You don't have to have a "disorder" to feel bad about your body. Because of images in the media, messages in movies, and conflicting opinions from our families and friends, we can often feel badly about how our body looks.

There are proven treatments for changing how we feel about our bodies - whether we have a specific focus on one area of our body that we can't stop thinking about, or if we are experiencing symptoms. Some other symptoms may include:

• Starving ourselves

• Overly-controlled eating

• Meal skipping

• Binge eating

• Purging

• Too much exercise

• Significant changes in mood that result from our food habits.

  The different types of eating disorders:
  
  Signs of Anorexia Nervosa:

  • Underweight (85% of normal weight)

  • Denial that being underweight is a problem or saying something like "it's not serious that I'm this size"

  • No menstrual periods or missed periods

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  Signs of Bulimia:

  • Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat

  • Upon self-evaluation, person feels a distorted sense of body's size or attributes

  • Control of one's eating habits through fasting, diuretics (diet pills), or starvation

  • Periods of binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting

  • Periods of binge eating followed by guilty feelings and/or a restricted diet

  You're not alone. Our eating habits and compulsions often change during stressful times in our lives. Old habits become activated, new ones get created. They can persist from messages in our family of origin, our cultures of origin, or when we try to adjust to American culture from another set of traditions and beliefs.

  
  Regardless of the cause, our clinicians are trained to help reclaim your body and your mind from thoughts that make you feel bad about what you eat and how you look. Treatments from a cognitive-behavioral approach will help with making small changes in your habits that will empower difference in how you think and feel.