Anorexia Therapy
Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa, Located in Las Vegas and Serving all of Nevada and Florida Virtually
Let’s face it: scrutinizing our bodies and obsessing about food and weight is part of the day-to-day of *a lot* of people’s lives. But sometimes, what seems like “lowkey” body drama slips into something else, an even darker and more sinister place that’s hard to come out of. And before you know it, it’s ruling your life.
Welcome to anorexia. You’ll hate it here.
Anorexia, straight out of the Seventh Level of Hell.
At a certain point, it can seem like counting calories and “watching what you eat” is just a part of life. I mean, it makes sense. Lots of trends in our culture promote anorexia—they’re just layered with a tacky filter on top so you don’t really see. Think: Weight Watchers, intermittent fasting, keto diets, paleo diets, juice fasting. And don’t even get us started on things like The Grapefruit Diet, The Raw Food Diet, and The Maple Syrup Diet. They’ve got to be kidding… Nope. They’re serious. Seriously bordering on promoting Anorexia. Ooof.
So what is anorexia, really? What does it look like?
Do I have Anorexia?
If you’re struggling with anorexia, you’re probably finding that all you do is think about food. When your next meal is, what it will be. How little you’ll eat of it. How you won’t eat at all. And then, when you finally make your choices, you live in a world of fear that the food will somehow immediately stick to your thighs or make your belly protrude. You might obsess about exercise, measure your body with your hands, count calories, read food labels, track your steps, weigh your food, or some other series of obsessive food and body-checking rituals.
Good grief, it’s so boring.
But thinking about food is all you can do, really. It’s the nature of the beast. And unfortunately, all that thinking still gets you nowhere. You feel fat and miss-shapen no matter how low the number on the scale drops. No matter how much you exercise or how little you eat, you never feel like you’ve reached your goal. It feels like nothing you do is ever good enough.
When it comes to nailing down what anorexia is, a couple of different factors come through loud and clear: you might be struggling with anorexia if you don’t eat enough, on purpose, and because you’re scared of gaining weight. Here’s where it gets tricky, you might just be living in a world of delusion, believing your one meal a day or your 1200 calorie diet is somehow “enough”. Someone deep in anorexia typically doesn’t agree with the assessment that they are not eating enough.
But there’s a little more to it than just that, and listen real good here, because this is probably the most important thing I could tell you: anorexia doesn’t look like just one thing. It doesn’t look like hollowed cheeks and bones sticking out, though it can; it can look like curvy bodies, too. It doesn’t look like salads and apples, though it can; it can look a lot like a series of fad diets or attempts at your own made up diet plan. Or, maybe it looks like a normal, balanced diet on the surface, but with portions so tiny and irregular that there aren’t enough nutrients to sustain life.
Did you know that it takes 1200 calories a day to sustain a TODDLER? Yeah… that’s right. Your “healthy lifestyle” is barely keeping you alive. No wonder you’re tired and cold all the time.
Risk factors for Anorexia include genetics, low self-esteem, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, perfectionism, a history of sexual abuse or other trauma, being an athlete, engaging in various diets, or big life changes that make you feel like you may be spinning out of control. Some folks don’t seem to have any of these risk factors, yet they still end up with this thing called anorexia…. Either way, it sucks!
You may be thinking you don’t actually have an eating disorder because you’re not underweight. That’s fair, society tells us bein emaciated is a mandatory part of having an eating disorder. We’ve got news to you. That’s a bunch of BS. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, less than 6% of people diagnosed with an eating disorder are medically diagnosed as underweight. Less than SIX percent!
Anorexia spans all ages, and it truly affects people everywhere. .6% of adults are diagnosed with anorexia in their lives. That may not seem like much, but factor in the 2.58.3 million adults in the United States and that makes approximately 15,498,000 people with anorexia. The lifetime prevalence is also three times higher among women than men, and 56.2% of people have a comorbidity with another mental health condition. (In other words more than half of people with anorexia also meet criteria for some other mental health diagnosis (common comorbidities include generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder). With all these mental health issues that seem to go along with anorexia, therapy just might be a good idea….
It’s more common than you may realize.
Symptoms of Anorexia
You probably already know that anorexia is… bad, to say the least. So you’re probably over here like, shit, man, do we really have to go over all of the terrible things that can happen to me thanks to this godawful disease?
Sure. Maybe you’re the kind of person that thrives on scare tactics.
But keep in mind, you don’t have to have ANY of these symptoms to meet criteria for Anorexia. (And we really hope you don’t)
So, here it goes: The symptoms of anorexia nervosa are more or less the same symptoms of malnutrition. These include loss of your menstral cycle, gastrointestinal issues, respiratory issues, cardiovascular irregularities, shitty skin, hair loss, fatigue, dizziness, and too much or not enough sleep. Anorexia can trigger hypoglycemia, which can induce seizures and headaches. It can lead to weak bones, which can escalate to osteoporosis, and a slow heart rate, which can escalate to heart failure.
A person with anorexia might feel cold, really cold, literally all the time. Your body might start to grow fine hair, all over, in an effort to preserve body heat. Because your body doesn’t have enough energy (calories!) to do so. And body hair is definitely not bad. But, with all the obsession on appearance, the last thing you want to do is end up looking like a Wookie. And, particularly horrifying is that studies show people with anorexia have less grey brain matter, sometimes in similar amounts to those with diagnosed Alzheimer’s. Yes, that’s right, years of restrictive eating can actually lead to brain damage. There’s a lot more we won’t get into here because let’s face it, you’ve probably already determined you are exempt from the statistic.
What’s most important to note here is anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. And because of this statistic we take Anorexia and most any restrictive eating very seriously. Therapy for anorexia is probably a no-brainer at this point… right?
We get it, you are exempt from the consequences of Anorexia because you aren’t THAT bad.
Maybe you’re here reading all of this and thinking to yourself, some of this sounds like me, but not all of it. Or, maybe, yep, this is me alright, but I’m not really… that sick. I don’t need therapy for anorexia, because I have it all under control. My friend, “under control” is a myth when it comes to eating disorders. It’s the very myth that feeds it. Let’s break that shit down like a cardboard box and put it out on the curb for trash day.
Allow us to burst your bubble. You do not have control. If you had control you could show up at a potluck and try a bit of everything that looked good, without overanalyzing Every. Single. Bite. or ruminating over the ingredients. If you had control you could spend a week on the beach sipping your favorite drinks and indulging in your favorite meals without feeling a deep sense of impending doom about the “repercussions” of relaxing. People that are in control order popcorn when they go to a movie. They enjoy coffee drinks and pastries with friends. They eat cake on their birthday.
Sure, maybe you aren’t suffering any medical consequences, and you blend in with the rest of the world pretty damn well. But let’s face it, you’re here on this page for a reason. People that don’t have a screwed-up relationship with food don’t usually surf our website in their spare time.
You’re actually here because you want to know about therapy for anorexia. And at Recovery Unfiltered, anorexia therapy looks like this:
Learn to trust your body
When you eat, you likely keep a running tally of what you consume because you feel like your body can't be trusted. Maybe you keep track in an app or you just obsessively review things in your head. Or perhaps there is no safe amount of food, the less the better, why count, it’s all bad. You have some underlying belief that any amount of food could turn you into a whale by Saturday. Your body feels like a thing that you are constantly trying to control and manage. We get that, we really do. At Recovery Unfiltered we can help you let go of the scale, and let go of the constant counting. (We know this sounds like a terrifying proposal today, but give us a chance before you knock it). We can help you learn to love yourself unconditionally so you can feel confident in your skin and not go running for the hills at the thought of a swimming suit.
Find Freedom with food
You probably can’t sit down for a meal without hearing a relentless voice in your head telling you how guilty you should be feeling for consuming it. And then there’s the actual eating part of it. Maybe you limit yourself to one meal a day. Maybe you only eat certain foods, at certain times, in certain quantities, that are just shy of enough to sustain life (even though the voice has you convinced you’re a glutton). We’ve been there. At Recovery Unfiltered, we help you shift your negative associations with certain foods, or food in general, so you can see food as fuel, pleasure, comfort, and even FUN. You know, kind of like a 3 year old that just eats when he’s hungry and stops when he’s full and then goes on to pursue more important things like toy cars and running naked in the sprinklers. Remember that?
Heal your trauma
You’ve probably grown up watching your friends compare their bodies to other people’s, or maybe you were the friend who was doing the comparing. Your mom might’ve droned on about her “cheat days” all throughout your childhood, or whispered into your ear about what you should or should not eat. Maybe you were bullied for being the fat kid at summer camp, or you were kicked out of gymnastics for going through puberty. We’ll be the first to tell you, that shit takes a toll. Maybe you’ve got bigger fish to fry; you found your brother hanging from the ceiling fan, or your dad used you as a punching bag. We are all about addressing the big shit too. Let’s unpack it all, together, arm and arm, and free you from the drama that keeps you stuck in disordered eating.
Be supported unconditionally
Anorexia is a lonely and often times embarrassing disorder. You likely skip out on all of the social gatherings that include food, or you go but spend the entire time in a hell of your own. Anorexia can make you feel like a bit of a freak. Maybe you’re overly picky, or you cut up your food into tiny bites so it *looks* like you’re eating when you’re actually not. Perhaps you dip carrots in mustard and call it a meal (don’t get any ideas). We get it. Anorexia can make you do some weird shit and that weird shit can make you a loner. At Recovery Unfiltered we don’t judge you. We will create time together where you don’t feel like a freak. At Recovery Unfiltered you also have the option of joining our recovery community and taking part in weekly group therapy where you no longer have to hide your crazy.
Eating Disorders suck.
Therapy for Anorexia can be hard, but regret is harder.
Let’s face it, if you were going to recover from this on your own, you would have done it already. Clearly you are missing something. Maybe therapy would help?
Look, it doesn't matter where you are on the eating disorder spectrum—you don't need to be a toothpick to ask for help. And besides, you’ve heard it before: healing isn't linear. It’s going to be quite the journey, so you’d be best served by starting sooner rather than later. There’s really never going to be a good time to do hard shit. Never.
So stop wasting precious moments and call us so you can get on the road to the good stuff, like going out to eat with your friends or having a gnarly, guilt-free slice of chocolate cake.
You might be wondering, how is therapy going to fix my anorexia?
Honestly, it's not. We can't “fix” anorexia. We are fresh out of magic beans. Recovery is 100% yours for the taking and only you have the power to take it.
Our job is to shine a light in the darkness so you can see the path. Maybe even find the door or point you toward the key.
Even that sounds a bit dreamy. We won't bullshit you. The reality is, the path is littered with bees and the door is probably jammed shut and you're going to need to learn to whittle a stick to pry it open. The key is often lost in pile of 100 other keys that look exactly like it.
But we will happily stand alongside you on this journey with a compass, a road map, and a host of knowledge about how to get to the other side.
Your first step is to shoot us an email. Hint hint. Nudge nudge… Now would be a great time to do that.