BEING AND BECOMING COUNSELLING AND WELLNESS SERVICES

Eating Disorder Therapy

Compassionate and specialized support to help you heal your relationship with food and your body and get your life back.

Eating Disorder Therapy can help you:

THINK ABOUT FOOD LESS

FEEL GREATER EASE AROUND FOOD

EXPERIENCE MORE JOY

Do you obsessively think about food, evaluating every food choice you make?

Eating disorders are about more than what you eat; they take over your life, consuming your thoughts, dictating your choices and diminishing your quality of life.

Recovery is possible. We are here to help.

There can be more to life.

Eating Disorder Therapy May Help When You Are:

  • Continually obsessing about food and/or your weight

  • Experiencing significant distress or anxiety around food or weight

  • Significantly restricting how much you eat or the types of food you eat

  • Unable to provide yourself with adequate nutrients

  • Unable to control yourself around food

  • Feeling the need to make up for what you have eaten, or plan to eat, by eating less, exercising, or vomiting

  • Basing your self-worth on your food choices or weight

  • Limiting what you allow yourself to do because of the need to control your food intake or fear or losing control around food

Eating disorders do not discriminate. People of all ages, body weights, genders, sexual orientations, classes, abilities, races and ethnic backgrounds can develop an eating disorder.

EATING DISORDER THERAPY IN BURNABY

What is Eating Disorder Therapy and How Does it Work?

There are several types of eating disorders and each person’s experience of an eating disorder is unique. Some people develop rigid rules around what and how much they allow themselves to eat, and feel unable to relax around food. Others repeatedly lose control around food and feel the need to engage in behaviours to make up for these “failures”. Many people oscillate between these two experiences. Despite behavioural differences, most individuals with an eating disorder feel preoccupied with food and their food choices; experience a running internal commentary that is constantly criticizing and evaluating their appearance, food choices and exercise behaviours; and their sense of self-worth is determined by how they are eating and how they look.

Eating disorder therapy offers a compassionate space to begin to explore the complex interplay of factors that are contributing to, and maintaining, your eating disorder. By understanding and addressing these underlying issues, you can begin the journey toward recovery, transforming your relationship with food, your body and yourself.

You don’t have to go through this alone.

Recovery is possible.

Counselling for Eating Disorders

Counselling is an important component of eating disorder treatment. In the beginning stages of therapy, your counsellor will work to understand what is contributing to, and perpetuating, your eating disorder. This understanding will inform the approach they take with you and help them to make a personalized plan to support you in your recovery.

The approach taken with each individual will vary, but eating disorder therapy often involves:

  • Supporting you in making behavioural changes and managing the emotions that come up around making these changes

  • Helping you understand why you are struggling with an eating disorder

  • Teaching you the tools to be able to meet the underlying needs the eating disorder may be meeting for you (e.g., eating disorder behaviours or thoughts often help individuals cope with, or distract from, difficult emotions; provide a sense of safety or control; provide a sense of identity or achievement)

  • Helping you become more connected to your body so that you can gradually learn to make food choices that support your body’s needs

  • Increasing self-compassion and self-understanding

  • Processing adverse or traumatic experiences that have contributed to the development of your eating disorder

What you can expect to get out of Eating Disorder Therapy

Each person’s journey to eating disorder recovery will be different, but in time you may notice that you have:

  • Fewer thoughts about food

  • Less anxiety or distress around food

  • Less rigidity around food

  • Decreased feelings of shame

  • Greater access to self-compassion

  • Greater self-acceptance

  • Better ability to manage emotions without turning to food or trying to control your food intake

  • Increased self-worth

  • Greater connection to yourself

  • Increased quality of life

  • Better relationships and social connections

Therapists Offering Eating Disorder Therapy

  • Semhar Ghedela

    Canadian Certified Counsellor

    Read Bio

  • Dr. Margaret Brennan

    Registered Psychologist

    Read Bio
Woman exhibiting confidence in bathing suit

Eating disorders do NOT have a look. You cannot know if someone has, or doesn’t have, an eating disorder by looking at them.

Types of Eating Disorders

  • Common symptoms of binge eating disorder include:

    • Recurrent episodes of binge eating, which are characterized by eating a large amount of food in a discrete period of time and experiencing a loss of control over one’s eating (e.g., feeling one cannot stop or control the amount of food consumed)

    • Eating rapidly

    • Eating until uncomfortably full

    • Eating large amounts of food when not feeling hungry

    • Eating alone or in secret because of shame and embarrassment about how much one is eating

    • Feelings of shame, disgust, or guilt about binge-eating behaviour

    • Marked distress about binge eating

    • In contrast to individuals with bulimia, individuals with binge eating disorder do not engage in compensatory behaviours such as purging or excessive exercise

  • Bulimia nervosa is characterized by the following symptoms:

    • Recurrent binge eating episodes, which are characterized by eating a large amount of food in a discrete period of time and experiencing a loss of control over one’s eating (e.g., feeling you cannot stop or control the amount of food consumed)

    • Recurrent compensatory behaviours to prevent weight gain (i.e., vomiting, laxative use, fasting or excessive exercise)

    • Sense of self-worth is significantly impacted by one’s body shape and weight

  • Common symptoms of anorexia nervosa include:

    • Being significantly underweight for age and gender

    • Restricted eating patterns

    • Intense fear of gaining weight

    • Persistent effort to lose weight or to avoid gaining weight

    • Sense of self-worth is focused on weight and/or the ability to restrict

    • Failure to recognize the seriousness of one’s low body weight

    • Some individuals may also binge and/or purge

  • Aytypical anorexia is a misnomer because it is actually more common than anorexia nervosa.

    Individuals with atypical anorexia exhibit all the same symptoms of an individual with anorexia but they are NOT underweight.

    *Atypical anorexia is one of the Other Specified Eating Disorders

  • ARFID is characterized by a failure to meet energy and/or nutritional needs that is NOT driven by concern with one’s body weight or shape. Symptoms of ARFID typically show up in infancy or childhood.

    Individuals with ARFID may:

    • Avoid foods because of sensory characteristics of food

    • Have a lack of interest in eating or food

    • Have concerns about possible aversive consequences of eating (e.g., fear of vomiting or choking)

  • Individuals with other specified eating disorders or unspecified eating disorders exhibit symptoms of an eating disorder but do not meet the full diagnostic criteria for anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder. Other specified and unspecified eating disorders still cause significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.

  • Orthorexia is not an official diagnosis but can provide a valuable framework for understanding individuals who exhibit obsessive and rigid beliefs and behaviours around healthy eating.

    Common symptoms of orthorexia include:

    • Inflexible eating patterns (e.g., refusing to eat anything deemed “bad” or “unhealthy”)

    • Fixation over quality of food (e.g., may prefer organic, raw, vegan, “clean,” or farm fresh foods)

    • Experience significant distress, such as anxiety, shame or guilt, if self-imposed food rules are broken

    • Cutting out entire food groups (e.g.,dairy, gluten, processed foods, sugar, meat, or carbohydrates)

    • Experience ongoing worry about health and believe that eating foods believed to be “toxic” could cause illness or disease

    • Experience anxiety being around foods typicalvy avoided or viewed as “bad”

    • Weight loss

    • Rigidty around eating is driven by concerns about health rather than a desire to lose weight