Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating

Food and eating struggles do not always fit neatly into a diagnosis.

You may be restricting, bingeing, purging, following rigid food rules, exercising compulsively, chronically dieting, or spending far more time thinking about food and weight than you want to.

Eating disorders and disordered eating exist along a continuum. You may not fall neatly into a category. Wherever you fall on that continuum, your concerns deserve attention.

What Disordered Eating Can Look Like

Disordered eating can take many forms. Sometimes it is obvious. Other times it can look like simply trying to “eat healthy,” control your weight, or be more disciplined with food.

It may include:

• Restricting food or not eating enough

• Binge eating or feeling out of control with food

• Purging or compensating for eating

• Rigid food rules or fear of certain foods

• Increasingly narrow ideas about what is “healthy,” “clean,” or safe to eat

• Constant thoughts about food, eating, weight, or your body

• Eating emotionally

• Exercising in ways that feel driven or difficult to stop

• Avoiding situations because of food or body concerns

• Feeling guilt, anxiety, or shame after eating

Some of these patterns may be part of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, OSFED, or another diagnosed eating disorder. Others may fall under disordered eating, orthorexia, or longstanding struggles with food that do not fit neatly into a diagnostic category.

What matters is not whether your experience has a particular label. What matters is how much it is affecting your eating, your health, and your life.

Different Eating Disorders Need Different Care

Eating disorders are not all the same, and neither is treatment.

Someone recovering from anorexia may need very different nutrition support from someone struggling with binge eating or ARFID. The amount and type of support needed can also change over time.

That is where our experience matters.

Together, Dr. Karin Kratina and Dr. Hannah Allen bring more than 50 years of combined experience working with eating disorders and disordered eating. That depth and breadth of experience helps us meet you where you are, individualize treatment to your particular needs, and adjust our approach as recovery unfolds.

We provide outpatient nutrition therapy and collaborate with therapists, physicians, and other members of a treatment team when appropriate. Because we've served the Gainesville community for more than three decades, we've built longstanding relationships with skilled therapists, physicians, and other providers in the area and can help guide you toward additional support when needed.

If a higher level of care is needed, we can help you understand your options and connect with appropriate resources.

How Nutrition Therapy Can Help

Nutrition therapy is about more than knowing what to eat.

We look at what is happening beneath the eating struggle as well as what your body needs nutritionally. Depending on your situation, our work may include restoring adequate nourishment, reducing food fears and rigid rules, reconnecting with hunger and fullness, decreasing food preoccupation, and building a more stable and trusting relationship with food and your body.

We work with children, adolescents, and adults, tailoring nutrition therapy to age, developmental stage, family involvement, sensory sensitivities, and individual circumstances.

Treatment is highly individualized. We bring our expertise in eating disorders and recovery, and you bring lived knowledge of yourself and what you're experiencing. Your input matters throughout the process, and together we shape the work in a way that supports where you are and where you want to go.

Our Specialties

Anorexia Nervosa • ARFID and Highly Selective Eating • Binge Eating and Emotional Eating • Body Image and Weight Concerns • Bulimia Nervosa • Relationship with Food