fbpx

Eating Disorder Nutritionist

Eating Disorder Nutritionist - Seven Health: Eating Disorder Recovery and Anti Diet Nutritionist

Are you in recovery from an eating disorder? Or want to start your recovery journey? Well, I’m pleased to say that you’re in the right place.

My name is Chris Sandel, I’m an eating disorder nutritionist and recovery coach and I help clients recover from a wide range of eating disorders including:

(If you want to find out more about me, you can do so here).

Eating Disorder Nutritionist, Seven Health: Eating Disorder Recovery and Anti Diet Nutritionist

What Is An Eating Disorder?

Eating Disorders are a mental health condition and despite the word “eating” in the title, they are about more than just food. They are characterised by disturbances in behaviours, thoughts and attitudes to food, eating, and body weight or shape.

An eating disorder is a complex and serious condition that negatively impacts your health, your emotions, your relationships and your ability to function in many important areas of life.

Eating disorders do not discriminate. Despite the stereotype of them affecting thin girls and teens, eating disorders occur in people of any age, size, weight, shape, sexuality, gender identity, cultural background or socioeconomic group. 

Many of the behaviours that occur in eating disorders, like the restriction of certain foods or the increased amount of exercise, impact the energy that is available for the body to use for all its functions. So, while eating disorders are characterised as a mental health condition, they have an impact on all aspects of how the body functions.

Physiology is the study of how the body works. It looks at the functions and mechanisms in a living system, like the human body.  My work as an eating disorder nutritionist is all about understanding physiology and how it is being impacted upon by your eating disorder. So that this can be reversed through a process of nutritional rehabilitation.

Eating Disorders Are More Complex Than Just Being About Food

While the word nutritionist in eating disorder nutritionist may make you think that this is just about food, it’s about much more than this. It is looking at all the components of your life that can be impacting physiology.

So, this can include eating, exercise/movement, sleep, and work/life stress. It can include past trauma. It can also include components that may feel more like psychology – things like your identity, values, beliefs, and perceptions – because these areas can all affect the choices that you make and therefore your physiology. 

And making changes is more than just about symptoms improvement. The physiological state that your body is in directly affects the eating disorder. It is in large part what is driving or perpetuating the eating disorder; the eating disorder is a symptom of the state that the body is in. This means that eating disorder recovery is about changing physiology.

Some of the components for doing this are:

  • Nutritional rehabilitation
  • Challenging fear foods
  • Exercise/movement cessation or reduction
  • Neural rewiring
  • Better understanding how the eating disorder is affecting you

Getting Support From An Eating Disorder Nutritionist

Recovery from an eating disorder is challenging and it’s rarely a linear process. But I truly believe in full recovery and as an eating disorder nutritionist, I know the importance of support on your journey.

It can feel scary or embarrassing to seek help for an eating disorder, which is why it’s crucial to get help that is supportive and non-judgemental.

I’ve worked with clients for over a decade, helping them recover from many different types of eating disorders. This experience means I know how to help and am aware of the many pitfalls that can prevent full recovery. (And you don’t have to take my word for it, you can read and listen to what past clients have to say).   

If you want to recover, even if you feel ambivalent, I’d love to have a chat. You can click here to register for a free initial chat, where we can talk about what’s going on and you can find out more about what working together would look like.

I wish you all the best with your recovery and would love to be able to support you through the process.

Eating Disorder Nutritionist, Seven Health: Eating Disorder Recovery and Anti Diet Nutritionist

FAQ

How Does Nutritional Rehabilitation Work?

Nutritional rehabilitation is a key component of eating disorder recovery. Eating disorders deplete the body of what it needs to function and create a state of energy debt. And this can occur irrespective of your weight; it’s not just once your BMI falls below some arbitrary number. Wherever you are on the BMI scale, you can be in a state of malnourishment.

Nutritional rehabilitation is about reversing the energy debt. It means bringing in more food regularly and doing so consistently. And doing this long enough for the body to be able to do all the repair it has missed out on.

Some of the things that we look at as part of nutritional rehabilitation are:

  • Amount – making sure you are taking in enough food for recovery, which can be very different from what you believe you need
  • Type – making sure you aren’t restricting certain types of foods (carbs, fat) and that you are eating foods that are energy-dense and foods that you can digest
  • Timing – making sure that you’re eating food across the day rather than say eating most of your food in the evening

How Can I Challenge Fear Foods?

A hallmark of eating disorders is a fear of certain foods. These fears can be because the food is “unhealthy” or because it will “lead to weight gain”. But whatever the reason for the fear, you typically end up in a place where you have a limited range of allowable foods and a long list of forbidden or off-limit foods.

Often, because it’s difficult to keep up restriction all the time, there are times when “binges” occur and this is can be the only time when certain “unhealthy” or “off-limit” foods are consumed. So, this can further entrench the dichotomy of good and bad foods and increase the fear levels because of the association with when these bad foods are consumed.

As part of recovery, these fear foods need to be challenged. The goal with this is to neutralise your response to all foods so that there is no fear response no matter what you eat. As an eating disorder nutritionist, I know that recovery can’t occur simply by increasing your intake of “healthy” foods and so challenging fear foods is integral to the recovery process. 

Restriction is at the heart of all eating disorders (even binge eating disorder) and while restriction can often be obvious, it can also be rather sneaky. I cover restriction in detail in this podcast and it touches on many of the aspects that we change as part of nutritional rehabilitation and challenging food fears.  

How Can I Modify Exercise And Movement Habits?

As I mentioned earlier, a driving force for why an eating disorder occurs is the low energy state that it creates. As the energy debt increases, the thoughts, feelings and compulsions increase.

And this is especially the case with exercise. Where for many clients, the amount that they do has slowly increased over time. Or if the total amount hasn’t increased, the compulsion to do it has; there is now an inability to take time off.

Exercise uses up energy. Energy that could otherwise be used for the body as part of the repair process. While there can be benefits of exercise, these come about from the rest and repair that occur alongside it. In the case of eating disorders, this is lacking; there is not enough energy to support this repair process. And so it just further pushes you down. 

While I’m using the word exercise here, this can also include other forms of movement that you may not think of as exercise. Walking, cleaning, taking extra trips to the shops, unnecessary walking up and down stairs – these are all common with clients.  

As an eating disorder nutritionist, my goal is to move you out of energy debt and assist in your nutritional rehabilitation and repair. This means making changes to exercise. This will usually mean a period of cessation from exercise or at the very least a significant reduction in what you’re doing.  

Eating Disorder Nutritionist, Seven Health: Eating Disorder Recovery and Anti Diet Nutritionist

How Does Being In Energy Debt Affect My Brain?

Being in energy debt affects all parts of the body and the brain is not excluded from this. 

Some of this can be connected to low blood sugar and how this affects thinking and perception. But the brain matter can also shrink and these physical changes can lead to changes in personality, beliefs, thoughts and behaviours.

This is why increasing the energy balance is so important, as this energy reverses these changes and facilitates recovery.

But in addition to energy intake, there needs to be a learning of new habits and patterns of behaviour at the brain level, which is known as neural rewiring. 

You may have heard the phrase “cells that fire together, wire together”. It means is that the more often you do something, the more it becomes entrenched. 

This is why making changes to eating, challenging food fears, and changing exercise habits is so important. By doing this for long enough, you change the wiring of the brain: new habits become normal and natural and old habits no longer feel like the default way of doing things.

How Can I Better Understand How My Body Recovers?

One of the most challenging aspects of recovery is that the body doesn’t recover in the manner that you would like it to. Certain symptoms in the short term can get worse before they get better. It can lead to aches, pains, swelling and water retention. You gain weight. You can have times over experiencing extreme hunger. The list goes on.

Understandably this experience can range from confusing to overwhelming to alarming.

But despite how this feels and how much the body isn’t responding in the manner that you would like, there is a method to the madness. These changes are following a predictable path.

One of my jobs as an eating disorder nutritionist is education. It is explaining about what to expect during the process. It’s explaining why symptoms are arising when they do. It’s helping to assure you that you are on the right path when the eating disorder is telling you that you’re doing something wrong.

Getting Support From An Eating Disorder Nutritionist

I’ve worked with clients for over a decade, helping them recover from many different types of eating disorders. This experience means I know how to help and am aware of the many pitfalls that can prevent full recovery. (And you don’t have to take my word for it, you can read and listen to what past clients have to say).   

If you want to recover, even if you feel ambivalent, I’d love to have a chat. You can click here to register for a free initial chat, where we can talk about what’s going on and you can find out more about what working together would look like.