COUNSELOR'S CORNER

What should you know about eating disorders?

Food can block out feelings and emotions.

People with eating disorders think about and use food in ways that are physically and emotionally destructive.

An eating disorder changes relationships with friends and family as the focus on food and eating increases.

Eating disorders don’t discriminate. They affect people of all ages, both genders, from all works of life, and all ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

Eating disorders don’t just happen. They have a logic, initially serve a purpose in your life, and may be triggered by a specific life event.

Why do I need a counselor?

The philosophy of this center is to treat the whole person-Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Spiritual to aid in eating disorders. We want to do everything we can to ensure a successful, long-term outcome. To this end, either individual or group therapy may enhance your chances of success.

Does psychotherapy help with eating disorders?

Psychotherapy offers strategies aimed at recognizing and changing maladaptive behaviors associated with eating disorders; it also identifies and addresses the psychological stressors in interpersonal and family relationships, major losses, and traumatic events that may have lead to development of an eating disorder.

What does behavioral modification mean and what is the association to eating disorders?

Losing weight is only the beginning of a weight loss program. The more critical stage is maintaining the weight loss. Maintaining weight loss involves what is called behavior modification -- changing behaviors that are associated with eating. Frequently, eating is associated with emotional or social situations, and not related to hunger. For example, some people eat when they become upset or nervous, while other people eat when they become bored. In social situations, it is common practice to eat regardless of appetite.

Behavior modification deals with identifying behaviors that are associated with eating and working to change them. If eating results from stress, you have to work on learning stress reduction techniques. If it results from boredom, learning to structure your time constructively is a good approach.

Behavior change focuses on learning eating and physical activity behaviors that will help you lose weight and keep it off.

Do psychological factors influence eating habits?

Psychological factors may also influence eating habits. Many people eat in response to negative emotions such as boredom, sadness, or anger. Many people over eat when they're stressed, bored or angry. Over time, the association between an emotion and food can become firmly fixed.

Why do I binge eat?

No one knows for sure what causes binge eating disorder. As many as half of all people with binge eating disorders have been depressed in the past. Whether depression causes binge eating disorder or whether binge eating disorder causes depression is not known.

Many people who are binge eaters say that being angry, sad, bored, or worried can cause them to binge eat. Binging is a way to hide from emotions, to fill a void felt inside, and to cope with daily stresses and problems in one’s life. These emotional issues need to be addressed.

What is Cognitive-Behavioral therapy?

Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches people how to keep track of their eating and change their unhealthy eating habits

Do men have eating disorders?

Statistics show there has been an explosion in recent years in the number of men with eating disorders. Recent studies suggest men account for 16% of eating disorder cases, and authors of Making Weight speculate the number may be even higher.

Many of the underlying issues that contribute to an eating disorder including low self-esteem, depression, feeling of loss of control, abuse, identity concerns, inability to cope with emotions and family communication problems, are the same for both men and women.

Men with eating disorders for example, are more concerned with body size and shape, whereas women with eating disorders are more concerned with weight.

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