rigidity and/or loss of control around their eating, eating becomes a source of anxiety or distress, and their eating behaviours determine how they feel about themselves.
Disordered eating therapy helps you understand the thoughts, feelings, behaviours and experiences that may be contributing to your eating challenges. By identifying and addressing these underlying issues, you can begin to heal your relationship with food.
You deserve to have a peaceful, balanced, and flexible relationship with food.
We are here to help.
What is Normal Eating?
“Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it — not just stop eating because you think you should.
Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection, so you can get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.
Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.
Normal eating is three meals a day, or even four or five. It can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more cookies now because they taste so wonderful.
Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.
Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating.
Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.”
— Ellyn Satter, taken from Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family (1993)
Counselling for Emotional Eating and Disordered Eating
Early in therapy, your therapist will strive to get a thorough understanding of your current eating concerns, the desired changes you would like to experience, and the history of your relationship with food.
Your therapist will then assess what is contributing to, and maintaining, your challenges with food. This information, along with your goals, will allow your therapist to develop a personalized treatment plan to help you heal your relationship with food. The approach taken with each individual will vary, but counselling for eating concerns may involve:
Educating you about how certain eating behaviours or mindsets may be unintentionally working to perpetuate the behaviours you would like to stop doing
Supporting you to make sustainable behavioural changes
Helping you get your hunger and fullness cues back online
Increasing your interoception skills (i.e., your ability to perceive sensations inside your body)
Supporting you to increase your capacity to notice and trust the feedback your body is providing about ways of eating that feel healthy, satisfying and nourishing
Teaching you additional ways to manage your emotions so that you are not having to rely on food
Helping you let go of diet culture or other unhelpful beliefs
Teaching and/or supporting you to set boundaries as needed
Processing adverse or traumatic experiences that may have contributed to your problematic relationship with food
Helping you shift unhelpful internal dialogues and ways of relating to yourself that may be contributing to your eating challenges.
What You Can Expect to Get Out of Therapy for Disordered Eating
Each person’s journey will be different but in time you may notice you have:
Increased flexibility in your eating
Decreased preoccupation with food
Increased feelings of control around food OR deceased need to rigidly control your eating behaviours
Greater ease around food
Increased ability to be present and mindful while eating
Increased satisfaction and pleasure while eating
Decreased shame and self-criticism
Improved ability to notice early-stage hunger and fullness cues
Greater attunement to your body and ability to honour its needs
Greater ability to manage your emotions without having to turn to food
Greater self-worth
Therapists Offering Therapy for Disordered and Emotional Eating
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Semhar Ghedela
Canadian Certified Counsellor
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Makayla Freeman
Doctoral Practicum Therapist & Registered Clinical Counsellor
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Eugene Chi
Doctoral Practicum Therapist & Registered Clinical Counsellor
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![Morgan Loewen]()
Morgan Loewen
Registered Clinical Counsellor
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Margaret Brennan
Licensed Psychologist
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Margaret Noel
Registered Clinical Counsellor
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![Julia Hiebert]()
Julia Hiebert
Registered Clinical Counsellor
From Our Blog
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