Introduction
When many people picture working with a dietitian, they imagine food rules, calorie counting, weight targets or being judged. But in the context of eating disorder recovery, a dietitian can be far more than a numbers-monitor: they can be a guide, an ally, and a healer.
At Relinquish on the Gold Coast, our dietetic approach is grounded in Health at Every Size (HAES), intuitive eating, trauma-informed care and body trust. We believe your worth is not tied to your weight or how “perfectly” you eat. Instead, our focus is on helping you heal your relationship with food, your body, and your internal cues so you can live freely, healthily, and confidently.
Why the Traditional Dietetic Picture Is Limiting
- Many dietetic settings still emphasise BMI, weight loss, calorie restriction or strict portion control as primary measures of progress. This can reinforce dieting cycles, guilt, shame, and disconnection from internal cues (hunger, fullness, satisfaction).
- For someone recovering from disordered eating, food guilt, internalised food rules or fear of certain foods, traditional approaches may trigger old patterns rather than heal them.
- When the primary focus is on numbers (weight, calories, BMI), the emotional, social, cultural, psychological and environmental influences on eating can be neglected. Real recovery demands attention to how you think about, feel about, and react to food — not just what you eat or how much.
What a HAES-Aligned, Trauma-Informed Dietitian Does
- Listens to Your Story
- Your history with food: dieting, restrictions, restrictions you placed on yourself, foods you feared or avoided, social or cultural influences, emotional triggers, and emotional relationship with eating.
- Body image history: how you have felt about your body over time, what messages you received, what judgments you apply to your body or eating.
- Your physical health context: medical conditions, medications, ability, energy, movement, digestion, hunger/fullness awareness and your life goals, values, preferences.
- Your emotional and mental health context: triggers, stressors, feelings around food, compensatory behaviours, emotional eating, social pressures, self-criticism, and recovery history.
- Your pace, comfort, readiness for change, and what feels safe to you in the journey of healing.
- Supports Internal Cues & Intuitive Eating
- Helps you learn to recognise your hunger and fullness signals, emotional triggers, pleasure and satisfaction.
- Guides you to make food choices based on what feels nourishing, satisfying, and sustainable rather than “only what’s lowest calorie” or “what burns off most.”
- Encourages permission, enjoyment, variety, and balance without rigid rules, food policing or moralising food.
- Works to reduce guilt, fear, or shame about food choices.
- Addresses the Emotional and Behavioural Side of Eating
- Food and eating are rarely only about nutrition; they’re often tied to emotion (stress, joy, loneliness, boredom, celebration, comfort). A dietitian in this context helps you notice, understand and respond compassionately to emotional cues, rather than ignoring them, avoiding them, or punishing yourself for them.
- Assists with developing coping strategies that don’t resort to harmful restriction or over-compensation.
- Increasing awareness of triggers and how food, body image, emotions and social life interact.
- Tailors Practical Skills & Planning
- Helps with meal timing, meal planning, grocery shopping, food selection, making foods you enjoy accessible, and meal/snack structure that supports comfort rather than restriction.
- Works with variation (what you like, culture, lifestyle, budget, cooking comfort etc.), not only prescriptive diets.
- Encourages small, sustainable changes rather than massive or abrupt rules that feel overwhelming or punitive.
- Provides guidance on nutrition adequacy, balanced variety, taste and satisfaction but without moralising difference or enforcing austerity.
- Offers Collaboration, Not Dictation
- You and the dietitian work together: you bring your experience, goals, preferences, and what feels safe; the dietitian brings expertise, strategies, insight, reflection, and options.
- No one “magic plan” fits everyone; what works for you may differ from what works for someone else.
- Progress is measured not only by behavioural changes but by how you feel (mentally, emotionally, physically), how your relationship with food evolves, how confident you are in decision-making, how well you trust your body’s cues, and how stable your eating behaviours become.
- Respects Your Autonomy & Supports Your Pace
- Healing is non-linear. It’s normal to have relapses, difficult days, discomfort, frustration these are part of growth and change, not failure.
- You get to choose what changes you focus on, when, and how quickly. The dietitian supports you, not judges you.
- You don’t have to wait until you reach a certain body size or weight to get support; your recovery and wellbeing are worthy of care now.
How This Support Helps Long Term
- Clients frequently report less mental and emotional burden around food, less guilt and shame, improved confidence in food choice, and more trust in their internal cues.
- Over time, many find eating becomes more peaceful, sustainable, satisfying; social eating feels easier; special events feel less stressful; emotional eating feels more manageable; and coping behaviours become less extreme.
- Physical health markers may improve when people engage in consistent and nourishing behaviours (balanced eating, adequate variety, regular intake, rest, movement, hydration, mindful timing) even without weight loss being the primary aim.
- Food stops being the enemy or the reward; it becomes part of life, community, culture, enjoyment, rest, recovery, connection and nourishment.
What to Expect at Relinquish on the Gold Coast
- A first meeting where your story is heard, your goals discussed, your comfort and preferences explored.
- Flexible pace and structure based on your readiness, your history, your emotional and physical health, your lifestyle, your values.
- Guidance on intuitive eating principles, satisfaction, fullness, food worry, emotional eating, food neutrality.
- Practical strategies for food planning, self-compassion, coping, social settings, emotional triggers, and decision-making.
- Support for holistic wellbeing: not just what you eat, but how you eat, how you feel, how your body feels, how your mood is, how your social life is, how your energy is, how your satisfaction is.
- Collaboration with other health professionals in your team if needed (psychologists, GPs, allied health, NDIS support etc.).
Conclusion & Call to Action
If you’ve been told too many times that your worth is tied to your weight, that you must restrict or follow rigid rules, or that your food choices make you “bad” there is another way.
At Relinquish, we believe you deserve care that honours your body, your history, your emotions, your goals, your voice, your comfort. You deserve to heal your relationship with food, to trust your body, to eat with satisfaction and ease, to live with freedom and confidence.