ClinicNotes: November 2025
welcome to ClinicNotes - a newsletter designed for practitioners working with relationship with food & eating behaviour. This is my public journal, where I share the latest research, tools, training, and anything else useful to practitioners working with eating difficulties and behaviour change.
using structure to rebuild trust with food
One of my clients, a woman in her mid 40s with a history of binge–restrict cycles, came to me believing she “couldn’t be trusted” around food. Years of dieting had eroded her internal cues; she relied on food rules, avoided carbohydrates, and regularly swung between rigid control and loss of control eating.
Our work focused on nutritional rehabilitation and reestablishing body trust. Early sessions centred on consistent nourishment — structured, balanced meals every 3–4 hours, reintroducing carbohydrates slowly, and adequate protein and essential fats to support satiety and mood. Oh, and ‘fun’ foods too, to reconnect to her enjoyment of eating!
Once regularity was in place consistently, we explored interoceptive awareness, noticing hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues without judgment. We used Dr Helen McCarthy’s Appetite Pendulum to help her observe patterns, be curious and rebuild connection to these signals.
A key turning point came when we reframed her goal: from “eating perfectly” to “feeding herself consistently and compassionately.” That shift in language softened all-or-nothing thinking and opened the door to curiosity, not control.
Over time, her binge episodes reduced, energy improved, and food became less emotionally charged. She began to see her eating as something that fuelled her body and meant she could live a meaningful life, rather than stressful events.
🧭 Key insight: Nutritional consistency provides psychological safety. Regular, adequate eating helps downregulate the nervous system, rebuilds interoceptive awareness, and lays the groundwork for body image recovery. You can find a useful tool here.
👉 We cover nutritional restoration in depth in Nutritional Therapy for Eating Disorders: Advanced Practitioner Programme. Next course is May 2026 [Join the waitlist here].
body functionality exercises
This is a simple (and yet effective) brief exercise for clients who are struggling with body image dissatisfaction. Ask your client to spend five minutes each day answering the following question:
“Today, my body allowed me to…”
(examples: hug my other half when he was having a bad day, enjoy watching the rain warm inside under a cosy blanket with a cuppa, catch my stubborn toddler from falling on his head when he ignored my pleas to stop climbing on the furniture again - may or may not be real examples from my week! 😉)
👉 Encourage them to do this daily for one week. It’s deceptively simple but empirically supported: research shows that functionality appreciation increases body satisfaction quickly. It is especially effective for certain populations (e.g., men) and when combined with psychological techniques like defusion and mindfulness.
Body image interventions for nutrition practitioners: advanced 2-day live training (online)
25th & 26th February 2026
This new interactive training will help you:
Define and explain body image using current frameworks and research, and its impact on eating and health behaviours
Recognise and assess body image challenges in your clients and your scope of practice
Apply psychological techniques to address body image dissatisfaction and distress
Reflect on your own language, beliefs and scope, fostering a safer and more inclusive client experience
This is an advanced and highly practical mini course to help you move into clinically effective body image work with any client. This training is for both eating disorder trained and non-eating disorder trained practitioners.
Cost: £330 (or 2 x £165)
Exclusive discount for Nutritional Therapy for Eating Disorders (NTED) graduates and expert speakers: Pop me a message to get a discount code.
what my research revealed about body image change
This month’s ClinicNotes shamelessly features my own doctoral research, where I designed and evaluated a body image intervention for men. And one of the most striking findings was how connection (not control) drove meaningful change.
Many participants entered the workshop believing that improvements to their physical appearance would bring body satisfaction. But what actually shifted things was relatedness: feeling understood, seen, and accepted by others going through similar struggles.
When they recognised body image worries as a shared experience, their shame reduced. The more connected they felt to others, to their values, and to life beyond appearance, the less central their bodies became to their self-worth.
Critically, it was this sense of connection that enabled them to engage in the psychological content - a new finding in this field!
This echoes what we see clinically: body image improves not through isolation and control, but through belonging and connection.
💡 Practitioner Tip: Building relatedness into recovery work through a deep therapeutic relationship (1-1) or even a group programme helps dismantle the loneliness and shame that fuel body image concerns. Work on deepening the therapeutic relationships by deeply listening to your client, building trust by framing recommendations as ‘mini experiments,’ giving them the space to make their own choices in their health and careful use of self-disclosure. Consider offering group programmes, especially for highly stigmatised topics.
✨ Final Word
In our Body Image Interventions for Nutrition Practitioners: 2-Day Advanced Training, we’ll dive into how to cultivate this sense of connection in 1-1 and group settings (even in virtual spaces!), using evidence-based tools from psychology and behaviour change. Grab your spot here.
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