Eating Disorders – Seattle – Common Questions

Eating disorders can be traitorous and difficult coping mechanisms to relinquish. People struggling usually are functional, however mentally slaves to the disorder. Because eating disorders, usually take excess time, energy, sleep, and physical health, they can have detrimental effects not only on the struggler, but their family as well.

As opposed to drug and alcohol rehab, eating disorder treatment is a long road with many chances to resort to it as a coping mechanism. The reason for this is the presence of food being more prevalent than alcohol or drugs. Food is legal, celebrated, eaten at least three times each day, and more advertised each year to connect emotion, desire, and love with food.

One of the first questions I get from patients with eating disorders is: “Are you going to make me fat?” Your weight is not my first concern. Your weight might be indicative of your food habits; however, your emotional state is the reason for the food habits. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, you are hurt, emotionally, mentally, or physically, usually from nothing to do with food. In order to cope with the emotional pain, you use food (restrict, binge/purge, binge) instead of eating it to keep your emotions from overwhelming you.

As you use food, often your weight changes. Why would anyone start with what is affected by a symptom of a problem? I focus on the issue that got the weight to where it is, and then the food follows naturally, not forcedly. In order to make this clear, we discuss your safe weight range, which is often too low, and make a pact that we’ll stay within that until we decide not to. This makes you feel trust in the process, and I get the benefit of moving past your surfactant fears to the issues that are really making you sick.

Dealing with weight changes is imperative to my practice, though. Not revealing weight, I still allow you to know if you are in or out of your safe weight range. If you are above your weight range, it is important that we deal with that in session, not at home alone.

Trust is crucial when we go through this process due to the absolute vulnerability of the clientele with which I work.

Another question I frequently hear is: “Are you going to put me on a meal plan?” My answer to this is, “not if I can help it.” Meal plans, in my opinion are like crack to an addict. When you have an eating disorder you crave order, and the worst place to give you order is in your food. It can become, a new disorder to hyper focus on, grade, count, succeed or fail at. I also do not use any type of forced eating or weight contracts. This is outpatient and if you don’t follow your contract, what am I going to do, take legal action? It doesn’t work. Eating disorder recovery is all about trust, taking small obtainable action steps you can feel good about and celebrate.

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