Need Binge Eating Help? Three Eating Disorder Dietitians Share Their Approaches to Eating Disorder Treatment

Feel out of control with your eating? Find yourself restricting your food during the daytime and overdoing it at night? Having a hard time resisting the urge to eat “forbidden” foods, especially when you feel tired and stressed? Do you experience a wave of shame after you eat a large amount of these foods—or a large amount of any foods? It sounds like you could be suffering from binge eating patterns, or even binge eating disorder (BED). I think that one of the best outpatient treatment strategies for binge eating and/or BED is to work with a therapist AND a dietitian who specialize in BED. I’ve shared my therapy approaches treating to BED, so I now wanted to convey the opinions of expert San Diego eating disorder dietitians: Theresa Carmichael, RD of Center For Discovery (and private practice), Dr. Megan Holt Hellner, RD of Potentia Therapy, and Dr. Saori Obayashi, RD of UCSD CHEAR. They have some wonderful tips on how to manage binge eating from a nutritional perspective.

***Trigger warning*** This blog post interview does include the term weight loss, as well as discussion of how some people seeking treatment for binge eating also want to lose weight. I cannot stress enough that these San Diego eating disorder dietitians do NOT advocate extreme behaviors that could trigger eating disorder symptoms. In fact, their approaches encompass reducing binge eating symptoms instead of focusing on weight loss.