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Eating Disorder Counseling
Virtually in Marietta, GA and Serving Clients Virtually Nationwide
Are you looking to heal your relationship to your body and food
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Do you find yourself thinking about food constantly throughout the day?
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Does eating feel stressful at home, or in social environments?
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Do you feel out of control around food or afraid to eat certain foods?
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Are you often feeling guilty or shameful after eating?
You might wake up thinking about food, the rules feel rigid and exhausting. You may feel anxious around meal or snack times, a lack of hunger and fullness cues, a battle of wanting nourishment and also fearing it. Social situations might be stressful to where you try to avoid it or anxiety consumes you if food is involved. You desire a life where your thoughts are not consumed by the eating disorder.
You are worthy of finding freedom from your eating disorder, disordered eating, emotional eating, or chronic diet. You are worthy of a healthy relationship to food, body and movement.
Eating disorders can affect anyone regardless of age, gender, or body size
We live in a society that promotes dieting, weight loss, and the constant feeling that you need to change something about your body, typically hearing these things from a young age. It may be constantly seeing your friends, family or celebrities trying out a new diet and asking yourself, “do I need to do that?” According to one study, “an estimated 9% of the U.S. population, or about 28.8 million Americans, will have an eating disorder at some point in their lives.” You are not alone in feeling the perfectionistic pressure to look and eat a certain way.
To society eating disorders have a certain “look” but eating disorders are not defined by body size or gender. “Fewer than 1 in 3 people with eating disorders receive any treatment, and diagnosis can be delayed or missed — especially when not accompanied by low weight.” Similarly, men are often overlooked when it comes to eating disorders. Women are up to 5 times more likely to be diagnosed than men but men represent up to 25% of people with eating disorders.
With the guidance and support of a compassionate, experienced eating disorder dietitian, healing your relationship with food and your body is possible.
How eating disorder counseling can help you
Our goal is to take a compassionate approach to supporting out clients as they work towards freedom from food and body concerns. Through eating disorder counseling we help our clients learn to trust their bodies again and provide them the tools they need to nourish themselves for the rest of their lives.
What to expect in sessions
For our intake session, we will focus on gathering information through a lifestyle and nutrition assessment. Together we will focus on baseline goal setting and develop a nutrition and self-care plan that is individualized to your goals and based on your needs. During our follow-up sessions, we will continue to talk through your personal goals, revise our care plan as needed, talk through medical labs if necessary, identify additional resources that might be helpful to you (i.e. books, hand-outs, podcasts, meditations, yoga & breathing techniques, other self-care tools, referral to see a mental health professional, etc.).
Individualized eating disorder counseling
We are eating disorder dietitians who are passionate about working with people who want to find freedom within their relationships with food and body. We take a non-diet and health-focused (versus weight-focused) approach to eating disorder counseling. We address all aspects of our clients’ health – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Between the four registered dietitians here at Whole Self Nutrition, we have a number of years of experience providing eating disorder counseling and general nutrition counseling. Depending on our clients’ needs, we provide nutrition therapy (both individual & family-based), fluid meal planning, nutrition education, meal- and snack-time support, intuitive eating and exercise tools, help guide our patients in challenging food rules, and self-care tools.
Binge Eating Counseling
We provide binge eating counseling to help support our clients reduce cycles of overeating by addressing physical and emotional drivers of their binge episodes. Physical drivers of binge eating can include restriction and having food rules around certain foods being off limits, which both can increase urges to binge and loss of control around certain foods. Emotional drivers can include shame, stress, self-critism and other hard emotions that can lead to binge eating urges. As eating disorder dietitians, we take a compassionate approach within binge eating counseling and utilize an all-foods-fit approach to help our clients address these behaviors and support healing of their relationship to food and body.
ARFID Counseling
Clients diagnosed with ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder) often struggle with limited food variety, sensory sensitivities, fear of adverse consequences related to food, or lack of interest in eating, and in most cases, clients will present with more than one of these presentations. Through ARFID counseling we assess nutrition adequacy and any risk for nutrient deficiencies, support regular eating patterns, and help increase variety through food exposures.
Anorexia Counseling
We provide anorexia counseling with specialized support to help address under-fueling, fear foods, rigid rules, and body image distress to those struggling to recover from their eating disorder. Within anorexia counseling we help challenge eating disorder behaviors and provide education on how restriction can affect one's brain, hormones, and body.
We also provide the option to incorporate yoga, breathing and other meditation and mindfulness techniques into our sessions. We believe these are valuable tools to help clients regulate their nervous systems, and get and stay connected to their best teachers and nutritionists — their bodies.
We believe that recovery, healing, and freedom from eating disorders and other food and body struggles is possible. Whether you're just starting your journey or returning to it, we’re here to walk alongside you every step of the way. We'll help you feel empowered to nourish yourself in compassionate and sustainable ways, so you can live authentically and in alignment with your values—set free from the shackles of your diet, disordered eating, or eating disorder.
But you may still have questions about eating disorder counseling
I’m not sick enough
Eating disorders can affect anyone. Many people who struggle with an eating disorder feel they don’t "qualify" for help if they don’t meet the stereotypical signs of an eating disorder. But just because you don’t meet the stereotype does not mean you don’t deserve support. We work with clients of all genders, ED diagnoses, ages, and body sizes.
Fear of being judged or misunderstood
We often have clients come to our practice after years of dieting and weight cycling, feeling defeated that they haven’t been able to “fix themselves.” This can lead you to feeling misunderstood, especially by providers who might not be eating-disorder informed or work with a weight inclusive approach. In our counseling sessions we provide a non-judgemental and comfortable space for you to explore your relationship to food and body.
Fear that recovery will make life harder, not easier
Recovery is not a quick fix, it takes time and has its ups and downs which can lead you to feeling that things will be harder without the eating disorder. Full recovery is possible and we are here to help and support you through this journey.
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Serving Clients Virtually Nationwide
1225 Johnson Ferry Rd # 170,
Marietta, GA 30068, United States