Disordered Eating Nutrition Therapy With a Registered Dietitian in Buffalo, NY

At WNY Nutrition Therapy, I provide nutrition therapy for individuals navigating a range of food and eating concerns, including eating disorder recovery and disordered eating habits.

We work together to help you feel safer and more confident around food while rebuilding trust with your body.

Eating Disorder & Disordered Eating Support

Disordered eating exists on a spectrum and can look different for everyone. I work with individuals navigating a range of food and eating concerns, including:

• Anorexia nervosa and restrictive eating

• Avoidant/restrictive food intake patterns (ARFID)

• Bulimia nervosa

• Binge eating and loss-of-control eating

• Difficulty recognizing or trusting hunger and fullness cues

• Disordered eating and chronic dieting

• Food anxiety and fear foods

• Orthorexia and rigid “clean eating”

• Emotional eating

• Restrictive eating followed by overeating

• Compulsive calorie counting, weighing, measuring, or tracking

• Food rituals and rigid eating routines

How a Dietitian Can Support Your Relationship With Food

One of the biggest misconceptions about nutrition counseling is that working with a dietitian means being handed a meal plan and being told to follow it. That's not what this work is about.

Nutrition is an important part of improving your relationship with food, but so is understanding the fear, anxiety, rules, and emotions that can make eating feel so difficult in the first place.

As your dietitian, I work with you to make food feel less overwhelming and help you gradually rebuild trust in yourself and your body. This is a collaborative process, we work together to figure out what support you need, rather than me simply telling you what to eat.

What We Can Work On Together

Making Peace With Food
We can work through the rules and fears that have developed around eating, whether that's avoiding certain foods, feeling like foods are “good” or “bad,” needing to eat in a very specific way, or feeling anxious when things don't go according to plan.

Working Through Food Fears
We can move at a pace that feels manageable while gradually expanding the foods and situations that feel safe enough to approach.

Rebuilding Adequate Nourishment
Your body needs consistent nourishment to heal. We can work toward eating enough and eating regularly while taking into account your individual nutritional, medical, and recovery needs.

Finding and Trusting Body Signals
Restriction and/or chronic dieting can make it difficult to recognize hunger, fullness, cravings, and satisfaction. As your body becomes more consistently nourished, we can begin rebuilding awareness of these signals and learning to trust them again when appropriate.

Creating More Flexibility
The work around improving your relationship with food isn't about eating perfectly. It's about being able to eat when you're hungry, enjoy foods you like, adapt when plans change, and participate in meals without feeling like you've done something wrong.

Making Sense of Nutrition Information
There is an overwhelming amount of nutrition information online. We can sort through what's evidence-based, what's fear-driven, and what's actually relevant to you so that nutrition becomes less confusing rather than another source of anxiety.

What About Meal Plans?

Meal planning can be helpful but it shouldn't have to mean counting calories, weighing portions, measuring your food, or following a really rigid plan.

For many people, structure provides a sense of safety while they're rebuilding their relationship with food. Too much focus on numbers and measurements can provide the opposite effect.

Rather than giving you a list of calories, exchanges, or exact measurements, I create meal and snack options based on what works best for you.

You get to focus on choosing what sounds manageable, satisfying, and enjoyable to you. Since the meal plan isn't the final destination, overtime we can make more room for spontaneity and flexibility as your body becomes more adequately nourished and eating begins to feel less stressful.

Trauma, Stress, and the Nervous System: How Disordered Eating Serves You

For many people, an disordered eating develops during a time when life feels overwhelming. Whether that involves chronic stress, trauma, difficult relationships, major life changes, or simply feeling like you don't have the tools to cope with what you're experiencing.

When you don't feel safe or in control, your nervous system can shift into survival mode. You may find yourself stuck in patterns of fight, flight, or freeze, with your body and brain constantly trying to manage a sense of threat.

Sometimes, food and eating become a way of coping with that distress.

Restricting, bingeing, purging, or becoming intensely focused on food and your body can provide temporary relief. Focusing on calories, numbers, routines, or body size may create a sense of control when other parts of life feel unpredictable. Restriction may numb difficult emotions, while bingeing or purging may temporarily provide an escape from them.

At the same time, what once helped you cope can eventually begin creating its own cycle of stress. Restriction, inadequate nourishment, bingeing, purging, and chronic preoccupation with food can place additional physical and emotional stress on your body, making it even harder to feel calm, grounded, and safe.

How Nutrition is a Part of Healing

• Creating a sense of safety through consistency: Regular, adequate meals give your body a predictable source of energy. When your body can trust that nourishment is coming consistently, it can begin to move away from the physical stress of restriction and deprivation.

• Supporting the brain: Your brain needs adequate energy and a variety of nutrients to function well. Consistent nourishment supports mood, concentration, sleep, emotional regulation, and the ability to respond to stress.

• Supporting the gut-brain connection: Your digestive system and nervous system are constantly communicating. As eating becomes more consistent and your body receives adequate nourishment, we can support the systems involved in digestion, regulation, and recovery.

• Building new ways to cope: Nutrition is only one part of recovery. We can work alongside your therapist or other providers to identify what the eating disorder has been helping you manage and gradually develop other ways of meeting those needs.

The goal isn't to force the eating disorder away. It's to understand why it became necessary, support your body through recovery, and help you build enough safety and flexibility that you no longer need food or your body to carry the weight of everything you're experiencing.