Eating Disorders Treatment in Nashville

Eating Disorder

Struggling with eating disorders can leave you feeling like you are treading water. You may find that you spend most of your time worried about food, counting calories and generally filled with loneliness, low self esteem and emptiness.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is a philosophy of eating that makes you the expert of your body and its hunger signals. Essentially, it’s the opposite of a traditional diet. It doesn’t impose guidelines about what to avoid and what or when to eat. Instead, it teaches that you are the best person — the only person — to make those choices.

Issues WCC works with:

Binge eating
Compulsive overeating
Emotional eating
Body image concerns
Anorexia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa
Avoidant/Restrictive food intake disorder
Children and adolescents with eating disorders
Body dysmorphia
Challenges with body acceptance

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The intuitive eating approach is based on 10 core principles. These are:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality. The research proves that restrictive diets don’t work. Sure you may lose weight in the short-term but there is a very likely chance that you’ll gain it back, and possibly more, within 5 years.

In fact, long-term your weight going down then back up may cause you more physical and mental harm than the short-term benefits you received. Reject the notion that you have no willpower or that you “failed” when you couldn’t stick to a diet or later regained the weight. The diet actually failed YOU.

2. Honor Your Hunger. Hunger is a normal process, not something you should ignore or fear. This intuitive eating focuses on learning how to feed your body adequately throughout the day with nourishing foods.

If you have ever ignored your hunger, you will probably find that your cravings or likelihood of bingeing increase. When you ignore what your body is telling you, your body will respond in an effort to protect you, by increasing hunger.

Plus, nobody deserves to experience deprivation regardless of the size or shape of their body. You deserve to be nourished and taken care of.

3. Make Peace With Food. This means allowing yourself to eat foods that may have previously been off-limits for you. If you’ve ever told yourself you couldn’t eat certain foods because of your diet, you’ve probably found that you crave those foods so much more. This leads to a restrict-binge cycle of eating.

Letting go of the guilt and the mentality of “good” or “bad” foods will help heal your relationship with food. When you first allow yourself to eat your forbidden foods, you may be scared you’ll overeat. While this may happen initially, this is a necessary part of the process that is only temporary. At a certain point, that food will lose its appeal and power over you, and those intense cravings will fade.

4. Challenge the Food Police. Challenge the messages around you and the voices inside your own head that you were “bad” for eating certain foods or “good” for avoiding others. This way of thinking associates your moral worth with your food choices. Instead, remember that one food won’t make or break your health and all foods can fit into a healthy lifestyle.

The food police can also be external voices that make you feel like you “should” or “shouldn’t eat a certain way. For example, a friend or loved one commenting on your food choices. A co-worker trying to convince you to join them in their new diet endeavor. Or the magazine headlines promising a new diet fix.

5. Feel Your Fullness. Dieting encourages us to eat at certain times and doesn’t always take our actual hunger and fullness into account. Take your time when eating and truly listen to your body, so you’ll be able to recognize when you’re starting to feel full.

Look for the signs that you are satisfied with your meal. Does the food still taste good? How do you physically feel? Using a hunger and fullness scale can help you to better identify these feelings. Eating is so much more pleasurable when you learn how to fully enjoy your food but also are able to stop before you become overly full or uncomfortable.

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor. The satisfaction factor is when you fully enjoy what you eat and savor it, without guilt. It is possible to feel physically full, but not satisfied. If you feel any negative feelings such as guilt or shame when eating certain foods, you will feel less satisfied and more likely to crave other foods later on.

But avoiding those foods in an attempt to feel guilt will likely backfire as your meals will be missing pleasure, thus you won’t feel fully satisfied even if you are full.

7. Cope With Your Emotions Without Using Food. We often eat for so many reasons other than actual hunger. We eat out of boredom, stress, anxiety, depression, or even as a way to pass the time.

The first step is acknowledging this without any guilt or shame. The second step is then learning healthier coping strategies to replace these habits so that you no longer use food as a crutch.

8. Respect Your Body. Treat your body with respect and be proud of it. Turn off the internal voices that criticize your body, and learn how to accept your body for exactly how it is. We are all born different shapes and sizes and that is out of our control. Once you develop a more positive body image, you will be able to reject the diet mentality with more ease.

9. Exercise – Feel the Difference. In the traditional dieting mentality, we feel like we have to exercise in order to work off the calories we ate. You may exercise because you feel like you “have” to or you “should,” and it can feel like a chore.

Instead, choose the type of movement that feels good for you. Don’t choose an exercise solely for its calorie-burning effects, but one that you look forward to doing. Consistent exercise, no matter what it is, is what brings you the biggest mental and physical health benefits.

10. Honor Your Health With Gentle Nutrition. Instead of trying to eat perfectly every day, focus on how certain foods make you feel. Through this, you will discover which foods satisfy you, give you long-lasting energy, and also taste good. Pleasure is an important part of the eating process and is something that should be celebrated.

We frequently hear from clients who have embraced intuitive eating that after they go through a period of indulging, their body actually begins to crave healthier foods. In the past they may have felt they needed to restrict or control their food intake after indulgences and that would just feed into the eat-repent-repeat cycle.

Now they realize if they listen to their bodies they will more gently realign with healthier choices. But it may take time for you to rebuild trust in yourself and your body that was destroyed by dieting.

What is Healthy At Every Size (HAES)?

The basic premise of health at every size, as written in Linda Bacon’s Book, Health at Every Size: The surprising truth about your weight, is that “Health at Every Size” (HAES) acknowledges that well-being and healthy habits are more important than any number on the scale.

Accept your size. Love and appreciate the body you have. Self-acceptance empowers you to move on and make positive changes.
Trust yourself. We all have internal systems designed to keep us healthy — and at a healthy weight. Support your body in naturally finding its appropriate weight by honoring its signals of hunger, fullness, and appetite.
Adopt healthy lifestyle habits. Develop and nurture connections with others and look for purpose and meaning in your life. Fulfilling your social, emotional, and spiritual needs restores food to its rightful place as a source of nourishment and pleasure.
Find the joy in moving your body and becoming more physically vital in your everyday life.
Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and seek out pleasurable and satisfying foods.
Tailor your tastes so that you enjoy more nutritious foods, staying mindful that there is plenty of room for less nutritious choices in the context of an overall healthy diet and lifestyle.
Embrace size diversity. Humans come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Open to the beauty found across the spectrum and support others in recognizing their unique attractiveness.

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What is Weight Stigma?

Weight stigma, also known as weight bias or weight-based discrimination, is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Weight stigma can increase body dissatisfaction, a leading risk factor in the development of eating disorders. The best-known environmental contributor to the development of eating disorders is the sociocultural idealization of thinness.

It is never acceptable to discriminate against someone based on their size, but shaming, blaming, and “concern trolling” happen everywhere – at work, school, in the home, and even at the doctor’s office. In fact, weight discrimination occurs more frequently than gender or age discrimination.

Despite its unfortunate prevalence, weight stigma is dangerous and can increase the risk for adverse psychological and behavioral issues, including depression, poor body image and binge eating.

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