Overcoming Disordered Eating
If you do think you might suffer from an eating disorder, it is important that you talk to your General Practitioner, as there are many physical complications that can arise from being at an unhealthily low weight or from losing weight very quickly, or from purging. We advise you to seek professional help with working on an eating disorder.
If you use any extreme weight control behaviours – even rarely – you should also see your General Practitioner for a full medical check-up, as your health might be compromised. Such extreme measures include:
- extreme food restriction/fasting (and/or rapid weight loss)
- purging (self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives or diuretics)
- extreme exercise
A full-blown eating disorder develops from disordered eating and/or weight control behaviours. Once an eating disorder develops, it can easily become entrenched and difficult to change. Therefore, if you have mildly disturbed eating patterns, it makes sense to work on improving them. This course has been designed for people like you, but might also be of help to people with more serious eating behaviours.
The programme is designed to provide you with some information about disordered eating – how it develops, how it is maintained, and strategies to start to change the problem behaviours associated with disordered eating. This programme is organised into modules that are designed to be worked through in sequence. We recommend that you complete one module before going on to the next. Each module contains information, worksheets, and suggested exercises or activities.
Programme Modules:
Module 1: What is an Eating Disorder? This module provides an overview of what eating disorders are, their impact, and the role of dieting and healthy weight.
Module 2: How Ready am I to Change? This module explores preparedness to change disordered eating behaviours, and also outlines some of the treatment options for eating disorders.
Module 3: How Eating Disorders are Maintained. This module outlines some of the factors which maintain disordered eating and create a vicious cycle.
Module 4: Self Monitoring. This module explains the importance of self-monitoring of eating behaviours, and provides a food log worksheet.
Module 5: Regular Eating and Weighing. This module provides a rationale for regular eating and weighing, along with guidelines and worksheets.
Module 6: Binge Eating, Purging & Driven Exercise. This module explains the role of binge eating, purging, and driven exercise, and how these behaviours maintain disordered eating in a vicious cycle.
Module 7: Moods and Disordered Eating. This module explores the way emotions and difficulty handling moods can affect disordered eating behaviours, along with strategies to manage moods.
Module 8: Dietary Rules. This module explores the role of dietary restriction and rules in maintaining disordered eating, along with guidelines for normal eating.
Module 9: Addressing Dietary Rules. This module builds on Module 8 and provides more strategies to overcome strict dietary rules.
Module 10: Progress Review. This module helps you to review your progress through the whole 10 modules and to summarise what you have learnt so far.