When eating, weight and body image take up more headspace than you’d like
You do not need to have an eating disorder for your relationship with eating, weight or your body to feel difficult.
You might find yourself thinking about food far more than you would like, repeatedly going on and off diets, feeling guilty about what you have eaten, or judging yourself according to what the scales say.
Perhaps you are not sure that anything is seriously “wrong”, but you are tired of the amount of mental and emotional energy it all takes.
Sometimes people describe this as food noise — the constant background chatter about what to eat, what not to eat, whether you have eaten too much, whether you should compensate later, or what you need to do differently tomorrow.
It can be exhausting.
When eating starts to feel complicated
You may recognise some of the following:
Frequently thinking about what you have eaten or what you are going to eat
Moving between being “good” with food and feeling that you have “blown it”
Regularly starting a new diet or eating plan
Feeling guilty after eating certain foods
Trying to compensate after eating more than you intended
Skipping meals because you ate too much the day before
Feeling anxious about weight gain
Weighing yourself frequently
Checking or scrutinising your body
Avoiding photographs, mirrors or certain clothes
Comparing your body with other people’s
Feeling uncomfortable eating in front of others
Using food for comfort and then criticising yourself afterwards
Feeling as though your confidence depends on what your body looks like
Spending far more time thinking about food, weight and shape than you would like
None of these automatically means that you have an eating disorder.
But they can still make life smaller and less enjoyable.
The diet cycle
For many people, difficulties with eating are tied up with years of dieting.
You may begin with the intention of being healthier or losing some weight and initially feel motivated and in control. Over time, however, the rules can become increasingly rigid.
Foods become “good” or “bad”. Eating something you had decided not to have can feel like failure. You might then think, “I’ve ruined today anyway”, eat more than you intended and promise yourself that you will start again tomorrow.
That can create a cycle of restriction, overeating, guilt and renewed restriction.
The problem is not necessarily that you lack discipline. Restricting food physically and psychologically can make us think about it more, not less.
Part of our work can be understanding this pattern and finding a way of eating that feels less governed by rules, guilt and repeated attempts to start again.
Food noise
Food noise is not a formal diagnosis, but it is a phrase many people recognise.
It can describe that almost constant stream of thoughts about food:
What am I going to eat later?
Should I really be eating this?
How many calories are in that?
Have I eaten too much today?
Should I skip dinner?
Why can everyone else eat normally?
I'll be better tomorrow.
For some people, those thoughts have been around for so long that they barely notice how much headspace they occupy.
Therapy can provide an opportunity to become curious about those thoughts rather than automatically following or fighting them.
Body image
Feeling uncomfortable in your body does not always mean hating it.
Perhaps your relationship with your body changes from day to day. You might feel relatively comfortable until you see a photograph of yourself, try on certain clothes or compare yourself with somebody else.
You may have spent years believing that you will feel happier, more confident or more acceptable once your body changes.
Body image is about much more than appearance. It can be affected by ageing, relationships, cultural expectations, social media, comments from other people, changes in health, pregnancy, menopause, weight changes and our own experiences over a lifetime.
Therapy does not require you to suddenly love everything about your body.
Sometimes a more realistic aim is to reduce the amount of power that appearance has over how you feel about yourself and to develop a relationship with your body that is less critical and more compassionate.
Emotional eating
Eating can also become a way of managing feelings.
You may notice yourself eating when you are stressed, lonely, bored, angry, overwhelmed or simply exhausted.
Food can provide comfort, stimulation, distraction or a temporary sense of relief. The difficulty often comes afterwards, when eating is followed by guilt and self-criticism.
In therapy, we can begin to understand what the eating is helping you manage, rather than focusing only on trying to stop the behaviour.
That can involve recognising emotional triggers, understanding patterns and gradually developing other ways of responding to difficult feelings.
You do not need a diagnosis
There is a large space between having an uncomplicated relationship with food and meeting the criteria for an eating disorder.
You may hear terms such as disordered eating, chronic dieting, emotional eating or body-image distress used to describe some of these difficulties.
Labels can sometimes be useful, but you do not need one in order to seek help.
If your relationship with eating or your body is affecting your confidence, your mood, your relationships or simply taking up more of your thoughts than you want it to, that is enough to explore.
How I work
My approach is integrative, which means that I adapt the therapy to you rather than using one fixed approach.
We might explore practical patterns around eating alongside the thoughts, feelings and experiences that sit underneath them.
Depending on what is happening for you, our work might include:
Exploring your history with dieting and weight
Understanding food rules and restriction
Reducing guilt and anxiety around eating
Looking at emotional eating and what triggers it
Exploring body image and body checking
Understanding the influence of family, relationships and past experiences
Working with perfectionism and self-criticism
Developing greater awareness of hunger and fullness
Becoming more flexible around food
Exploring how ageing or changes in your body have affected how you see yourself
Understanding ADHD or neurodivergence where this may be relevant
Finding ways of relating to yourself and your body with less judgement
I draw on person-centred therapy, CBT and CBT-E informed approaches, transactional analysis, psychodynamic thinking and psychoeducation, while always adapting the work to the individual in front of me.
I also hold a Master Practitioner qualification in Eating Disorders and Obesity and have specialist training and experience in working with eating difficulties and body image.
It does not have to get worse before you ask for help
Sometimes people worry that their difficulties are not serious enough for therapy.
You may think that because you are eating regularly, functioning well or do not have an eating-disorder diagnosis, you should simply be able to sort this out yourself.
You do not need to wait until your relationship with food or your body becomes more severe.
If eating, weight and body image are taking up more headspace than you would like, therapy can offer somewhere to begin understanding why — and to start finding a different way of relating to them.
Online counselling for eating and body image
I offer online counselling for adults across the UK.
Working online can provide a private and comfortable space to talk openly about food, weight and body image without judgement.
If you would like to talk about whether counselling might be helpful, you are welcome to get in touch.