Intuitive Eating and Health At Every Size

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What is Health At Every Size (HAES)?

Health at every size, HAES, is a health promotion model which encourages a focus on health and wellbeing for people of all shapes and sizes, including restoring a healthy relationship with food, listening to your hunger and fullness, managing emotions and distress without eating, and encouraging movement and physical activity for the enjoyment and positive benefits it brings, rather than for weight loss.


The sad truth about weight loss diets

Calorie restricting diets don’t lead to long term, sustainable weight loss. They just don’t. Time and time again research has show that 95% of people who start a diet or restrict their eating to lose weight don’t lose weight over the long term (ie over a year), and a significant proportion of people will regain more weight than they lost. There is so much evidence for this, and yet most people who have dieted without weight loss success blame themselves: they say they have ‘failed’, that they ‘lack willpower’ or that they ‘need to try harder’ or try a different diet. This just isn’t true, yet this myth really persists. In contrast, our approach is to encourage you to focus on self care for the body you have now, to develop a healthy relationship with food and your body and to find a form of movement that you enjoy.

How can a psychologist help me with disordered eating and body concerns?

Psychologists specialise in helping people understand how their thoughts, feelings and behaviours interact, and in changing their behaviour. Our thoughts, feelings and behaviours play an enormous role in determining when and what we eat, how much we eat, and how we then feel.

If you have already tried dieting or restricting your food intake, or if you struggle with comfort or emotional eating or binge eating, ask yourself these two questions:
 how much of your distress around eating comes from the your thoughts about yourself (I’m lazy, I can’t do this, I have no willpower, what’s wrong with me), or your thoughts about food (I can’t eat bread, carbs are bad, I deserve a treat, I’ll start again tomorrow, it’s rude not to clean my plate), and your feelings about eating (guilt, shame, hopelessness, disappointment, fear). For most people this is a pretty HIGH number. This shows how important our thoughts and emotions about food and eating really are.

Then ask yourself the second question: how much energy and effort have you put into changing these thoughts and feelings (ie a psychological approach), compared to the effort and energy you have put into controlling what you eat? (ie dieting). For most people, this is a pretty LOW number.

Addressing these psychological factors can help you to change your relationship with eating and your body. Imagine how much mental and emotional energy you could regain if you no longer thought about and felt bad about your eating, weight or body shape. Imagine how much time and money you could save over the rest of your life if you stopped paying for diet plans, diet books, diet “food”, diet “support groups”, unused gym memberships etc. What else could you do with all that spare time and money?

Instead of trying to follow the advice of a social media influencer, give yourself the best chance of finally making peace with your body by working with a trained and experienced therapist who knows what they’re talking about.

Help with over-eating, binge eating and comfort eating

If you struggle with over eating, comfort eating or bingeing, you’re eating when you’re not physically hungry, or you eat past the point of satiety (enough). If you’re not eating due to hunger, then something else is triggering the urge to eat. I can help you learn to distinguish physical hunger from other triggers to eat- such as emotional distress, boredom or tiredness – teach you to cope with these triggers in more healthy ways which don’t involve eating, and help you to stop eating when you’ve had enough.

Help for under eating, restrictive eating, dieting and yo-yo dieting

If you struggle with dieting, under eating or restrictive eating, then I can help you learn to pay attention to your body’s natural hunger cues, to learn to trust these cues as guide to when to eat, to gradually broaden your eating habits, to move your focus from your weight to your overall health and wellbeing, to improve your body image and self care, and to  develop a positive, rather than punitive, relationship with exercise and movement.

Support after bariatric surgery

While bariatric surgery for weight loss forces you to change the amount of food you can eat at any one time, it of course doesn’t change the underlying thoughts and feelings about food, eating, your body or exercise. I can help you address these thoughts and feelings, so you don’t just keep repeating old habits and patterns.  I’ll focus on long term health and wellbeing, not weight loss.  

Support for eating disorder recovery

Eating disorders are serious psychological disorders which often effect people’s hunger and fullness signals, so we adapt intuitive eating principles when people are recovering from eating disorders, and combine them with eating disorder therapies.

About eating disorders

Learn about eating disorders and separate the facts from fiction.

Eating disorder treatment

We help young people and adults recover from an eating disorder.

Eating disorder resources

Books and online resources we recommend.
Finding Balance Psychology is no longer accepting referrals for young people and families, but we welcome referrals for adults 18 years and over.