How can an Eating Disorder Dietitian help me?

​Curious about how adding an Eating Disorder dietitian to your healthcare team could be helpful?

​Here are a few ways an Eating Disorder Dietitian can support you:

Providing the time and space to talk about food and your body

It’s not very often in our society that we get the chance to explore our relationship with food and our body in any great detail, let alone in a non-judgemental and supportive environment. Our world is full of harmful advice around food, so finding a ‘bubble’ of non-judgemental support can do wonders in alleviating worries, feeling understood and seeking practical advice to support recovery.  Often my clients talk about the positive impact of simply having the space to outline their food and body history and for this to be received with compassion and understanding, which they may not have experienced before.

Support to challenge diet culture and other problematic societal messaging

​Your sessions with an Eating Disorder Dietitian might not always just be about food.  If you are working with a HAES-aligned, fat positive Eating Disorder Dietitian, chances are the conversation will end up going a little deeper than surface level nutrition advice.  These deeper conversations can be so supportive in getting to the root of where many of your ED food rules have stemmed from, and having this understanding can help you in challenging them a lot more than if you were to challenge them without this background understanding.

Gentle guidance, at your pace

​Rather than being handed a meal plan and being sent on your way, a supportive Eating Disorder Dietitian will support you in first identifying what you might like to experiment with and then helping you to achieve this as you feel ready or safe to dip your toe in.  Provided you are medically stable, support will be completely at your pace.  Food challenges will be explored in ‘baby steps’ rather than tackling big stuff all at once.  As an example, you might work with your Eating Disorder Dietitian to try and experiment with including a food that feels ‘risky’ on one occasion before your next session, and notice how this feels and what comes up (even if you weren’t able to include it, this is still valuable information as well!).  This can be a lot more supportive than diving straight in to attempting to include a food that feels ‘unsafe’ every day until the next session.  Anything explored or experimented with will be at your pace and without judgement.

Practical nutrition advice (without the side of restriction!)

Seeking support from an Eating Disorder Dietitian can also provide the opportunity to work through the practical aspects of your recovery. 

As an example, if food is feeling overwhelming to shop for, prepare and plan around, an Eating Disorder Dietitian can support you in finding ways to make each of those steps easier and help you to be guided by the capacity that you have, rather than what you feel you ‘should’ be doing.

An Eating Disorder Dietitian could also provide relevant nutrition advice for any other health conditions that you have, by supporting you to experiment with foods to add in, rather than the focus being on restriction.  Nutrition education can also be provided in order to support your Eating Disorder recovery, answer your questions as well as challenge any food rules and support you to let go of food guilt in time and with support. 

​An Eating Disorder Dietitian can support you with eating regularly and enough, to ensure that you are nourished enough to be able to get the most out of your treatment more generally. Malnutrition and restrict/binge cycling can have a massive impact on thoughts, behaviours as well as your capacity to engage in therapy as much as you’d like to, so getting that support can be super helpful for your recovery. 

Support to reconnect to your body cues

​As you start to feel more settled in your recovery, an Eating Disorder Dietitian can support you to reconnect with your body cues if this feels safe and accessible to you.  Eating Disorders can often disconnect you from your body cues in lots of ways, and an Eating Disorder Dietitian can provide practical support to help you to notice and honour those cues as they arise, whether it’s hunger, fullness, eating what you feel like, meeting your sensory food needs or supporting regular and adequate eating more generally.  So, alongside nutrition education as you see fit, you can also be supported to reconnect with food, your body and yourself.

Collaboration with other team members

​With your consent, an Eating Disorder Dietitian will always collaborate with the rest of your ED team (e.g. GP and psychologist) to ensure that you are well supported.  This can also be helpful so that you don’t have to repeat yourself as much, as rehashing your story all the time can be challenging.  If there are any nutrition-related impacts that your GP and/or psychologist needs to be aware of, your Dietitian can pass this information on with your consent.

I hope this provides a little more insight into how an Eating Disorder Dietitian can support you with your recovery.  I am currently accepting new clients, and you are most welcome to get in touch if you would like to work together.