Eating Concerns
Difficulties with food and eating can take up a significant amount of mental and emotional space. You may find yourself constantly thinking about what you have eaten, what you should eat, or how your food choices might affect your body.
You do not need to have an eating disorder diagnosis for your relationship with food to feel distressing or difficult to manage.
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Eating concerns can look different for everyone. You may notice:
Frequently thinking about food, weight, or eating
Feeling guilty or ashamed after eating
Following rigid food rules or labelling foods as "good" or "bad"
Restricting food or skipping meals
Eating in response to difficult emotions or stress
Feeling out of control around certain foods
Experiencing episodes of overeating or binge eating
Trying to compensate for what you have eaten
Avoiding social situations involving food
Comparing what you eat or how your body looks to others
Feeling that your self-worth is connected to your weight or eating habits
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Our relationship with food can be shaped by many experiences, including messages about weight and appearance, family attitudes towards eating, dieting, perfectionism, stress, trauma, or attempts to manage difficult emotions.
Over time, controlling food, restricting, or eating for comfort can become ways of creating a sense of safety, relief, or control. Even when these patterns become distressing, changing them can feel difficult.
Understanding what food and eating have come to represent for you can be an important part of developing a different relationship with them.
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Therapy can help you explore the thoughts, emotions, and experiences shaping your relationship with food and eating.
Our psychologists can support you to understand patterns of restriction, emotional eating, binge eating, shame, or rigid food rules, while developing a more flexible and compassionate relationship with food and yourself.
Where appropriate, psychological therapy may form part of a broader treatment team alongside your GP and other health professionals.
Taking the next step
You do not need to wait until your relationship with food becomes "bad enough" to seek support.
Our psychologists can help you make sense of your eating concerns and work towards a relationship with food that feels less consuming, rigid, or distressing.