While underlying thoughts and emotions remain at the core of a person’s illness and recovery, their relationship with food, eating and nutrition can play a major role in inhibiting or promoting the recovery process. Throughout the program, many opportunities are provided for patients to incorporate and practice their new balanced approach to eating.

 

While ED symptoms and behaviors can vary from person to person and between different eating disorder diagnoses, an unhealthy focus on food and/or nutrition is often present.  Individuals with EDs often have extensive and detailed knowledge about nutrition, but may be applying it in ways that inhibit rather than promote their health. In other cases, individuals may be rigidly adhering to nutrition information that is inaccurate, misleading or dangerous.  

 

Below is a list of behaviors and experiences commonly observed in individuals with eating disorders:

 

• Chronic/Severe dieting

• Eliminating specific food items

• Eliminating entire food groups or categories of foods

• Obsessive calorie counting, monitoring of nutrition labels or precise measuring of foods

• Labeling foods as good vs. bad, clean vs. dirty, or relying on safe foods vs. fear foods

• Difficulty eating around other people or in social situations

• Extreme difficulty making decisions about food, as when ordering off of a menu at a restaurant