Food and body can be stressful and concerns about eating too much or too little and how you see yourself, judge yourself, or evaluate yourself in the eyes of others can become debilitating, preoccupying, and even dangerous to your health. Are you struggling to stop eating when you are full or even struggling to recognise if you are hungry or full? Maybe, you eat for the comfort it brings and experience cravings for food or eat mindlessly and too much. Perhaps, you’re checking yourself in mirrors and windows and focussing on parts of your body that you experience as “fat”, or “ugly”, or other words that diminish you in some way. Perhaps, you’re bingeing and throwing up afterwards, or over-exercising. Sometimes, you find yourself counting calories, focussing on what you eat, limiting what you eat, cutting out foods you consider “bad”. Maybe, you talk about body and health often, when you’re really talking about “skinny”, “thin”, or other ideas that seem to be aspirations rather than healthy attributes. 

Disordered eating and eating disorders are fairly common in everyday life, and some eating- and body-related issues can be debilitating for people and for their families. The experience of “food crazy” can become overwhelming and perpetuate feelings of self-loathing and self-judgement that become a way of being in the world, often feeling like it will never end. Disordered eating has various forms of treatment depending on what the presentation is and can have successful outcomes for many people.