Learn to care for your health after disordered eating.
Elizabeth Saviteer, MS, LMHC, CN
I help people who’ve struggled with disordered eating or chronic dieting in the past, make sustainable changes to improve their health for the future.
You’re in a different season in your life. You don’t need intensive eating disorder therapy but you also don’t want conventional weight-loss coaching or rigid meal plan. You need gentle but directive counseling and tools to form new habits that will improve your health long term. As a licensed mental health counselor & certified nutritionist I guide men & women to enter the next phase of their health journey.
Does this sound like you?​
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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, but other, less dramatic symptoms have eroded their health over time. They may not be in the full-on restrict-binge cycle, but that pendulum swings more than they'd like. They exercise sporadically, don't sleep consistently, and have trouble dealing with stress. And then they feel guilty or frustrated with themselves, believing they "should do better."
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They find themselves comfort eating when they can grab 5 minutes to themselves to look at social media and eat a handful of chocolate chips.
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They stay up too late snacking and watching their show when the kids are in bed and feel lousy the next day.
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When their family wants to order pizza they don’t have the energy to single-handedly follow through with the healthy meal they had planned.
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Making a menu plan and cooking sounds exhausting and boring.
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And now, in their 30s and beyond, their health has declined- high blood sugar, blood pressure, fatigue, brain fog, or hormone issues.
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On top of that, many of my clients who had eating disorders when they were younger, had underlying health issues (like IBS, PCOS, celiac), that were never treated. These health issues need attention without triggering old, harmful thought patterns.
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Your goals and challenges:
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You want to avoid medication and chronic disease but you know you can’t white knuckle your way to sustainable changes.
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You want to break the sugar addiction that isn’t that bad but is slowly eroding your health.
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You want to set an example for your kids and look forward to being an active grandparent.
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You want to practice real self-care, not the quick fix of t.v. and chips, but you have very little time or energy.
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You want to be thoughtful about these changes but not get stuck in “I’ll start next week” mode.
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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.
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We might be a good fit if:
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You may be hoping to lose weight in this process but what's more important is noticeably improved health.
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You can do some mindful tracking with food & hunger/fullness without getting triggered into restriction, calorie counting, or frequently weighing yourself.
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You prefer accountability and structure in your sessions, and can come ready to roll up your sleeves and get real work done.
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You want a short-term, individualized program with highly effective interventions that you can implement right away and take with you when you finish.
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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 in control of your health without being perfect, I’d love to help you get there.
I’m Elizabeth. I’m a total nerd and can get lost researching my current obsession for hours, listening to countless podcasts and YouTube videos. I even had to purchase an app for my phone to limit the time I spend diving into new interests. I can be exuberant and overly talkative with people but crave alone time to re-center my own thoughts. I love parents, and have a heart for supporting them, but I’m not a mom myself. 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.
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I love this work because I’ve lived it. 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.
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Certified Level 3 TEAM- CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and 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
Let me introduce myself
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.
