At Opal Food+Body Wisdom, we understand that the journey to healing from Anorexia is unique for each individual.
Our holistic approach combines both community support and personalized therapy to help you uncover the underlying causes of your eating disorder with anorexia therapy. Together, we work to explore the “whys” behind your behaviors and find healthier ways to cope. With three levels of care available at our Seattle clinic, we’re here to support you every step of the way toward a life of recovery.
What is Anorexia Nervosa?
- A mental health condition with deep, complex roots
- Restricting food intake to maintain or lower body weight
- Body weight falling below one’s natural, healthy weight
- Intense fear of gaining weight or losing control overeating
- Engaging in behaviors that impact weight, such as restriction, bingeing, purging, misuse of laxatives/diet pills/diuretics, or excessive exercise
- A distorted perception of one’s body weight or shape
- Attributing self-worth to body weight or shape
- Lack of awareness of the health risks associated with being below a natural, healthy weight
What are the Signs+Symptoms?
Although one could struggle with many of the above signs and symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa, it can be sometimes difficult to identify when you or someone you love is struggling.
A change in one’s patterns, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with food, weight and exercise could be a sign of something more serious going on. Due to many culturally normative values around weight and health, anorexia can be difficult to detect.
We encourage having a professional that specializes in eating disorders help you or your loved one get clarity on what is really going on.
If you would like to get more information on supporting a loved one, see our advice here.
At Opal, we offer:
- Individual therapy, nutrition counseling, psychiatry, exercise experientials and family/relationship therapy available at the PHP and IOP levels of care.
- Health at Every Size, weight-neutral treatment approach
- Non-diet approach to food. Meals and snacks provided offer a wide variety of foods (highly processed, fresh, organic, non-organic, home-cooked, frozen, easy to prepare, etc.)
- Eating at meals and snacks are done with other clients and staff, as a community.
- A belief that adequate food intake is a foundational step in recovery.
- Exercise + Sport programming, which addresses exercise bulimia, exercise avoidance, and other exercise concerns
- Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as a foundational treatment
- Group therapy including body wisdom group, movement group, self-inquiry, process groups, facing fears and more.
- Teaching/Didactic groups including Radically Open Dialectical Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Exercise + Sport Didactic, Health at Every Size Didactic, etc.
- Non-clinical lodging for PHP clients to use while in treatment is available for a weekly fee, as space available.
- Alumni outpatient groups
Check Your Biases
Anorexia Nervosa can be life-threatening for anyone that is experiencing it, regardless of body size, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, religion.
What You Might Not Know About Anorexia
- You cannot tell someone is struggling with Anorexia by looking at them. Body weight may or may not change due to the eating disorder.
- People with Anorexia do eat and can have some incidents of overeating and binge eating.
- Sometimes a person with Anorexia may eat a normal amount of food and experience that as a binge.
- Anorexia Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric disorders.
- Some athletes can be diagnosed with Anorexia due to food restriction in the context of their sport performance goals.
- For people who menstruate, restricting food can lead to loss of period and resulting health concerns. This is part of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). Learn more about this topic from our podcast.
- Anorexia is usually rooted in something other than the way their body looks. There are multiple root causes to anorexia, so the solution is more complex than just eating.
- Temperamentally individuals with Anorexia tend to have more over-controlled personalities, are rigid in their thinking, rule-following, and perfectionistic.
