Eating Disorder Therapy in California

Cultivate Body Acceptance and Food Freedom

Let’s face it: in our diet culture, being preoccupied with food and your body is the norm. Behaviors like restrictive eating and rigid exercise are often encouraged and praised, especially here in California, where appearance and physical fitness are so often conflated with health, success, and happiness.

It can be hard to recognize when something that started as an effort to “eat healthier,” lose weight, or feel better in your body has begun taking up more and more of your life.

Maybe you beat yourself up about what you ate yesterday or you’re carefully planning what you’ll allow yourself to eat today. You promise yourself you’ll be “good,” only to feel out of control around food later. You feel guilty if you miss a workout or pressure yourself to exercise even when your body needs rest. The number on the scale can change your mood for the day. You avoid photos, mirrors, certain clothes, meals out, or social situations because of how you feel about your body. And no matter what you change, it never seems to feel like enough.

Here are some signs you may need treatment for an eating disorder:

• You restrict what you eat, counting calories, following rigid food rules, and/or limiting the variety of foods you eat.

• You often feel out of control around food, bingeing or eating compulsively when you’re not hungry.

• You’re preoccupied with your size and shape, deriving your self-worth from your appearance.

• You yo-yo diet, cycling between periods of dieting and periods of overeating.

• You obsess over the quality of your food and “clean” eating.

• You exercise, purge, or abuse laxatives to compensate for what you’ve eaten.

• You habitually turn to food to cope with overwhelming or uncomfortable emotions.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re far from alone.

Eating disorders and struggles with food and body image aren’t a failure of willpower. And they’re rarely just about food. The patterns that are causing you pain may also have become ways of coping with difficult emotions, finding a sense of control, feeling safe, or getting through experiences that have been hard to carry.

But hating yourself into a version of yourself you can love doesn’t work.