Chronic Dieting Therapy & Nutrition Counseling
See chronic dieting treatment FAQs here.
You are tired of the impossible food rules, body shame, and diet cycling.
Your self-esteem has dwindled after “failing” multiple diet plans, and you feel powerless around forbidden foods. Perhaps you keep certain foods out of your house because you feel that you cannot trust yourself with them in such close proximity. Thoughts about your body shape are all-consuming, and the shame you feel keeps you obsessed. The mental battle with food and your body is exhausting, and you want out. You want to learn how to better care for yourself, understand your disordered eating, finally end the cycle of compulsive eating and body shame, and reclaim your life.
At Austin Center for Eating Disorders (ACED), we understand how frustrated and tired you are. Disordered eating and body image distress are lonely and demoralizing issues.
We’re Here to Help
Contributing Factors in Chronic Dieting
Battling with disordered eating can take over your inner world. Dieting and rebellion behaviors swing like a pendulum, and can tarnish or even destroy your self-esteem, and isolate you from the things that used to bring you joy. Anxiety can skyrocket. Complicating matters is the ubiquitous cultural pressure to be thin and attractive based upon narrow and oppressive beauty standards. And, if exercise is wrapped up in your disordered eating, fitness/gym culture is even worse. These beauty and fitness standards are everywhere and convince all of us that if we want love, care, and respect in this world, we must conform (read: lose weight).
On top of all of this, we might guess that someone in your family also struggles with food, body image, and/or exercise. Disordered eating has a strong genetic component and tends to run in families. If you grew up in an environment of restrictive eating, dieting, body shame, and/or overexercise, you are more likely to struggle in these ways as an adult, especially if you have the genetic predisposition. We’re not here to blame your family, even though they may have accidentally contributed to the development of your disordered eating habits. Your parents’ parents likely passed these things down as well, and so goes the cyclical nature of trans-generational food and body image issues. That is, until someone finally heals it. We hope that person is you.
We often hear about the shaming doctors visits our clients endure as children and adults. Having a doctor tell you that there is something wrong with your body shape or weight as a child (or adult) can spur body image distress and disordered eating, and contribute to having an eating disorder later in life. We are doing everything we can to educate doctors about eating disorders and the harms of fat phobia in medical treatments. We want you to know that it’s not ok that you were shamed as a child, and told that your body was somehow defective.
Many People Struggle With Disordered Eating
No matter where you are in the process of recovery, you deserve to be heard and get support. Struggling with emotional eating does not mean that you are inferior in any way, and you are certainly not alone. You are not to blame for “failing” at diets and weight loss attempts. In fact, the diets themselves are to blame. This may surprise you to hear, but fully recovering from disordered eating will require that you, slowly over time, turn away from dieting all together, and work toward body acceptance. We understand that this way of thinking is a radical departure from everything you may know about food and bodies, and how scary it may be to imagine trying a new approach. If dieting and body hatred worked to solve your issues, it would have worked by now.
Wellness plans and “clean eating” rules that dictate your food can easily get out of hand, as 95% of these type of plans fail, meaning that any weight lost returns- fueling your sense of failure and diminishing self-esteem. You can read the blog Why Diets Don’t Work for more information about this. Furthermore, people who have dieted moderately are 5 times more likely to develop an eating disorder, and those who practiced extreme dieting were 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who did not diet. You can learn more about the risk factors of dieting here.
Relevant Blog Posts
Let Us Help
With the help of a skilled, specialized therapist and/or dietitian, you can develop the insight and compassionate self-care needed to sustain the long journey of healing. We can provide the support you need:
You will receive a personalized treatment plan that is highly specific and aligned with your unique needs and goals
Tools and skills to manage and diminish eating disorder behaviors
Support in developing insight and understanding in your relationships with food and your body, and about yourself in general
Education about the science behind eating disorders and trauma
Help learning to regulate and soothe your intense emotions
Coping skills to advocate for yourself, especially when it comes to difficult relationships and diet culture
Nutrition support, education, and guidance
Tools and guidance in dismantling the restrictive food rules and obsessions that take over your life
A meal plan, if necessary, with a specialized Registered Dietitian
Inspiration, motivation, and accountability
So much love and compassion
See eating disorder treatment FAQs here
Chronic Dieting Therapy Can Repair Your Relationship With Food and Body
Psychotherapy can be an extremely effective method to heal your relationship with food, your body, and your life. Treatment for disordered eating, although complex and commonly long-term, can guide you toward developing insight into your dysfunctional patterns of thinking and coping by giving you the skills and space necessary for authentic growth.
Therapy can give you a refuge, a place where you can be vulnerable, and trust that you will be unconditionally accepted, respected, and loved. Working at your own pace, you can find your voice, reconcile unaddressed emotions, and summon the power and courage required to take charge of your life and make tough changes.
Our Collaborative Approach Toward Eating Disorder Recovery
Depending on your symptoms and needs, we will refer you to a registered dietician and/or therapist specializing in eating disorders to assist us on our journey together. Working with a specialized dietitian can be very important, and we will collaborate to make sure that you are getting the best care possible.
We will also refer you to a specialized medical doctor to check in about your physical health. Again, we want to do our best make sure that you have everything you need to recover from your eating disorder.
Another option and recommendation we’ll likely provide is to join a therapy group that focuses on eating disorder recovery, so that you can connect with others who share your goals and struggles.
We’ll also look for other possible mental health concerns, such as anxiety, depression, or trauma, that may be complicating or intensifying your need to cope using disordered eating behaviors.
We utilize a number of therapeutic modalities to aid in your unique recovery process:
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Family Based Therapy (FBT)
Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT)
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
Psychodynamic Theory
Feminist Theory
Health at Every Size® and Intuitive Eating
Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Parts Work
Relational Cultural Theory
Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
We Cherish Your Autonomy
You and you alone (given that you are an adult) are in charge of your body. You make decisions based upon what you believe is best for you. We will have plenty of recommendations (see above) to aid your recovery process, and if your symptoms are more severe, we may be more directive in nature. However, you are always free to agree or disagree, to come and go as you please, and do what you believe is the best thing for you.
We believe that you must make your own decisions to get the most out of therapy, and we support you in doing so. We cannot make you do anything, and you simply will not change unless you want to. We unconditionally accept you for who you are, right now.
You may be considering Chronic Dieting Treatment but still have some questions or concerns…
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We understand the power of a guarantee to lose weight and keep it off; it can be blinding and all-consuming. And, there is some part of you that knows that this might not be real, and you are catching on to the fact that there is no magical solution. The magical thinking behind ‘getting thin and staying thin’ is seductive: you believe that it will solve all your problems, make you happy, and enrich your life… if only you could be that 5% (the percentage of successful diets over 2 years). The reality is that chronic dieting can annihilate your self-worth, mental health, and quality of life. (Read more about whether weight loss can make you happy here.)
You may always wish to lose weight in our work together, and that’s ok and completely normal. The truth is that during the process of Intuitive Eating, some people lose weight, some gain weight, and others stay the same. There are no guarantees. Your body is in charge.
Anyone, or any company, that promises weight loss is lying to you, and probably to themselves as well. This may sound harsh, but I stand strongly behind this statement because the idea of attaining an ideal of beauty and body in order to find worth or happiness is profoundly damaging to all of us. I want you to discover genuine happiness, peace, and fulfillment- in the body you have right now.
Some people do decide to take a break from exercise in order to reconnect with themselves and learn better ways to cope with the inevitable stressors of life, and then return to it after the hiatus it in a much more balanced way. This temporary break from your workouts, if you decide to go this route, can make all the difference, and give your body an opportunity to recover and heal from any nagging or chronic injuries.
We also work closely with certified personal trainers, and we are happy to give you scientific information regarding exercise and recovery.
If you are noticing worrisome physical symptoms, improving your relationship with food now might prevent costly medical treatments down the line. Furthermore, compensatory behaviors (e.g., compulsive overexercise, unprescribed medications, laxative use, etc.) can damage the health and functioning of your body in multiple ways. By engaging in therapy for Anorexia, it’s possible to learn to better care for yourself, cope with challenges successfully without resorting to eating disorder behaviors, and create the life that you truly want to live. The benefits of seeking treatment are infinite and although it looks different for everyone, recovery is possible.
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Investing in your mental and physical health is one of the most valuable investments you could possibly make. Disordered eating typically involves immense feelings of loneliness, shame, and feeling like a failure, and this can destroy the quality of your everyday life. We realize that treatment is expensive, but the costs to your wellbeing if you don’t get help can be even greater. If you simply cannot afford treatment, please reach out anyway, and we can look at alternatives through other programs.If you are noticing worrisome physical symptoms, improving your relationship with exercise now might prevent costly medical treatments in the future. Furthermore, excessive exercise behaviors can damage the health and functioning of your body in multiple ways. By engaging in therapy for compulsive exercise, it’s possible to learn to better care for yourself, cope with challenges successfully without resorting to harmful behaviors, and create the life that you truly want to live. The benefits of engaging in treatment are infinite, and although it looks different for everyone, recovery is possible.
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Chances are, you have already exhausted yourself with various diets, tried the latest fasting or restrictive fads, and searched weight loss websites or groups just to find that nothing seems to work sustainably. Your body image only seems to get worse, and the painful, obsessive behavioral patterns creep back into your life, causing your life to shrink away from the things that truly matter to you.
Emotional eating treatment can help you to identify the impulses behind your behavior and help you untangle your emotions so that you can develop an awareness of your needs, thus fundamentally changing your relationship with food. No diet can know what you truly need, and by learning to trust yourself and express your emotions in a healthy way in therapy, you can find freedom.
Help Is Available for Chronic Dieting
We’re here for you. Schedule a complimentary phone consultation to ask all of your questions, and see if we might be a good fit for you.
