Eating Disorder/Disordered Eating dietitians Melbourne
If you’re experiencing disordered eating behaviours, 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.
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), or are restricting certain foods 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 an eating disorder diagnosis. These are the very behaviours that can become highly disordered.
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 in the first or second session.
We help people with:
• Binge Eating Disorder
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Anorexia Nervosa
• ARFID
• Orthorexia
• OSFED
• Disordered eating behaviours (such as over-eating, binge eating, restrictive eating, emotional eating, high level of anxiety/stress or fear around food)
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Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders and 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.
