Is Your Relationship to Food and Your Body Hurting You?

Do Any of the Following Apply to You?

• Repeatedly dieting and/or bingeing despite your best efforts to eat in a healthy way?
• Disliking or even hating how your body looks?
• Constantly gaining and losing weight and struggling to keep it off?
• Feeling guilty or anxious about what you are eating?
• Not exercising regularly or over-exercising?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you need to know that you don’t have to continue in this way… You CAN have a POSITIVE RELATIONSHIP with Food and your Body!

Underweight, overweight, fit, or a couch-potato, if you have a painful relationship to food, exercise, or the way your body looks, you don’t have to suffer any longer. You can change this hurtful pattern of relating to yourself and have a healthy, happy, loving relationship with food, exercise, and the way you look!

I had serious concerns about my eating. I was overeating and not knowing why. I was stuffing myself at suppertime even though I knew I wasn’t hungry. I felt anxious about returning to work after having 9 months off due to an illness. My anxiety was a 10 out of 10! My head was spinning, I couldn’t concentrate, and I felt sad. My psychiatrist from the cancer clinic referred me to Diane.

I had issues with my parents that went way back. I had been in therapy before in the hope I would not keep dragging that baggage with me through the rest of my life. But the baggage was still attached to me.

And I had anger issues. I did not know when it was appropriate to be angry or what level of anger was appropriate for the incident. I didn’t want to be angry or feel angry, so I tried not to. I realized that my anger is what I was stuffing down.

My own personal gauge was lost. I didn’t experience what I was feeling. I overrode it in my mind so that I didn’t have to deal with what I felt at all. I noticed when I didn’t experience the negative emotions that I tended to stuff myself at suppertime and to drink too much wine!

I am still learning the process of feeling. It is hard sometimes because it can be painful. I am trying to move through the pain of anger, loneliness, frustration, disappointment, sadness and depression. And my suppertime overeating has stopped.

Stephanie*, age 44
Designer, South Surrey, BC
July 2006

* Please note: Names and initials are pseudonyms. Actual names are printed by client request. Testimonials have been edited for the sake of space and with approval of each client. They can be viewed in their entirety on the “Testimonials” page.

In working with us, you can learn to:

• End the dieting rollercoaster once and for all and make choices based on leading information, proper nourishment, and the satisfaction that comes from an attuned understanding of what you REALLY WANT or NEED
• Overcome exercise-resistance or obsessive exercise and enjoy a healthy activity level not only because it’s good for you but because you feel and look fantastic
• Stop yo-yo dieting, make peace with your body, get the ideal healthy weight for you and maintain it for your lifetime
• Identify and resolve the underlying emotional issues that contribute to your problems. (IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE FOOD or HOW YOUR BODY LOOKS! Rather it’s the emotional, social and historical experiences over time that are at the root of eating and body image problems)
• Repair and deepen your relationship to your body by learning to really treat yourself with trust, compassion, love, care, and attention

My Counselling Approach Helps You Create Lasting Change with Problems of Dieting, Exercise and Body Image.

Working with Diane:

I am a Registered Clinical Counsellor and have over twenty years training and fifteen years experience working with people who have hurtful patterns of relating to food and their bodies. I have a strong background as a therapist, support group facilitator, presenter, and political advocate in the area of disordered eating. My Master’s thesis addressed the factors involved in successfully overcoming severe eating disorders. I have always been passionate about this subject and in helping people to establish long-term lifestyle changes.

With my skills, training, experience, and passion for helping people heal eating and body image problems and your willingness, curiosity, and commitment, we will work together so that YOU can feel good about yourself.

I, too, suffered from bulimia for years and was eventually able to overcome it with the help of counselling. In addition, several of my family members have struggled with obesity, compulsive eating, anorexia, and exercise resistance. Throughout my life, I have seen firsthand how destructive and deadly these patterns can be.

How I Work

In working together, we will help you go beyond INSIGHT AND UNDERSTANDING.  You will EXPERIENCE yourself in a profoundly new way!

I approach these problems from two perspectives: a physical perspective and a psychological perspective. We help you understand what happens in your body when you restrict, indulge, or yo-yo diet. We also help you get in touch with and overcome your anxiety and painful emotions.
I will work with you to help you resolve the conflict between your heart and your head, where you know what you should do, but find yourself repeatedly doing the opposite.

This two-track approach can help you to undo life-long unhealthy patterns and to finally create your longed-for healthy relationship to food and your body!
For more information about how we practice in the area of food and body problems, please click here.

If you been unsuccessful in your previous attempts to change your painful relationship to food, exercise, and your body, give us a call today at 778-292-0260 or 1-888-678-9229. You don’t have to live a life of angst and unhappiness one moment longer. Take that first step and start to change your life today!

Call today to schedule your free, no-obligation, 10-minute phone consultation at 778-292-0260 or 1-88-678-9229 or email info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com. I can arrange a time to talk about the specific difficulties you are having and discuss how Diane Anderson Counselling can help you now.

If you would like general information (my fees, package prices, office hours) please call or email Lanita, my office
administrator, at info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com.

Services

Food and Body Image Problems:

Sometimes our relationship problems are affected by our food and body image problems and sometimes our food and body image are affected by our difficulties in our love life!  Whether your relationship to food and your body is connected to your love life or not, we can help!  This is another area of our practice that we have experience with.   

An ADDED BENEFIT to counselling with me is our collaboration with Certified Fitness Professionals and Registered Dieticians and Nutritionists.

In my years as a counsellor, I quickly realized that people have difficulty changing these engrained negative patterns of eating, exercising, or body hatred.

In fact, simply talking inside my office wasn’t enough for many clients to change their behaviour outside my office… they needed help with actually DOING what they needed to.

Many clients need the professional guidance and precision of a Registered Fitness Professional or Registered Dietician and Nutritionist to:

• (Re-)learn how to exercise effectively, efficiently, and safely
• Help stay motivated and on track with fitness, nutrition, wellness goals
• Repair their fractured relationships with their bodies
• Navigate the influx of (mis)information around foods, diets, gimmicks and find sound, effective and healthy ways to eat and exercise.

For this important reason I work collaboratively with  Registered Fitness Professionals and Exercise Consultants, Dieticians and Nutritionists to provide this essential service to clients who want need comprehensive help in their recovery.

There professionals have a unique understanding of how emotions are held physically in the body and how food can become emotionally-imbued with qualities, longings and “power” that need to be specifically addressed.  The professionals we work with help clients not only achieve their fitness or weight and nutrition goals, but to integrate and reform their physical and emotional relationships to their bodies.
Together I can help you:

• Overcome your self-defeating patterns with honest and qualified feedback on your capabilities and behaviours
• Set realistic goals for your achievement in exercise, weight, and eating
• Help you achieve your goals by providing supportive contact with me 3-4 times per week

I consult with one another throughout your program to increase your positive outcomes.  Working together as a qualified and thorough team for you helps you be successful!

Finally, there is a comprehensive approach to healing your painful relationships to food and your body.

I have been "yoyo dieting" for too many years and had just come off yet another diet where I had lost over 100 pounds and reached a goal that I thought I would never achieve—the "size 8." When I still wasn't feeling like the "world was my oyster," and all my problems didn’t vanish when I reached that goal, I knew it was time to get some help. A friend referred me to Diane.

Working with Diane has shown that I am more than my dress size. She has especially helped me see that the lack of care I have experienced throughout my early childhood and adult life has had a tremendous impact on how I have learned to take care of myself.

Diane also recommended I start working with her exercise consultant because there was concern about my metabolism after dieting for so long and so hard. I started with her and have felt great ever since.

I had not been working out at all when I first started my exercise program. At the beginning I was in poor physical condition. I have improved dramatically! My body is stronger, and I have seen physical changes that I am very happy with. Now I average a work out about 4-5 times a week. I never thought I would ever say this, but I enjoy going to the gym!

Working with Diane and my exercise consultant combined has helped me a great deal. With all my dieting I have really messed up my internal body. I have kept off a significant amount of weight in the past 18 months since my last severe diet with the help of these two. I can attribute that success to my working with these two women.

They are an awesome team and compliment each other. They have given me the results I so desperately needed. I couldn't ask for anything more. I would have no hesitation recommending them to anyone. In fact, I did! And the friend that I did recommend to see them is finding a healthier life now too.

Allison
August 2006

How This Unique Program Works:

1. Your program starts with an initial counselling assessment of where you are right now and how your particular history of food and exercise problems has affected your current condition. This initial assessment is two hours long.
2. Together we will then develop an all-round, individualized treatment program combining counselling and/or personal training to change your patterns of eating and exercising and help you to achieve the outcomes you desire in order to live a healthy lifestyle.

You will decide one of the three options:

Option 1:

Individual Counselling for Food & Body Image Problems

Ongoing counselling sessions with me are 60-90 minutes long (depending on your goals and needs). In some cases, on-going email support is also provided.

I work from the perspective that although it may seem your problem centres with food or your body, I know that what you eat or how you look are not the real problem!  And I know that changes never come from self-contempt but rather significant change flows from self-acceptance.

While your eating and exercise behaviours may seem destructive, I understand that they are real attempts to help yourself soothe and address some type of pain (emotional, physical, mental or emotional) .  I work from a psychological and physiological perspective—what is now called “psychophysiology” in the counselling field—to accurately and precisely identify your eating and exercise behaviours, understand their function and their cost and benefit, and to address the deeper, often unconscious, underlying issues that are driving these unhelpful practices—always with compassion.

I use my knowledge and skills in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Therapy (ISTDP)--an in-depth technique focusing on how you experience your feelings in your body—to work with your physical responses as well as the emotional ones. When you carefully and attentively experience the sensations, impulses, nervousness, and even your resistance to feeling emotions, changes in your relationship to food and your body occur.

Experiencing your emotions must be done in a precise fashion—not too much intensity of emotion and not too little—but “just the right amount.” The way in which we work is designed to work specifically with an optimum balance of intensity to ensure you derive the maximum benefit from our work.

Research on successful and long-lasting outcomes of counselling demonstrates that the experiencing of your emotions and how they feel in your body is what creates long-lasting change.  My approach to counselling is especially helpful for food and body image issues and can help you get off the dieting, bingeing, purging, exercise roller-coaster one can for all. 

I start with a free 10-minute, no obligation telephone consult to talk about what your particular problem is and to see if you and I are a good fit.  If we aren’t, I'll help you find someone to help.

If you choose to work with me, I will schedule an initial 2 hour session.  This allows us to get an in-depth overview of your concerns and a considerable “trial” run of the type of counselling I do. I will see how effectively we can work together with this concentrated time. Often clients begin to make changes and gains in their relationship patterns within the first session!

From there, on-going sessions are 60-90 minutes long, depending on your needs. If you’d like or if we need additional support, we would look at Option 2 or Option 3 to give your further assistance to meet your needs and help you meet your goals.

Option 2:

6-Weeks Individualized Counselling for Food & Body Image Problems PLUS Exercise/Training Program

After your initial counselling session (2-hours long) with the me, you then meet with a fitness professional for a 90-minute consultation and assessment (this can be scheduled for the same day as your counselling appointment or at another time in the week).  If it is necessary, a 60-minute consult with the dietician will also be scheduled.

After your initial counselling and your consultation with your exercise professional, you will have:

• Six, in-depth, 50- or 90-minute counselling sessions with me (dependent on your needs and goals) scheduled once per week
• VHS copy of the counselling session to review between sessions (optional)
• Eighteen individualized one-on-one training sessions three times per week with your exercise consultant.
• Nutritional assessment(s) with your dietician (where necessary)
• On-going email support with me and/or your other team members (optional)
• Physical assessment with at the end of the program to accurately measure the positive changes you have made and celebrate your success!

Option 3:

12-Week Individualized Counselling for Food & Body Image PLUS Exercise/Training Program

After your initial counselling session (2-hours long) with me, you then meet with our exercise consultant for a 90-minute consultation and assessment. (This can be scheduled for the same day as your appointment or at another time in the week).
After your initial counselling and consultation, you will have:

• Twelve, in-depth, 60- or 90-minute counselling sessions (dependent on your needs and goals) with me, once per week
• VHS copy of the counselling session to review between sessions (optional)
• Thirty-six individualized, one-on-one training sessions with your fitness consultant scheduled three times per week for maximum success
• Nutritional assessment with the dietician (optional) at the beginning of the program with feedback throughout your program if wanted
• On-going email support with me and/or your fitness professional(optional)
• Physical assessment with fitness professional at the six week mark to keep you on-track and to adjust your program to keep aligned with your goals
• Physical assessment at the end of the twelve weeks to accurately measure and celebrate your success!

How to decide which option is right for you?

These packages can be individually-customized with more or less frequent counselling or training sessions to meet your unique needs.

For more information about how I practice, please click here for “Services” and “How I Work”.

If you been unsuccessful in your previous attempts to change your painful relationship to food, exercise, and your body, give me a call today at 778-292-0260. You don’t have to live a life of angst and unhappiness one moment longer. Take that first step and start to change your life today!

Call today to schedule your free, no-obligation, 10-minute phone consultation at 778-292-0260 or email
info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com. I can arrange a time to talk about the specific difficulties you are having and discuss how Diane Anderson Counselling can help you now.

If you would like general information (my fees, package prices, office hours) please call or email Lanita, my office
administrator, at info@DianeAndersonCounselling.com.

Diane Anderson Counselling accepts payment by cash, cheque, Visa, Mastercard or American Express. Financing may also be arranged through Credit Medical Corporation. (Please call Diane Anderson Counselling for details at 778-292-0260).

Diane Anderson & Associates (Vancouver's "Love Coaches") — Relationship and Marriage Counsellors Serving: Greater Vancouver, Downtown, Yaletown, West End, North and West Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, Tsawwassen, Surrey, South Surrey, White Rock, Cloverdale, Langley, Fort Langley, Abbotsford, Aldergrove, Mission, Chilliwack, Fraser Valley, British Columbia and also Blaine, Bellingham, Seattle Washington.