Struggles with food, weight, control, and body image don’t come out of nowhere. Whether it’s restriction, bingeing, compulsive thoughts, or obsession with appearance, eating disorders are not about vanity or willpower. They're about patterns—emotional survival strategies deeply linked to how you see yourself and the world.
At ShiftGrit, we don’t just help people manage eating disorders—we help them understand where those patterns come from, how they function, and how to shift them at the root. You are not broken, and you are not defined by your behaviors.
You are the Core You—and that version of you has been there all along.
The Core You Framework for Eating Disorder Recovery
At the heart of every eating disorder is an emotional loop: a reaction to pain, a search for control, or an attempt to feel safe. Our work at ShiftGrit focuses on helping you reconnect to your observing self—the part of you that’s always been aware, present, and capable of choosing something different.
Here’s how that framework looks in the context of eating disorder treatment:
🔹 1.
Awareness
Eating behaviors—whether restrictive, chaotic, or compulsive—are often driven by limiting beliefs like:
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“I’m not good enough unless I look a certain way.”
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“I can only control my body, not my life.”
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“My worth is based on how I’m perceived.”
In therapy, we help you notice these thoughts without judgment. Awareness means separating yourself from the behavior and seeing it for what it is: a pattern, not a personality. It’s the first step in reclaiming your identity from the grip of your eating disorder.
🔹 2.
Alignment
When you live through the lens of your eating disorder, your behaviors often conflict with your values. You might value health, connection, confidence—but feel stuck in rituals, secrecy, or self-criticism.
We help you identify what’s actually important to you, and use that clarity to evaluate your actions. Is this behavior aligned with the life you want? If not, what would be?
This value-based alignment becomes your compass, guiding you toward behaviors that reflect the real you—not the fear-driven patterns you’ve been trapped in.
🔹 3.
Agency
One of the most painful parts of an eating disorder is feeling out of control—like you're stuck in a loop you can’t get out of. But what if you had more choice than you think?
At ShiftGrit, we use structured reconditioning techniques to rewire the brain’s automatic responses to food, control, body image, and self-worth. This is where agency returns. You’ll start to see that you’re not powerless—you’re just practicing an old survival strategy that can be unlearned.
Agency is the space between urge and action—and we help you widen that space, one session at a time.
🔹 4.
Adaptability
Eating disorders often trick you into believing that change is unsafe. That if you gain weight, lose control, or stop the rules, everything will fall apart.
But your observing self knows better.
As you reconnect with this part of yourself, you begin to trust your capacity to adapt—to evolve, to choose differently, to respond to change with resilience instead of fear. You no longer need the eating disorder to feel stable. You have yourself.
The Pattern Behind the Behavior
In our therapy model, eating disorders are seen as maladaptive patterns—loops that begin with a limiting belief (e.g., “I’m not good enough”) and try to protect you through a dysfunctional need (e.g., “I must be perfect to be accepted”).
Over time, this builds emotional pressure. When that pressure becomes too much, the brain looks for an opt-out: a behavior that temporarily relieves the discomfort. For many clients, this opt-out becomes food control, bingeing, purging, over-exercising, or body checking.
But these opt-outs create self-fulfilling prophecies—reinforcing the very beliefs that caused the pain in the first place.
That’s why at ShiftGrit, we don’t treat symptoms in isolation. We work with you to:
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Identify your unique pattern
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Understand where it comes from
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Build awareness of when and how it shows up
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Recondition the emotional response at the root using imaginal exposure
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Replace the loop with aligned, values-based behavior
What Recovery Looks Like at ShiftGrit
Recovery isn’t about perfection. It’s about building a relationship with yourself that’s rooted in clarity, compassion, and choice.
Our therapy model for eating disorder recovery includes:
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Enriched intake sessions to understand your history, patterns, and goals
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Pattern teaching to help you make sense of your experiences
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Structured reconditioning work to reduce the emotional charge behind disordered behaviors
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Ongoing alignment work to connect you with the life you actually want to live
Whether you’re early in your journey or have been in recovery before, our therapists meet you where you are—with curiosity, not judgment.
You Are Not the Disorder
You are not your weight.
You are not your food choices.
You are not your habits, rituals, or mistakes.
You are the one who notices, the one who feels, the one who gets to choose what happens next. And the more you live through that part of yourself, the more freedom becomes possible—even in the small moments.
You are, and always have been, the Core You.
Let’s help you reconnect with that version of yourself.
