Eating Disorder dietitians and Disordered Eating dietitians Melbourne
If you’re experiencing disordered eating behaviours, such as binge eating or food restriction, you’re not alone. Over 1 million Australians are living with an eating disorder, that’s 1 in 26 people. Most of these people are not formally diagnosed or receiving treatment. In addition, the prevalence of disordered eating is much higher.
Why? One key reason is that we live in a culture that validates eating disorder behaviours.
If you have been tracking all your food (calories or macros), are restricting food and have lost weight, you are most likely being praised and seen as someone who has discipline and who is “doing the right thing”. But these are the very behaviours that lead to disordered eating in many people, or an eating disorder diagnosis in others.
So what defines disordered eating?
- Preoccupation with food to the point of distress at times
- Feeling out of control around food
- Feeling shame around food and hiding eating from others
- Restricting food and then finding yourself bingeing on it
- Beating yourself over what you’ve eaten, or not eaten
- Worried about eating out as you don’t know what’s in the food
- Counting or tracking calories or macros in a way that feels overwhelming or is simply messing with your psychology around food
Eating Disorders Victoria is a great place for further information on disordered eating.
What defines binge eating?
While there are clinical definitions of binge eating, it can be very subjective and if it feels like a binge to you, then it’s a type of disordered eating.
It’s also completely normal to feel ashamed of what feels like bingeing behaviour with food. Once you learn that one of the key drivers for bingeing is driven by trying to “do the right thing” (ie. restricting food or eating less to try and lose weight or be healthier), then you can start to dial down the shame and learn to eat in a way where you can start to resolve bingeing behaviours.
Examples of what might be binge eating behaviour;
- Any eating that feels out of control to you
- Feeling like you’ve eaten way too much in one sitting or of one type of food
- Eating large amounts of food in secret
- Feeling uncomfortably full to the point of regret or beating yourself up over what or how much you’ve eaten
- Quickly eating a packet a lollies in your car in the supermarket carpark before you get home (I’ve heard this example from a number of clients, very often mums)
We have helped hundreds of people resolve their struggle with binge eating.
Dieting or restricting food for weight loss is the number 1. risk factor for developing an eating disorder
This may seem very confusing as aren’t we supposed to try and lose weight for our health? Isn’t that the message we hear over and over again from most doctors and health professionals?
These are just some of the conversations we will have with you, to help you understand why you don’t need to lose weight to focus on your health. Almost everyone who comes to see us wants to lose weight and we completely understand this desire. A key part of our job is to help you navigate the struggle of wanting to lose weight, whilst addressing your disordered eating behaviours.
Depending on your eating disorder diagnosis or disordered eating behaviours, we will introduce you to the Intuitive Eating framework either in the first session, or once you’re ready to start the process. We do use meal plans where required and this will be established over the first few sessions.
We help people with:
• Binge Eating Disorder
• OSFED
• Orthorexia
• Disordered eating behaviours (such as over-eating, binge eating, restrictive eating, emotional eating, high level of stress or fear around food)
Other Eating Disorder and/or Disordered Eating behaviours
- Binge eating – anything that feels like a binge to you can fit this
- Feeling out of control around food
- Feeling significant shame around food and your body
- Hiding food and/or eating from others
- Restricting food to the point of inadequate nutrition or feeling overwhelmed when faced with certain food
- Fear of some food types
- Chewing food and then spitting it out
- Not socialising for worry over food and/or eating
For much more information around eating disorders, please visit…
Eating Disorders Victoria or Butterfly foundation
Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders lead to Gut Issues
Almost everyone with a diagnosed eating disorder ends up with a functional gut disorder, or IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). The gut issues can be transient, or they can persist even once the significant eating disorder behaviours have subsided. Understanding this is integral to management of symptoms and if you have been following a low FODMAP diet or avoiding certain foods (such as wheat/gluten) as you feel these upset your gut, you may then discover you don’t need to restrict all these foods to improve your gut health.
Many of our clients are relieved to discover that though addressing their relationship with food and establishing a calm and consistent eating pattern, that many of their gut symptoms settle right down. This can also be true for non-gut related symptoms, where certain eating behaviours can lead to over-dosing on known food triggers, and if those eating behaviours are resolved, the food is no longer a trigger for symptoms. It is a much better outcome to find you aren’t as food sensitive as you thought and that you can eat more freely, especially with social eating.
You can read more about our approach to food intolerance investigation here.
