When you constantly feel like you're trying to whip your body into shape or keep your body under control, it’s hard to imagine any other option - but with the right support, there can be.

 

Perhaps you have spent months or years, controlling every aspect of your physical appearance and shape, either with restrictive eating, or relentless exercise.  Or perhaps you feel like you are constantly trying to gain control over your body and "failing".  You start out each day promising to be "good" and not eat anything "bad" and end the day having "blown it" in a binge or steady stream of "just one more" snack.  Or you are able to stick to a plan for the week and then "cheat" on the weekends, resulting in obsessively watching the scale that never moves.  Or perhaps you are stuck in a see-saw of bingeing and purging, or using other compensatory behaviors.  Or the never ending cycle of weight loss and regain (and thensome).  

 

It's exhausting constantly fighting your body or trying to control it.  And, news flash, it doesn't work.  Because you are punishing someone you should be loving and nurturing.  So of course you are going to want to "cheat" or "be bad."  Even the language I used in the paragraph above, illustrates just how punishing and black and white, all or nothing, we think about food and body and diet and exercise. 

​

Whether you are living in a larger body or a smaller one, you are safe here.  We will work together to help you shift to a mindset that nurtures and supports your body, mind and spirit.  

​

You may be struggling with an eating disorder if:

 

• You are restricting your eating

• You are using compensatory behaviors like exercise, purging, etc.

• You are or have repeatedly lost and regained weight

• You do not like what you see in the mirror or in photos,

despite what other people tell you

• You find yourself constantly thinking about food or exercise

​

These are all common signs of eating disorders.  It may be time to get the support you need, want, and deserve.  

​

​​

 

​​​​Hi, I’m Sue Brekka

Eating Disorders Therapist in Los Angeles, CA.

​

​

​

​

I know what it's like to feel stuck in the constant food noise and diet culture that just seems to get more and more pervasive.  Whether that be Insta or Tik Tok advice on how to "get control", "have the body you want", etc.  Or if it's the medical doctors who seem to use "lose weight" as the answer for every illness they don't have an answer for.  

​

A note about bariatric surgery and weight loss drugs.  You may find eating disorders therapists who have very strong feelings about people having bariatric surgery or using GLP-1 or GLP-2 medications.  You will not find judgment here.  There are positive and negative aspects to these tools.  For some, having bariatric surgery or going on the weight loss medications is the first time in their memory that they have experienced a lack of "food noise".   That can be life-changing for a lot of people.  The key is that we want to be continuing to do the work on the psychology of eating disorders while you implement these tools, so that if you go off the medication, you don't immediately gain back the weight and then some, and so that with bariatric surgery, your disordered relationship with food doesn't flip into another disorder, shift into another addiction, or lead to countering the surgery "one teaspoon of peanut butter at a time."  

 

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, you don’t need another diet, or restrictive, controlling behavior modification approach - but you need an experience eating disorders therapist who can help you get to the root of the problem and effect deep, lasting change.

 

​