You’ve probably heard of eating disorders, but have you heard of disordered eating?

Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder are a group of serious mental illnesses that can be life-threatening. They require a clinical diagnosis and are often treated by specialised dietitians, GPs, psychologists, or psychiatrists.

Disordered eating, on the other hand, is a broader group of eating and food-related behaviours that indicate a disordered relationship with food, your body, and/or exercise. This can look like skipping meals, fasting for prolonged periods of time, unbalanced eating (for example avoiding major food groups like sugar or carbs), chronic dieting, using diet pills, binge eating, or obsessively counting calories.

While disordered eating behaviours can contribute to the development of eating disorders, it doesn’t always progress to that. Early intervention like engaging in counselling can prevent these behaviours from developing into more serious mental health conditions.

If you’re experiencing disordered eating, you might also have strict rules about food and exercise:

• Labeling foods as “good” or “bad”

• Only allowing yourself to eat certain foods on certain days (e.g. only having dessert on Sunday, only having carbs on a “cheat day”)

• Forcing yourself to exercise after eating certain foods (e.g. you have to exercise after you’ve had dessert)

• Not eating before or after a certain time of day (e.g. no breakfast before 11AM or no food after 7PM)

If any of the above sounds familiar to you, I want you to know that you’re not the only one who has experienced this. Disordered eating is much more common than we realise, especially in a culture where thinness, weight loss, and not eating is glamourised. I spent years counting calories, tracking every food that went into my mouth, and obsessing over my workouts before I realised that a life where I was at peace with food and my body was possible.

Now, you might be thinking: “but I don’t have an eating disorder, so it’s not bad enough to seek help, right?”

Wrong.

You don’t have to reach an invisible level of suffering to be allowed to reach out for support. Counselling is not only for those with a clinical diagnosis. It’s for anyone who’s ready for a change. And if you clicked on this page, you might be ready for that change.

Maybe you want to have a less complicated relationship with food. Maybe you want to be able to go out and enjoy a delicious meal with your friends. Maybe you want to spend your Friday night on the couch with a loved one, enjoying a delicious piece of your favourite dessert without worrying all evening how you’ll burn it off in the gym. Or maybe you just want to free up some space in your brain for other, more important things.

If you’re ready for a change, then I’m here to support you.

How I can support you

In our work together, we might focus on:

• Examining any core beliefs you have about diet culture, fatness and thinness, and the morality of “good” and “bad” foods, and exploring how these beliefs are impacting your mental health and your relationship with your body

• Taking a closer look at the mechanism behind dieting for weight loss and the long-term impacts dieting can have on mental health

• Discussing approaches to food, movement, and mental and physical health that are supportive of good mental health

• Learning coping skills and emotional regulation techniques that can help you navigate difficult moments, hard conversations, and any day-to-day challenges that impact your mental health

• Exploring how you can implement self-compassion into your life and challenge your inner critic

• Exploring any events or relationships that have impacted your relationship to your body, food, movement, and diets, and processing them together

• Identifying sources and triggers for stress and anxiety around food and weight (social media, particular people in your life, stressful situations), and determining how you can navigate them in a way that supports your mental health