You recovered from an eating disorder years ago and now enjoy a healthy relationship with food, but your body is struggling. You don’t feel well. Your labs are off, your hormones are out of balance, everything just feels worse than it should.

You believe you can improve your health with different food choices and habits, but you aren’t willing to risk going back into rigid food rules or obsessive thinking. You need help but you are wary of recommendations from the health & wellness world which is likely to funnel you into weight-loss, and the ED recovery world which cautions you against any changes for fear of reigniting the disorder.

I help people by bridging the gap between the two extremes of control: the side that says we have complete control over our body, and the side that says we have no control. (Read more here.)

As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor & Certified Nutritionist with 15 years of experience at all levels of eating disorder treatment, I guide men & women to enter the next phase of their health journey. I work with adults in person in Spokane and online across Washington state.

Nutrition and Mental Health Counseling
Learn how to get healthy in a way your eating disorder never understood.

Does this sound like you?

Many of my clients struggled with disordered eating and have put extreme restricting, binging, purging, punitive exercise and body loathing from their teens and twenties in the past. They recovered to find normalcy with eating and body acceptance, something they never could have imagined in the depths of their disorder. And yet, they don't feel well.

New or persistent symptoms

Metabolic issues like high blood sugar, blood pressure or triglycerides, hypothyroid
Fatigue, brain fog, migraines and sleep issues
Hormone imbalance: PCOS, severe PMS/perimenopause symptoms and/or cortisol disruption
Digestive problems, food sensitivities
Autoimmune disorders
Family history of cancer, cardiovascular or neurological disorders that make your symptoms feel so much scarier

Life stage challenges

You feel exhausted by responsibilities: Parenting, work and aging parents. "Self-care" sounds like another obligation you don't have the energy for.
You have little time for yourself, so comfort eating is your escape or reward.
You are too busy or too exhausted to menu plan & cook, so you go too long without eating then scrounge for what's available that requires the least effort.
Your family has different needs and preferences, making it hard to plan the kind of meals that feel best for your body.
You get into "I'll start Monday" mode and put off the changes you want to make.

Your goals:

Avoid or limit medication and chronic disease.
Break the sugar habit that isn’t that bad but is slowly eroding your health.
Set an example for your kids and look forward to being an active grandparent
Practice real self-care, not just t.v. and scrolling.
You’re curious to explore the possibility of deeper issues with food and self-care, but at the end of the day you want tangible changes that leave you feeling strong and energized.

We might be a good fit if:

Even if there's a part of you who hopes to lose weight in this process, what's more important to you is noticeably improved health.
You can do some mindful tracking with food & hunger/fullness without getting triggered into restriction, calorie counting, or frequently weighing yourself.
You prefer accountability and structure in your sessions, and can come ready to roll up your sleeves and get real work done.
You want a short-term, individualized counseling with highly effective interventions that you can implement right away and take with you when you finish.
You need someone to guide you who has lived and treated this issue so you don’t have to trial-and-error it for years.

Getting your health back and maintaining it is not out of your reach. You can make healthy changes and maintain a healthy relationship with food. If you want to feel more in control of your health without being perfect, I’d love to help you get there.

Reach Out

Let me introduce myself

I love this work because I’ve lived it, and helped hundreds of people find joy and peace with food. I recovered from an eating disorder in my 20s, and embraced intuitive eating and body acceptance. For over a decade, I continued to enjoy a normal relationship with food and counsel others to do the same. But, there were two problems that caught up with me in my late 30s: I had a habit of eating too many sweets and I was rebelling against “healthy” eating. When I found out my blood sugar was in the pre-diabetic range I initially felt ashamed and fraudulent. I was supposed to know better and be an example of Health At Every Size! But I also knew I had the tools to change my habits and get healthy going into mid-life. Within 6 months my blood sugar had come down, my energy improved, and my digestive system was happier. Five years later and all these things, plus more, have continued to improve. Most importantly, it hasn’t been a struggle, it’s just my new normal.

On a personal note, I’m a total nerd and listen to way too many podcasts and YouTube videos. My favorite long form podcast is "Dolly Parton's America," I highly recommend it. I can be exuberant and overly talkative with friends, but I'm an introvert who craves alone time to re-center my own thoughts. I was an atheist for 30 years and found Jesus later in life and love to talk with everyone from atheists to pagans to Christians about their own spiritual beliefs and values.

Certified Level 3 TEAM- CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) & Certified Integrative Mental Health Provider

Master of Science in Nutrition & Clinical Health Psychology, Bastyr University

Licensed Mental Health Counselor & Certified Nutritionist, Washington State & New Hampshire

What to Expect

From our first meeting to graduation

1. Free initial consultation: If you like, we can meet for about 30 minutes to give us each a chance to make sure I'm the right fit for you. I'll ask you questions about your life, your history & relationship with food, and what your goals are for counseling. I'll describe how my approach would help your specific situation. No pressure, no sales.

2. If you want to move forward I'll have you fill out some paperwork that will give me more specific information about your current lifestyle, health habits, and mental health symptoms.

3. I'll recommend a book or podcast or my free online course (whichever you prefer) to add structure & educational elements between sessions. On average clients spend 15 minutes/day on "homework".

4. We begin! I'll always start by offering you empathy, deep listening, and compassion. Once you feel fully heard and understood, then we roll up our sleeves and get to work. We'll identify a specific goal and I'll show you a roadmap for how we tackle that problem. I'll walk you through the techniques that you'll use to change your negative thoughts, feelings, motivation, and actions.

5. Over the next sessions we'll keep using different techniques until you arrive at the shift you're looking for. We'll stick with one problem area until we've resolved it.

6. Once you've achieved the change you wanted we can work on the next problem or you can finish therapy and go live your life with the tools you learned.

Nutrition and Mental Health Counseling Learn how to get healthy in a way your eating disorder never understood.