Eating and Body Image
Finding peace with food, your body, and yourself
Food is meant to nourish, not control or punish.
Yet many people live caught between guilt and craving, trying to manage stress, shame, or emotional pain through eating or restriction.
If you have spent years cycling between control and regret, therapy can help you rebuild a healthier, more compassionate relationship with your body and food.
I specialize in treating eating and body-image concerns. My approach is grounded in evidence-based care and free from judgment, moralizing, or quick fixes.
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Common challenges
Overeating or binge eating that feels out of control
Strict food rules, restriction, or guilt around eating
Obsession with body weight, muscle size, or leanness
Emotional eating during stress or loneliness
Shame, secrecy, or fear of losing control
Exercise that feels compulsive rather than enjoyable
Avoiding social events involving food
Feeling disconnected from hunger, fullness, or pleasure
For many, these behaviors start as a way to regain control or manage anxiety. Over time, they can take on a life of their own, creating exhaustion, isolation, and self-criticism.
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How therapy helps
Understand the cycle.
Identify what drives your eating patterns and the emotions or situations that trigger them.
Rebuild connection with your body.
Learn to recognize hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues rather than relying on rules or judgment.
Challenge distorted beliefs.
Examine internalized ideas about masculinity, control, or perfection that keep the cycle alive.
Rebuilding trust and intimacy.
Replace shame and comparison with awareness and kindness.
Integrate values and behavior.
Learn to eat, move, and live in ways that align with your personal values, not external standards.
My approach
I integrate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and body-awareness practices.
I am also a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS) with over a decade of experience treating eating disorders in both outpatient and higher levels of care.
My work is collaborative, transparent, and tailored to your needs. If appropriate, I coordinate care with registered dietitians, physicians, or other providers so that treatment supports both your psychological and physical health.
For men
Men face unique pressures around body image that are often ignored in mainstream culture.
Messages about strength, control, and perfection can make it hard to admit struggle.
Therapy offers a private, judgment-free space to explore how those expectations shape your relationship with your body and self-worth.
You do not need a diagnosis
You do not have to meet criteria for an “eating disorder” to deserve support.
If your thoughts about food or your body take up too much time, energy, or peace of mind, that is enough reason to reach out.
Many clients start therapy simply wanting to feel less controlled by food and more at ease in their bodies.
If you are recovering from an eating disorder
I provide ongoing outpatient care for clients stepping down from higher levels of treatment or returning to work and daily life.
We will focus on relapse prevention, emotional regulation, and maintaining balance around food, relationships, and identity.
What progress looks like
Eating without guilt or anxiety
Feeling comfortable and connected in your body
Recognizing stress triggers without using food to cope
Enjoying movement as expression, not punishment
Spending less time thinking about food or appearance
Reclaiming energy and confidence to live fully
Ready to start
Healing your relationship with food and your body is not about perfection. It is about trust and freedom.
You can begin at any stage, with no prerequisites other than curiosity and willingness.
We will talk about what has been happening and decide what kind of support best fits your needs.
Book a Free Consultation
The Experience
When you’re living with an eating disorder, there’s not much room for anything else. The obsession with how, when, and what you eat, or don’t eat, takes precedence over everything—your health, your relationships, your hopes, and your dreams. Eating disorders are an all-consuming attack on your body and mind.
Behind every person’s eating struggles is a story not yet told, and emotions not yet discovered or heard. In therapy, you can begin to open up about all of the behaviors, concerns, and feelings that you’d been working hard to hide from others and maybe even from yourself. Opening up takes a lot of courage, but the rewards can be immense as well. You will begin to look at your struggles in a whole new light, and you will acquire new coping strategies to manage your life.
Treatment plays a crucial role for individuals with eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image issues. The earlier treatment begins, the more favorable the outcomes tend to be. Various types of eating disorders can lead to serious side effects, but even when symptoms are not immediately life-threatening, a person's mental, emotional, and physical well-being can be positively impacted over time. Addressing unhealthy food-related behaviors can help restore a sense of control, making daily life more manageable. It's encouraging to note that awareness is growing, although many still hesitate to seek treatment due to the stigma surrounding these conditions.
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It is encouraging to recognize that anyone can find themselves struggling, and that people with eating disorders come from diverse backgrounds. There are specific precursors that may increase susceptibility, such as a history of trauma, family history of eating disorders, addiction, or mental illness.
Many individuals with eating disorders also experience co-occurring mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and personality disorders.
It is worth noting that while women are the most common demographic affected by these conditions, many men, trans, and non-binary individuals also face similar challenges.
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Understanding the distinction between a diagnosable eating disorder and disordered eating can be quite enlightening. Behaviors such as bingeing and purging, fear of gaining weight, or compulsively consuming large amounts of food can occur in both scenarios. The overlapping symptoms can often appear quite similar, which is why collaborating with a mental health professional can provide valuable clarity.
Recovery begins when individuals learn to manage their symptoms effectively. One way to differentiate eating disorders from disordered eating patterns is by assessing the degree and severity of the symptoms. Those exhibiting disordered eating may display certain behaviors without fulfilling the criteria for a formal diagnosis.
If left unaddressed, disordered eating can evolve into a diagnosable eating disorder, such as Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa. Seeking help is particularly important if there are co-occurring symptoms of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or trauma, as these mental health challenges can intensify disordered eating symptoms.
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Recognizing the signs of an eating disorder is crucial for early intervention. If you or someone you love is experiencing these symptoms, seeking professional help at an eating disorder rehab in Los Angeles can be life-changing.
Physical Symptoms
Rapid weight fluctuations
Gastrointestinal complaints, such as bloating or constipation
Fatigue, dizziness, or fainting spells
Irregular menstrual cycles or loss of menstruation
Dry skin, brittle nails, and thinning hair
Behavioral Symptoms
Obsessive calorie counting or food restriction
Compulsive exercise despite exhaustion or injury
Secretive eating habits or skipping meals
Frequent trips to the bathroom after eating
Use of laxatives, diuretics, or other methods to purge calories
Emotional Symptoms
Intense fear of weight gain or being “fat”
Distorted body image or dissatisfaction with appearance
Feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety around eating
Withdrawal from social activities involving food
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In many cases, anxiety is a familiar feeling for those struggling with eating disorders. For many individuals, the onset of an eating disorder begins with a desire to control their situations and environment. When they feel out of control, they may turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as trying to gain control through food, exercise, and weight loss. Managing these aspects can provide a temporary sense of relief from anxiety, although that relief is often short-lived.
For some, treatment for an eating disorder also includes addressing anxiety. Each person’s treatment plan is tailored to their specific therapeutic goals and needs, which is a positive step towards recovery.
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Body image concerns can profoundly affect an individual's self-worth, confidence, and interpersonal connections. For many, fostering a positive body image can seem like a daunting challenge. Nevertheless, mental health support provides essential resources to achieve emotional liberation from harmful perceptions of body image and self-esteem.
Concepts such as body acceptance, body neutrality, and body positivity serve as guiding principles on the path to self-love and profound self-acceptance. Each approach offers practical strategies to confront body dissatisfaction and nurture a more constructive relationship with one’s body, emphasizing a message of acceptance and personal empowerment.
Through therapeutic processes, individuals can examine diverse viewpoints regarding their bodies, recognizing that these perspectives can vary widely. The aim is to uncover a reframing that promotes healing and encourages a compassionate relationship with oneself.
Regardless of whether you are dealing with an eating disorder or disordered eating patterns, you are entitled to validation, empathy, and understanding. It is important to remember that help is always available.
HEALING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FOOD
Regardless of how disordered eating shows up in your life, my work is to help you understand the cause of your eating disorder. We work to process what is underneath the eating disorder, and build skills to manage life’s challenges without the use of food. Once we do this I often see people become less and less focused on food. They begin to enjoy eating food more freely without the desire to restrict. Or they stop using food as a way to avoid their feelings.
The parallel focus is on understanding the connection between food and feelings and developing value based coping mechanisms with emotions which are often the triggers to disordered eating practices and working toward fostering a new way of relating to oneself and one’s body based on self-acceptance and self-compassion. This opens the door to an unfolding process of self-discovery, leading to greater awareness and acceptance of emotions, improved assertiveness in relationships and effectiveness in coping with stressful life situations.
I utilize The Health At Every Size approach in working with adults and adolescents with emotional eating and binge-eating issues. This is a non-diet approach that focuses on stopping the vicious diet-binge cycle and the yo-yo weight loss and regain phenomenon that we have all been so familiar with as part of our current diet culture.
In part, because eating disorders are complex conditions, involving biological, psychological and societal elements. As the combined effect of these elements naturally varies from one individual to another, I offer personalized treatment to cater to an individual’s unique situation, and give them the best chance of recovery.
