What is an Eating Disorder Coaches? They are specially trained individuals with the ability to offer expert support. It is important that you have someone helping you identify the issues in your life that are causing you to overeat, as well as offering support when you are eating. An Eating Disorders Professional, such as a Clinical Nurse Specialist, an Occupational Therapist or even a Psychology Coach, will have many treatment tools at their disposal to help you. They are there to educate you and help you develop healthy eating habits. Below is an outline of what an Eating Disorders Coaches will do for you.
The First Step: The first step that your eating disorder recovery coach will take you on is to determine the root cause of your problem. This may include some family dysfunction, a history of abuse, childhood obesity or just plain old “not being hungry enough”. Once you know the cause, you are ready to start your journey to healing. Your coach will design an intervention plan that takes into account your unique circumstances and your unique personality. He or she will then provide a personalized treatment plan tailored just for you! This plan will be based on proven behavioral therapy techniques, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy and psychoanalytic therapy.
The Second Step: Within eating disorder recovery coaching, your counselor will teach you how to increase your body image. Specifically, your counselor will teach you how to increase your confidence, improve your self-esteem and how to develop and maintain healthy relationships within your new relationship with yourself and your new coach. Self-esteem plays a vital role in helping us feel and act confident. If we feel inadequate, it is nearly impossible to gain self-confidence and self-esteem. The body image that we have can make all the difference.
The third step: Eating disorders do not just “go away”. You may think that you have reached an “end” or that this particular problem is “unvable”, but nothing could be further from the truth! Most eating disorders, however, only require one or two attempts at recovery before you reach complete recovery. The majority of individuals that go on to form successful and lifelong relationships and are successful in their personal and career lives never even considered themselves to be suffering from an eating disorder.
The Fourth Step: During your recovery, your coach will teach you how to gain back control of your life. This is done through intuitive wisdom. Intuitive wisdom is the ability to know the answer before others who may not share the same insight. Many people who suffer from eating disorders develop these false beliefs or thoughts that “these” behaviors must be true. When you come to believe these false beliefs, you begin to do the things that are in direct opposition to them-which usually results in controlling or adopting behaviors that are in direct opposition to your goals.
The fifth step: Overcoming your eating disorder requires you to become self-aware. It is not enough to be aware of your illness, you must also become self-aware of the behaviors and thoughts you are having leading up to your illness. These behaviors or thoughts often lead to denial, depression, and ultimately, complete recovery. Your intuitive wisdom will tell you that denial is the worst kind. If you do not want to continue living like an outcast, you must put a stop to the denial. You can do this with the help of your intuitive eating therapist or support group.
Lastly, you must learn how to create a healthy balance between your eating disorder and your life. When you eat, your brain signals your body to take action. If your body doesn’t have the appropriate “signal” to tell you that it needs to consume food, then you won’t eat. This often leads to extreme behaviors such as overeating, compulsive eating, bulimia, or even over exercising. Your intuitive wisdom will tell you that if you cannot create a healthy balance between your eating disorder and your life, you will never fully recover.
The above descriptions are just a few of the many indicators your intuitive voice may be giving you. The above descriptions are meant as a general guideline to give you an idea of what your lived experience is really like. However, your recovered state can only be fully grasped by a licensed professional if you allow them to access your personal history and circumstances-including the current state of your eating disorder behaviors.
