Adult Counseling
Teen counseling
Young adult counseling
Online therapy
Individual
family
Therapy services
Group
Do you struggle with your relationship with food?
Are you dissatisfied with your body, your physical appearance, and wish you could change it?
Do you restrict your food intake or follow a strict calorie count?
Has binging ever been present, sometimes so much that you feel the need to purge?
Have you ever punished yourself with exercise or over-exercised in order to not feel guilty?
Does it feel like you’ve been dieting your whole life?
Are you ready to let go of the scale and stop letting your size dictate your life?
Are you or someone you love struggling with body image issues or disordered eating?
Living with disordered eating and a negative body image can control your life. It effects your mental health. It can take you away from moments of joy, rob you of opportunities, and occupy your brain all day.
You might feel like no matter what you do, you’re never good enough.
Living with disordered eating and a negative body image can control your life. It effects your mental health. It can take you away from moments of joy, rob you of opportunities, and occupy your brain all day.
You might feel like no matter what you do, you’re never good enough.
New diets and exercise routines are constantly prescribed by our society. These messages tell us that we can achieve the perfect body and perfect health, and that life won’t be good until then. When these inevitably don’t work, you might feel like a failure. This cycle can be vicious and is exhausting.
If You or Someone You Love Has Body Image Concerns and Battle Internally Over Food, We Can Help.
low self-esteem
chronic dieting
restrictive eating
binge eating over eating and compulsive eating
disordered eating
negative thoughts about food and body
negative body image
We help people who struggle with
It’s easy to fall on the spectrum of disordered eating when there have been so many food rules and expectations placed on us since we were born. We’ve been taught the importance of being thin and that thin equals healthy.
Our society often equates being thin to being successful, desireable, respectable. With impeccable health and thinness being a value that has been engrained in us, it’s easy to end up on the treadmill of trying to obtain that.
You are not alone if you have lived your life with food rules, restrictions and expectations for yourself and your body. You are also not alone if you are tired of living this way and want to find peace and acceptance. The expectations for people’s bodies can’t be the same for everybody and we’re here to support if you’re ready to come home to you.
Almost All of Us Have Some Type of Disordered Eating or Body Image Struggles
Our goal is to help you find positivity in food and your body through an Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size (HAES) lens in addition to traditional therapeutic approaches (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to name a few).
We have created an inclusive environment that thrives on the principle of acceptance across ALL bodies regardless of size, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, cultural expectations, and cultures. And, we will help you understand the biases, norms and expectations put in place by all of theses systems and indentities.
By letting go of external expectations, we can help you learn to become more in-tune to your needs. We can help nourish your relationship with food, increase happiness in movement, and find freedom.
We want to help restore the joy in your journey towards health in hopes that our clients can live rich and full lives.
We Can Help You Find Peace With Your Body
We understand that disordered eating is typically related to other struggles that you might be having in your life. Negative thoughts about your body are just the beginning. You may also be experiencing anxiety, depression, shame, stress, burnout, or uncertainty. Our therapists work to understand the whole person and all the different parts that make up you and your life. We work with you to identify the roots cause of your difficulties so that you can make lasting change.
Body Image Struggles Aren’t The Only Struggle I Have
Make food choices that honor your preference and body‘s need. Honor your body by balancing what you eat over time rather than day by day. Being healthy doesn’t mean only eating certain foods deemed to be healthy; it’s finding balance with what you enjoy eating and what your body finds nourishing over time.
10. Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition.
Shift your focus to how it feels to move, rather than how many calories you are burning. When you learn to be intune with the positive feelings that come with movement – more energy, strength, accomplishment can lead to more movement and a healthier relationship with movement. You may enjoy chosing to go for a walk over snoozing or watching another show.
9. Movement – Feel the Difference.
Accept the genetics you were blessed with. All bodies are different; even within in families. When you are able to learn how to see and treat your body with dignity and respect, healing, acceptance and freedom follow.
8. Respect Your Body.
Often we turn to food to comfort ourselves when we experience uncomfortable feelings. You may find yourself eating when you are anxious, bored, lonely, angry to sooth instead of feeling the feelings as they come up, acknowledge them with compassion and learn to cope effectively without using food to numb, distract or avoid. Food won’t solve the problem you are facing and in fact, may lead to you feeling worse in the long run.
7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness.
Learn to honor when you feel full. Take pauses while you eat to get to know the way your bodyfeels when it has had enough and when it needs more. Becoming intune with when you are full and honoring that feeling helps you build trust with yourself and your relationship with food.
6. Feel Your Fullness.
“When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes just the right amount of food for you to decide you’ve had “enough.” – Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the Original Intuitive Eating Pros.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor.
The food police are those thoughts and voices in your head that equate “good” with eating certain foods and “bad” with eating others. Learning to say “no” to these policing voices can be hard and can lead to a sense of freedom from being ruled by food.
4. Challenge the Food Police.
Take the “shoulds” out of eating and enjoy eating what you want. Giving yourself permission to eat the foods you enjoy, yet prohibit yourself from eating, reduces the liklihood of binging on these forbidden foods and a following shame spiral.
3. Make Peace with Food.
2. Honor Your Hunger.
Keeping your body nourished throughout the day with adequate energy helps regulate your mood and keeps you from over eating out of excessive hunger. Learning to recognize when you are hungry and nourishing your body with what it needs helps to rebuild trust in yourself and in food.
Diet culture has caused great harm in people’s ideals and quest for health. Dieting doesn’t work long-term in weight management for most people. In fact, the majority of people who restrict food gain more weight back once the diet stops working for them. Dieting can turn into obsession over finding the next trend in weightloss and health. Dieting prevents you from being able to eat intuitively what your body needs.
1. Reject the Diet Mentality.
There are 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:
Intuitive Eating focuses on the client being the expert of their body and increasing attunement to internal cues. In other words, we will help you to become more aware of what your body needs and provide support around emotional obstacles that prevent you from connecting with those needs. Diet culture can be extremely harmful to our mental and physical health.
What is Intuitive Eating?
What is Intuitive Eating?
There are 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:
1. Reject the Diet Mentality.
2. Honor Your Hunger.
3. Make Peace with Food.
4. Challenge the Food Police.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor.
6. Feel Your Fullness.
7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness.
8. Respect Your Body.
9. Movement – Feel the Difference.
10. Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition.
BODY IMAGE STRUGGLES AREN’T THE ONLY STRUGGLE I HAVE
Health at Every Size (HAES) is a body positive, fat positive, size diverse movement that runs on the principle that we cannot determine health based on someone’s size or body weight.
The idea is that well-being and taking care of your body and health are more important than your weight on a scale.
The goal is to define weight in a more inclusive way by eliminating weight stigma, respecting that bodies are diverse and we are all different, and improving health access to everyone.
It is a movement that looks beyond traditional ideals of health equals thin.
The focus is on eating and moving for health, function, well-being, and pleasure vs eating for weight management and unrealistic body ideals.
What is Health at Every Size (HAES)?
What to Expect from Our Therapists in Denver
At the end of the first meeting you and your therapist will know your therapy goals and establish a method to achieve them.
Ongoing sessions are 50-minutes and vary in cost based on clinician and certifications. During these sessions, you will share more of your story and learn tools along the way to help manage your body image concerns and thrive in the body you have now.
Create therapy goals
Should you choose to work with one of our body image counselors, you will schedule an initial 90-minute intake appointment.
During this first session, we want to get to know more about you and your health journey. We are careful not to make this too overwhelming and won’t get into anything too deep this first meeting.
Schedule your intake appointment
We will help you decide who might be the best fit for your unique needs and schedule a consultation between you and one of our specialized therapists.
Therapists are matched based on a variety of factors to ensure that you receive the most effective care possible and that you feel comfortable working with the therapist for your specific and unique needs.
Choose your therapist
Schedule a complimentary 20-minute consult to discuss your concerns with one of our body image counselors. She will walk you through the process of getting onboarded and scheduling your first appointment.
SCHEDULE A CONSULT
Thank you!
To book your complimentary consultation, call our office using the call button below and take the first step towards better mental health today.
Contact us today to book a 20-minute consult
Book a complimentary consultation
