Do you struggle with preoccupation with food and eating habits? Or, do your adolescent or teenager force themselves to stick to extreme diet rules? As well, with disordered eating habits, you may see changes in mood. Your adolescent may be more crabby, angry, or anxious when struggling with food. For some teenagers, emotional distress increases because of the restrictive eating disorder behavior. Also, adolescents, teens, and adults with disordered eating often experience fear and anxiety around certain foods. With disordered eating habits, there is a struggle to eat and feed ones self. Does your teenager have food fixations that affect their friendships and social interactions? At times, depressed teenagers with disordered eating habits may develop social anxiety and social withdrawal. At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, we can help you learn how to identify disordered eating habits.
So, what are disordered eating habits?
Many people have disordered eating habits, where they might only eat one large big meal a day and constantly forget to eat. Sometimes, people will only eat dinner and skip breakfast and lunch. At times, people with orthorexia worry and do not eat certain types of foods and worry they are going to get fat if they do.
Additionally, people with orthorexia and disordered eating behaviors will feel guilt and shame when they are unable to meet the higher standards they have set for themselves on their diet.
Often, these are type A or perfectionist type people. Sometimes, disturbed feeding behaviors can lead to severe nutritional issues. Additionally, someone might only have smoothies and beverages for breakfast and lunch to lose weight, and only chew on real food for dinner. Skipping meals is a sign of disordered eating habits. Lastly, calorie counting is a sign that you may have just ordered eating behaviors and could benefit from counseling.
If you noticed that you have a big inner critic or you were calling yourself ugly, this can be sign of an eating disorder. It is important to get help sooner than later, so no further self-injury can occur.
To begin, click the pink button below to learn more about how we can help you or your adolescents build skills for overcoming disordered eating habits and develop a healthy body image from self-love.
Do you worry you have a food addiction?
When it comes to learning how to identify disordered eating habits, it is helpful to look at food addiction. If you have a food addiction, you will know because you end up eating more food than ideal. As well, eating certain foods even when you are no longer hungry can be a sign of a food addiction. Additionally, eating to the point of being overly full is a sign. In addition, consuming food to the point of feeling ill can be a sign of a food addiction.
At times, alcoholism, substance, and food addiction go hand in hand.
With a food addiction, there will often be extremes such as eating a very large amount of food or trying, or restricting certain types of foods out of shame or guilt. For some, a food addiction is passed down generationally in the family. Other times, eating disorders develop from trauma and stresses in life.
Who gets eating disorders?
Frequently, only athletes who are very underweight are considered for developing eating disorders. However, this is just a myth. It is essential to learn When it comes to learning how to identify disordered eating habits, we need to look at all ages, body sizes, and weights. Many times, people who have disordered eating habits are within a healthy weight range. So, they may not visibly be underweight or in the super fat category. Essentially, you can not learn how to identify disordered eating habits, just from looking at someone’s size or weight.
Inside, someone with disordered eating habits feels tension, hate, fear, and shame about their body size or weight.
Even if someone looks like they are able to maintain their weight, they may still have disordered eating behaviors. Overall, our American society is over focused on calories, weight, and lifting weights while going to the gym. Both people who are underweight and overweight can have disordered eating behaviors.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, we help children, teenagers, and adults develop a healthy relationship with food and self-confidence.
What is orthorexia, when it comes to disordered eating and body shame?
Manytimes, teenagers and adults with orthorexia have obsessive concerns about food. Essentially, among other symptoms, this is a trait of orthorexia. As well, people with orthorexia obsess about eating and can’t stop thinking about calories. And, people with orthorexia have fixations on their body shape being a specific way. As well, they obsess and think constantly about diet standards as well as food preparation.
To begin learning how to release body shame and build self-confidence about your body shape and weight, book a phone consult below.
How to identify disordered eating behavior before it becomes an eating disorder?
When it comes to disordered eating habits, these are often from diet standards that are not based in self-love. So, at Wisdom Within Counseling, we teach self-love skills for a positive food relationship. Often, following extreme dietary rules such as not eating after an hour or not eating certain foods is a sign of an eating disorder. If you notice these behaviors showing disordered eating, contact an eating disorder specialist right away.
With disordered eating behaviors, there is an unhealthy focus on calories in the body shape.
In counseling, our holistic therapists teach a healthy relationship with food and nurturing eating skills. Frequently, people with disordered eating obsess about food to a degree that it can damage mental health and prevent joy. With eating disorders like orthorexia, emotional well-being suffers. If someone has disordered eating, they will often only allow themselves to feel worthy if they eat the “good” food. For instance, a “good” food could be one grape or some person or a bag of chips for another. With orthorexia, a person will deem themselves unworthy if they eat a “bad” food. So, if more than one grape is eaten, then their inner critic shames them.
Unfortunately, the disordered eating habit creates a cycle of tension, anger, and anxiety. We help people who feel stuck in this pattern of tension build a positive relationship with food, from self-compassion.
Someone with an eating disorder will think they need to be a certain weight to be acceptable or fit in. Often, teenagers and adults with depression who are learning how to identify disordered eating habits will feel frustrated and have mood swings because of their imbalanced relationship with food. When it comes to learning how to identify disordered eating habits, know that teenagers often hide these behaviors.
How does the inner critic play a role in orthorexia?
As well, there is a very negative inner critic that propels these disordered eating and food behaviors around feeding. Sometimes, this inner voice develops from the American diet culture. Frequently, a person with orthorexia or disordered eating behaviors will feel that certain foods are truly dangerous. However, through working with an eating disorder professional therapy, a new perspective can evolve.
To begin, book a phone consult using the button below. At Wisdom Within Counseling, we help teenagers and young adults develop a healthy body image and self-love skills.
We help teenagers and adults with disordered eating, body image issues love themselves and gain positive coping tools.
With orthorexia, a person will prevent themselves from eating food they deem dangerous, bad, or unacceptable. Over time, counseling specialized for eating disorder recovery can support food confidence. As well, people with orthorexia will restrict themselves from eating these “bad” foods, which may be necessary for health and balance. In some cases, orthorexia untreated can cause nutritional deficiencies.
What is another warning sign of disordered eating when it comes to substance and alcohol abuse?
As well, disordered eating can go along with substance and alcohol abuse. With eating disorder, adults may choose to drink alcohol instead of eating food to lose weight. Instead of consuming food, they will drink alcohol in excess. As well, some adults with eating disorders will take prescription medication and stimulants such as Adderall or caffeine to lose weight. Sometimes, people experiencing disordered eating will over exercise or run extra hard to burn off the meal they just ate. These over exercising behaviors are fueled by regret, guilt, shame, self-hatred, and lack of coping skills. Furthermore, the examples above are all forms of eating disorders. Sometimes, people with eating disorders will miss their period due to under eating and restriction habits. As well, people with anorexia will often wear baggy clothes covering most of their body.
Is body and muscle building play a role in disordered eating habits?
People who are very active and exercise as well as those who are secondary can also have disordered eating. Sometimes, disordered eating can look like binging a large amount of food and then purging or throwing up. Yes, hitting the gym can be a great outlet for mind-body connection and stress.
However, when hitting the gym and lifting weights coincide with disordered eating, food restrictive behaviors, and body shame, it is not self-loving, but fear-based.
Also, an eating disorder can look like over exercising or bodybuilding to reduce body fat to look a certain way. Overall, body building or over exercising are signs of disordered eating habits and behaviors. Anytime someone is preoccupied with the number on the scale, this is a sign of body shame. Seek professional eating disorder help for gaining a healthy body image right away.
The first step is education on where these disordered eating behaviors come from. Our Americanized society and diet culture supports these negative behaviors.
Many times, people with eating disorders will let themselves carry on a negative relationship with food out with fear that something will go wrong in the future. People with eating disorders might be afraid of how they would look at the eat a different food on their “bad” list. For instance, a person with disorder eating may put bananas or apples on their “bad” list out of obsession. Often times, the way we are cultured and socialized plays a lot into how we feel about our body and weight. We are cultured to feel inferior if we don’t fit into how the magazines and movies tell us how to look
Remember, just because someone looks like they are healthy weight, they can still feel very uncomfortable in their body and hate themselves secretly on the inside.
Therapy with an eating disorder focus can allow an adolescent or young adult to build a healthy relationship with their body. As well, our therapists support holistic, positive coping skills for connecting with their mind, body, and their spirit.
In counseling, your eating disorder therapist in Southeastern Connecticut can help you feel comfortable being your authentic self while building a nurturing relationship with food.
How does body shame and diet culture play a role in disordered eating habits?
See professional help from a holistic eating disorder specialist in southeastern Connecticut to learn more about building a healthy, loving relationship with food. At times, people with eating disorders will track their food to an obsessive degree. Disordered eating habits often evolve in to a more severe eating disorder. Using a calorie counting app or diet app can perpetuate disordered eating into an an eating disorder too. When people want to get back in shape, it is often based on wanting to look better or to change their weight. Rather than exercising from a place of emotional exhaustion and dieting, it is best to learn self love skills and self acceptance tools.
The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut love helping adolescents, teens and adults love themselves.
At Wisdom Within Counseling in Southeastern Connecticut, our team specializes with eating disorder treatment. We are a highly specialized practice and love helping anxious children and gender questioning adolescents, young adults, families, and couples.
We specialize with teens and young adults with eating disorders, self-harm/cutting, body image issues, perfectionism, and LGBTQIA+ exploration, gender identity, and sexual orientation exploration build self-love skills and positive coping tools and better self-esteem.
As well, gender and sexuality therapy topics go hand in hand with eating disorders. As holistic therapists, we love talking with adolescents and young adults struggling with their gender, sexuality, and LGBTQIA+. Frequently, gender and eating disorders, binge eating, and body shame are interwoven. At Wisdom Within Counseling, our therapists have intuitive eating and health-at-every-size certifications. Through creative counseling, teach teens how to accept and love themselves. We help anxious young adults feel empowerment, identify unhealthy relationships, and attract positive friendships as well.
Looking for something different? Out-of-the-box specialities of creative play therapy, art, yoga, music, and outdoor walking therapies are available.
And, these are not offered anywhere within 60 miles for eating disorder treatment.
We are unique in offering animal therapy groups of emotional confidence and hands-on learning. We had one with turtles, a snake, frog, rabbit, and guinea pig in June 2021 and families loved it. These holistic skills support holistic self-care tools and lifelong coping strategies and a sense of playfulness. Creative options are specialized for children with selective mutism, and who don’t want to talk. Children who can’t speak can express what they feel through play therapies, musical instruments, and art to feel safe in the world again. We offer options beyond traditional talk counseling as well as comfy couches.
