Disordered eating doesn’t always look the way you might expect. For many students in Northern Nevada—especially in Reno—and in Stillwater, Oklahoma, it often hides behind socially accepted behaviors like skipping meals to “eat clean,” obsessively logging calories, counting macronutrients, or exercising to burn off a meal. These patterns often start with the intention to be healthy but quickly become sources of guilt,
anxiety, and stress.
If you find yourself constantly thinking about food, avoiding social events because of meals, or feeling like you need to "earn" your food through exercise, you’re not alone. These signs point to a deeper disconnect between your body and your sense of self-worth. You can break this cycle. Healing your relationship with food and your body is possible, and it doesn’t involve another diet or fitness plan.
Diet culture tells you that being thinner means being healthier, happier, and more successful. It praises self-control, discipline, and restriction. But what it doesn’t tell you is the emotional cost of living this way.
As a student navigating life in places like Reno or Stillwater, you’re balancing classes, work, and social life. The pressure to maintain a certain appearance can lead to habits that feel "healthy" on the surface but are actually harmful to your internal body. You might start skipping meals, avoiding foods you once loved, or tying your self-worth to your body image.
One of the most harmful beliefs diet culture pushes is that you need to earn food and you don't deserve to enjoy food. Maybe you’ve felt like you shouldn’t eat because you didn’t work out that day. Or you ate something "bad" and felt like you had to make up for it. This mindset leads to guilt and fear around food.
Instead, food can become a source of nourishment and connection. Your body has signals—hunger, fullness, satisfaction—that guide how much and when to eat. Ignoring those cues in favor of external rules disconnects you from what your body actually needs. Therapy offers a path to relearning how to listen to and trust those cues again.
It’s hard to feel confident in your body when every ad, post, or influencer implies that you should look different—as if something is wrong with you for not fitting society’s idea of the perfect body." But your body doesn’t need to be changed to be worthy. You deserve respect and care just as you are. When we come from this place of compassion and acceptance then we make steps to honor our physical body more
Therapy can help you explore where body image struggles began and how they’ve been reinforced. By challenging unrealistic standards and reframing your internal narrative, you can start to feel safer in your own skin.
The dieting industry is worth billions. That’s no coincidence. Diets promise control, results, and transformation—but only if you follow their rules. When the diet doesn’t work long-term, the blame falls on you, not the system.
This cycle leads to frustration and even more restrictive behavior. Diets lead to fluctuations in weight and over time research suggest individuals gain weight over time. The key to heal is to learn intuitive eating and listen to your amazing body which is your expert in finding your optimal weight. Once this is attained you will move better, have more energy, and have improved cognition. But wellness isn’t something you can buy or hack. True well-being includes your mental health, your relationship with food, and your ability to be present in your life. Therapy creates space to reject these external pressures and build habits that actually support your overall health.
Exercise and nutrition don’t need to be tools for punishment. Movement can be about joy, release, and energy—not shrinking your body. Nutrition can be about how food feels, tastes, and supports your focus and energy—not about sticking to a rigid plan.
Therapy guides you toward creating a relationship with movement and food that fits your life. No strict meal plans or exercise rules. Just curiosity, flexibility, and self-compassion.
You may have spent years thinking your body was the problem. The truth is, your body has always been trying to communicate with you. It’s time to start listening.
Reconnection happens through small moments: choosing to rest when you’re tired instead of pushing through, allowing yourself a meal that brings comfort, or letting movement feel playful instead of punishing. Therapy supports you in noticing these shifts and building on them.
Therapeutic work at Healing Stones Therapy is personalized and non-judgmental. Students from communities across Northern Nevada and the Oklahoma area, often carry a heavy mix of stress, perfectionism, and confusion when it comes to food and body image. Our approach focuses on helping you feel understood, not pathologized.
Sessions may explore your relationship with control, how food rules started, and how your body story has evolved. You’ll work toward feeling safer in your body and more confident in the choices you make for your health. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s connection. We offer nutritional and psychotherapy support as part of a holistic approach to enhance healing and promote lasting well-being.
If these sound familiar, you’re not alone. Many students in the Mountain West struggle with these thoughts and behaviors but don’t realize there’s another way to live.
Healing doesn’t happen overnight. But each step toward rejecting diet culture creates more room for joy, freedom, and presence in your life. Therapy helps you clarify what health means for you—on your terms.
You can learn to:
These aren’t lofty goals—they’re entirely possible when you have the right support.
If you’ve been waiting for the right time to get help, this is it. You deserve to feel at home in your body and at peace with food. Healing Stones Therapy in Jackson Hole offers a place to begin that process.
Start your journey today by scheduling an appointment here. Therapy isn’t about fixing you—it’s about reconnecting with yourself. You already have the wisdom inside you. Let’s uncover it together.
