Ready to ditch dieting, let go of shame and fear around food, and start living a life of peace?

Have you tried diet after diet after diet only to feel that it is:

Not giving you the results you want?

Sucking the joy out of eating – and probably living too?!

Leaving you either insatiably hungry or devoid of hunger altogether?

Unsustainable and bringing you into all or nothing tendencies with no middle ground?

Do you...

Feel that food has a hold on you?

Hide certain foods in that awkward cupboard to feel in control, or go out of your way for certain foods for seemingly no reason or turn to food when your emotions are heightened?

Feel powerless, overcome with shame, fear, guilt or grief when you think about your relationship to food and your body?

If you answer yes to any of these then you’re definitely in the right place!

I want to start by making one thing clear – there’s absolutely nothing wrong, bad or broken about you. And these feelings, behaviours and thoughts are absolutely normal in a society that actively promotes and prioritises weight loss and dieting.

As a HAES (Health at Every Size) aligned non-diet dietitian, intuitive eating counsellor, body image coach and embodied mindfulness and self-compassion teacher, I am here to help support you on your journey towards a more peaceful, joyous and liberated life.

Thinking about Intuitive Eating?

I understand that it can be uncomfortable and overwhelming to realise that our relationship to ourselves and how we eat is not as positive as it could be, or as fulfilling as we deserve it to be. This process of realisation can bring up a lot of emotions and stories.

You may have already done plenty of background reading and experimenting and feel totally ready for this. Or you may be feeling a bit uncertain, or outright doubtful – doubtful that this process really works, that your healing is ever going to be possible, that anything or anyone can really make a difference at this stage.

I want to emphasise again that this is totally normal. When we have lived and re-lived certain experiences, patterns and behaviours without an appropriate level of support, it is absolutely normal to feel distrust that anything is going to change.

And yet the beauty of the process of intuitive eating is that, in addition to being a holistic framework, it is also rooted in science, with a constantly growing evidence base to support it.

So, what exactly is intuitive eating?

It is a framework which we can use to help re-connect the mind and body and realign our eating behaviours with our internal bodily cues.

It is rooted in the recognition that diet culture and weight stigma are actually harmful for health, and it is centred around self-care and kindness.

It calls on your inner wisdom to know what is best for you without rigid rules and restrictions while acknowledging that some self-discovery and growth will be necessary before being able to fully trust the signals that will guide us.

Work With Me

At this stage you may be curious and wondering what this process actually involves.

During this journey, we will draw on processes to connect to mind and body, cultivate self-respect and self-compassion, discover ways to regulate your emotions, navigate your inner narratives, understand and express your needs and boundaries, and walk the path to empowerment within your life.

Let’s have a deeper look at what we might cover together:

Self-Compassion and Mindfulness

Self-compassion is absolutely fundamental to the work that we will be doing together. Recognising our own suffering, the commonality of our suffering, that we are not alone, and having the desire to take action with care and kindness is going to be a pivotal tool in sustaining this journey. Add to that the non-judgemental observation of mind and body introduced through mindfulness and we will have the foundations to hold this process and find your power for transformation.

Honouring Hunger

Have you ever found yourself feeling angry (hangry), nauseous, or ravenous with hunger? Perhaps feeling out of control and unable to stop when you eat? What if I told you that these were perfectly normal responses to severe hunger and very likely to occur when we have restricted our eating and lost touch with the more subtle signals of hunger. This can easily happen when we stop acknowledging hunger and start relying on time, calories and meal plans to dictate what and when we eat. Or when we try to stave off hunger with gum, water, coffee or diet carbonated drinks.

We will be entering a process of re-learning and re-attuning to your body’s hunger signals and discovering what it is to honour your hunger without being controlled by guilt, shame and fear.

Making Peace with Food

It’s quite probable that opening yourself up to eating foods that you have considered ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’ for so long will be quite challenging! Yet it can also be quite empowering!

We will be exploring food fears, discovering that no foods are inherently bad, regardless of what the media says, and learning to let go of the reins of restriction while opening up to trust that our bodies will guide us once we’ve learned how to listen.

Feeling your Fullness

Food rules, diets, restrictions and eating for emotional regulation can really disconnect us from recognising when we are comfortably full. We may undereat to restrict calories, or overeat for fear of when our next meal will be.

Allowing ourselves to reach and recognise fullness, and build the pattern and bodily trust of eating in this way can play such an important role in helping to avoid overeating due to prior starvation. It can also feel very satisfying to be comfortably full, providing us with better energy and enhancing our motivation and mood.

Respecting your Body

We all have a unique shape and size, and no specific body type is perfect and suited to everyone. This process of intuitive eating will help your body to rest and settle in its own happy and healthy place. We can begin to explore the experience of being in your body, learning to make peace with, and maybe even learning to love being in your body.

And since our experience of being in our body are rarely static, you can also discover a range of skills to help maintain a healthy relationship with your body and its inevitable changes over time.

Gently Nourishing the Body

Of course, nutrition is still important and it can be really helpful to have an idea of what nourishes us and helps our bodies to feel good and work well.

One of my big learnings in nutrition is that there is no one way to eat and we are all unique with differing needs. With the underlying knowledge that no food is inherently good or bad, we can spend some time beginning to understand nutritional properties of foods, and feel into what nourishes us and why, and how to include key nutrients on a regular basis. I will also be inviting in lots of care and compassion through this journey and offering reminders that all foods have their place in providing nourishment in one form or another.

Ditching the Diet Cycle

Diet culture is everywhere, from restrictive diets to promote weight loss, to the most recent trend to optimise your health. Unfortunately, it is rare that our happiness, well-being or emotional state is considered remotely relevant in this process and the reality is that the on-and-off diet cycling that people get caught up in is actually shown to be a detriment to our health. We will explore why diets do not work and why we do not need weight loss to be our goal for a happy and healthy life.

Challenging the Inner Critic

That internal voice that tells us what we ‘should’ do, how we ‘should’ be and what we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ eat can be intense and difficult to manage. It can be so easy to get swept up by the narrative, believing all the stories produced by this part of us and yet rarely do these stories have any solid grounding. Drawing on the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion we can cultivate curiosity and begin to question the validity of these thoughts.

We can explore where they come from – inner wisdom, inner child, repetitions of a caregiver perhaps – and explore how valid they are in reality and what needs they are trying to meet.

Discovering Joy and Satisfaction

Food is a basic human need – our bodies are designed to experience pleasure when we eat! In addition to the wonderful benefit of bringing more joy and excitement into life, we are also much more likely to eat in tune with our body if we are also attuned to the pleasure we receive from eating. And if we actually give ourselves full permission to eat any food alongside addressing factors like emotional regulation, we may even find our tastes begin to change. Eating mindfully can give us the opportunity to really get to know the flavours, textures, smells, colours and sounds that we enjoy when we eat.

Coping with Emotions with Kindness

Eating when we feel emotional is absolutely normal, and it’s not always a bad thing. If you didn’t turn to food when you felt overwhelmed or numb, what would help you to cope instead?

The reality is that eating as a way to regulate our emotions is actually a great act of kindness and one we can celebrate ourselves for. At the same time, it’s likely not aligned anymore and it’s time to explore other solutions to help cope with strong feelings in a way that also brings a sense of peace.

Moving with Joy

Just like food, movement is an important source of nourishment for our bodies, and it’s supposed to feel good! Lack of movement, or over-exercising with rigid and unrealistic plans that leave you frequently fatigued and maybe even injured are very likely causing more harm than good.

There are so many ways to move, and develop strength, flexibility and mobility. We can explore barriers to movement and discover various movement practices to find ones you can genuinely enjoy, feel re-energised by and sustain in the long-term.

Ready to get started?

I recommend either starting with 6 months covering the whole intuitive eating process, or 12 weeks dedicated primarily to working with emotional eating.

Intuitive Eating Packages

1-1 Weekly sessions via video call

Get in touch via email to book a free 20 minute consultation to learn more about each other, get a feel for how it would be to work together and how I can help you.

Initial 90 minute deep dive consultation to get to know more about you and your relationship to food, self and environment and to discuss our approach going forward.

45-50 minute ongoing consultations either following a programme pre-designed together, or taking it week by week addressing what comes up in each session.

30 minute closing call at the end of a package to reflect, discuss where you are at and any ongoing support you may need.

Reflections, plans and resources to support you on your journey after each session sent via email.

Support via email as needed between sessions.

6 Month Plan

Recommended

The work we will be doing together will probably feel a bit like therapy. We will likely dive deep and often explore parts of yourself that may be unseen or misunderstood. You may be learning new concepts and frameworks and changing long held beliefs and behaviours.

To do this process justice, especially if you’re at or near the beginning of this path, I would really recommend committing to a 6 month plan.

£3000

3 Month Plan

I would advise this plan more for those who do not have the resources at the moment to join a 6 month plan, or for those have already been working on this process for a while and would like to see what’s different about working with me.

We can always extend the plan at a later stage.

£1500

Session by Session

To be honest, I only recommend one off sessions to people who have already been doing this work for a long time and just want a bit of support going over things previously explored in depth.

Much like therapy, the relationship that we build between us will be important to your healing process and like any other relationship, this takes time. We also need time to dig beneath the surface, reflect, learn and explore together.

We can discuss in a short call prior to booking if this will be suitable for you.

£100 per session

Let's Get Started!

Please note that while I have set my prices very reasonably for the work being offered, and to cover my expenses, I am very aware that this price does not offer accessibility for everyone. If you find that you are unable to access my work due to the cost, please do get in touch and we can discuss possible options.

Emotional Eating Package

There is a societal narrative that says emotional eating is a ‘bad behaviour’ and I’m here to offer an alternative story. The reality is that for so many of us, our emotions can completely overwhelm us, either leaving us in an unbearable state of anxiety and stress, or shutting down completely and feeling quite numb. Despite the normality of this, there is little support and education offered on how to regulate our emotions so that we may simply feel pleasure, rested, safe and secure.

Add to this factors like restrictive eating, critical thought patterns, unhelpful comments of those around us and reinforced eating behaviours that encourage us to remain disconnected to ourselves as we eat, and it is unsurprising that many of us find ourselves caught in these cycles of comfort eating.

Many people grow up without sufficient support to regulate their emotions, they watch and repeat what other people do and digest what the media shows. We’ll have no doubt been offered milk as babies, other foods as children and adults when we show emotional distress. And we discover that when we eat certain foods, we do in fact feel better able to cope with what we’re feeling in the moment. Eating can become a coping mechanism and if we try to just suddenly stop without having first found another way to regulate our thoughts and feelings, we likely won’t be able to and we will turn back to compulsive eating as quickly as we turned away from it.

In this package, I will be inviting you to explore your emotional relationship with food, yourself and others and we will draw on a variety of body based and psychological tools to develop the capacity to step away from eating mindlessly or emotionally in a way that feels out of control (keeping in mind that a bit of eating to support our emotions is absolutely normal) and begin to find other solutions for managing our feelings.