Nutritionist Emma Wylie, left, and psychologist Sophia Dawson have teamed up to create Eating with Ease. Photo / Supplied
Eating disorders have risen rapidly in New Zealand in recent years. As reported by the Herald last week, eating disorder hospitalisations increased four-fold between 2009 and 2024, according to a University of Otago study.
Experts agree that this rise is linked to title="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/social-media/">social media, a channel through which we often engage with or use to help spread harmful messaging around food and our bodies, knowingly or not.
According to registered nutritionist and Elo Wellbeing founder Emma Wylie, who also holds a qualification in disordered eating from the Australian Centre for Eating Behaviour, eating disorders are a spectrum like many other mental health conditions.
“For everyone who’s somewhere on that spectrum, it’s challenging day-to-day,” Auckland-based Wylie tells the Herald.
Along with registered psychologist Sophia Dawson, she is aiming to address some of these challenges through a new online platform called Eating with Ease.
“We want to help bring people back down the spectrum towards a place of eating with more ease, more food freedom and a more enriched experience of life, because we only get one life to live, and we don’t want to be imprisoned by our thoughts.”
The founder of WHOLEistic Psychology, Central Otago-based Dawson is also studying a PhD in nutritional psychology and says the two sciences are linked when it comes to our relationship with food.
“Because we have been seeing the same sort of themes in our work separately, we thought, what if we bring together an integrated course to be able to use both of us? In a big way, it saves on time, it saves financially for people so they don’t have to see us separately.”
According to Ipsos research published in 2022, 81% of women say they struggle with body image or weight concerns before turning 30. One in four women under 40 restricts their food intake to punish themselves for eating “too much”, and more than half of them believe their weight affects their sense of self-worth.
“A lot of the people that are coming into this course are people for whom food is central to their lives and their decision-making,” Dawson says.
“They wake up and they’re thinking, ‘How am I going to be healthy today? What am I going to eat? When do I need to exercise to run all of this off?’”
“There’s a sense of guilt or shame that is attached to eating certain foods,” Wylie adds.
“Other things that raise the red flags that someone’s struggling with their food relationship would be if they’re not feeling safe around eating certain foods, or they have a very black and white perspective on a food.”
Labelling certain foods “good”, “bad”, “naughty” or “cheat meals” assigns morality to them, she explains.
“Even the use of ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ can be problematic sometimes, because there’s a huge wave of people believing that to be healthy, it has to be 100% perfect. But when we’re talking about healthy, it’s actually very balanced.”
Then there’s talking about food “like it needs to be earned or burnt off”. “Even just an obsession with body composition, and believing that food will dictate or change that.”
“I see a lot of teenagers who have lots of thoughts about their body and the shape that they want it to be, and the weight that they want to be,” Dawson adds.
“They think that in order to be healthy, i.e. a certain weight, they [have to] restrict their food, or they overcompensate with exercise, they skip meals.”
Food and diet trends come and go, and are served up to us via traditional media and social media – often to a harmful extent.
“It was low-fat, then there was low-carb, then there was a real calorie focus, Weight Watchers, things like that,” Wylie says.
“At the moment, [it’s] high protein, or even weight loss medications being so prominent and so shown to us, and the effects of them ... questioning whether certain people are on them or not on them.”
Not everything we see on social media is helpful or realistic.
“Things that get real gravity or weight or that go viral are always the extremes. We get such exposure to these extreme ideas of what health and wellness is, and sometimes there has been less of a focus on what is actually a functional, balanced relationship with food and what’s sustainable and consistent.”
Dawson believes somewhere along the way, making comments on people’s bodies became “normalised”.
“We’re like, ‘Oh, you’re looking good today’. And then our minds attach whatever meaning we want to attach. Like, ‘I have lost 2 kilos, so maybe they’re referring to the fact that I’ve lost weight’.
“It means we overvalue this idea of somebody’s physical appearance over their other incredible qualities.”
That focus on outward physical appearances is something we learn by example, Wylie says.
“Generationally, that’s existed and passed down, and just looks a different way each time. Now, we have the words and the ability to understand that’s the case, and how we can create a narrative that questions or changes that.”
Wylie suggests using neutral language and acknowledging there’s space for lots of foods in a balanced diet.
“If we look at a burger, for example, you’ve got an incredible meat protein in the patty, you’ve got your energy from the carbohydrates in the bun. There might be some great fats in there, whether it’s cheese or avocado, and then there’s often some veggies, like lettuce or tomato. So how is that any different to a ‘healthy’ sandwich? This actually is a balanced meal, and I really enjoy it – therefore there’s nourishment in it."
Something Wylie often tells her clients is: “If we don’t expect one day of ‘healthy’ eating and exercise to change our body, then why do we think one less ‘healthy’ day will?
“We have a negative bias in terms of what we think will happen to our body.”
Dawson adds, “A big part of what we’re teaching in this course is how to be guided by our values and the long-term things that matter, rather than thoughts and feelings that are so temporary.
“So, rather than making choices from feelings of guilt or shame, thoughts about ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘unhealthy’, ‘healthy’, recognise that we want to use food to nourish, not punish.”
It’s an approach that is grounded in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).
“It’s about recognising, actually we can’t control the stuff our mind says.
“We can’t control how we feel, because so much of it is automatic and so much of it is just part of being a human in this world. So how can we make room for these thoughts and feelings and move towards the life we want to have and the person we want to be?”
Those thoughts won’t necessarily go away, and may continue to crop up in situations such as ordering off a menu in public.
“It’s about knowing that those thoughts might be present, but choosing the difficult thing to do, which is actually order the thing that you want to order and using that as exposure and confirmation that, actually, I can do the hard thing,” Wylie says.
“The nutrition element is, what does a balanced diet look like? How can I create meals that I know are full of nourishment and energy and how can I feel confident in making these foods, ordering these foods, or how do I eat in social situations?”
The pair say that the feedback from those using the course has been “really positive” so far.
They stress that it’s not intended to replace psychological, medical or urgent treatment for those experiencing distress or health complications due to disordered eating. Rather, it’s designed to be educational.
“People are relieved to see that there’s a programme like this that’s realistic and compassionate and supportive, and that it feels accessible,” Wylie says, while Dawson adds the convenience has been a big drawcard for busy people.
“They can log on and complete it as they need, rather than book in for a session at a certain time on a certain day that doesn’t necessarily allow for life happening.”
Ultimately, the pair hope that it can help people find a sense of freedom when it comes to food.
“Just in the way that body shape and weight can overshadow all the amazing parts, food also then overshadows all the amazing parts of life,” Dawson says.
“We don’t want that for people. We want them to see food as nourishment and balance.”