Emotional and Disordered Eating

Emotional and Disordered Eating is when you have an unhealthy relationship with food and you are using food as a way to control your environment and or regulate your emotions. 

This can be in the form of feeding your feeling as an over eater, engaging in a binge and purge cycle (bulimia) or controlling your intake of food through calorie restriction or drastically controlling calories by undereating (anorexia). These are all classed as eating disorders and will impact every aspect of your life.    

• Do you think you suffer from an Eating Disorder?    
• Are you preoccupied with food and its calories?  
• Do you use food to change the way you feel?  
• Are you secretive about this behaviour?  
• Do you go on food binges, unable to stop yourself?  
• Do you feel guilt and shame around these binges? 
• Do you purge yourself, or swear you’ll never eat like that again after the binge?  
• Are you measuring every morsel of food you eat?  
• Do you limit your food intake?  
• Are you over exercising?  
• Have you given up exercising altogether?  
• Have loved ones voiced concern?    

If you have answered yes to 2 or more of these questions, you are most likely suffering from an eating disorder.    

Emotional and Disordered Eating can cause vast medical issues and can lead to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. There is no one single cause of emotional or disordered eating, it is contributed to genetics, family of origin, trauma (childhood and adulthood) and environmental/social factors.