In Laramie, an active lifestyle is part of the culture. Between long winters, high altitude, college athletics, ranch and outdoor work, and youth and club sports, many people here train hard and expect a lot of themselves. Drive and discipline can be real strengths. But for some people, the pressure to perform slowly turns into pressure around food, weight, and body image.
If that sounds familiar, you are not alone, and you don't have to figure it out by yourself.
Athletes and highly driven people often share traits that help them succeed: perfectionism, self-discipline, high standards, and a strong tolerance for discomfort. Those same traits can also make someone more vulnerable to disordered eating. When performance is tied to self-worth, food can start to feel like something to control, earn, or fix.
Sport environments can add to this. Comments about weight or appearance, weigh-ins, aesthetic pressure, comparisons to teammates, and the belief that "lighter is faster" can all feed unhelpful rules about eating. Athletes are sometimes praised for behaviors that are actually warning signs, which makes it harder to reach out.
You don't need to be in a crisis to ask for help. Consider reaching out if you notice:
Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) happens when the body does not get enough fuel to support both training and normal daily functioning. It is not always intentional, and it can show up in athletes who are not "trying" to restrict. It can affect energy, mood, recovery, bone health, hormones, and performance. If you suspect under-fueling, it is important to work with a qualified professional team rather than trying to fix it on your own.
Mental performance work focuses on the skills that help you show up as your best: managing pressure, building confidence, handling setbacks, and reducing perfectionism and fear of failure. In sport psychology sessions, you might work on focus, self-talk, anxiety before competition, motivation, and your relationship with your sport.
For many clients, this is not only about performing better. It is about enjoying training again and feeling like more than your results.
At Healing Stones Therapy, eating disorder treatment is grounded in CBT-E (Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), an evidence-based approach for eating disorders and disordered eating. CBT-E is individualized. Together we look at what is keeping the eating problem going for you, including beliefs about weight, shape, and self-worth, and build practical steps toward regular, flexible eating and a healthier relationship with your body.
Treatment is collaborative, non-judgmental, and weight-inclusive. When helpful, care can be coordinated with your doctor, current therapist, or a registered dietitian so everyone is on the same page.
Healing Stones Therapy is based in Laramie, Wyoming, and offers telehealth so you can get support from home, whether you live in town, out on a ranch, or travel for competition. Our practice also serves clients in Utah, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, and Oklahoma.
Asking for help is not a sign that you are weak or failing at your sport. It is a way to protect your health, your performance, and your enjoyment of the things you love.
Ready to talk? Schedule a consultation with Healing Stones Therapy or call [phone number].
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call or text 988 or call 911.
Eating disorders do not always fit neatly into one diagnostic box.
Someone may begin with severe food restriction and later experience binge eating. Another person may move between binge eating, compensatory behaviors, rigid dieting, and periods of restriction. The diagnosis can change while many of the thoughts and behaviors keeping the eating disorder alive remain remarkably similar.
This is one reason Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT-E, is such an important treatment for eating disorders.
CBT-E was developed specifically for eating disorders and is based on a transdiagnostic model. Rather than requiring an entirely different therapy for every eating disorder diagnosis, CBT-E identifies and treats many of the psychological processes that maintain eating disorders across diagnoses.
At Healing Stones Therapy, we use evidence-based eating disorder treatment to help individuals struggling with anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge eating disorder (BED), OSFED, and other forms of disordered eating.
CBT-E stands for Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Although it developed from cognitive behavioral treatments for bulimia nervosa, CBT-E was designed as a broader treatment capable of addressing eating-disorder psychopathology across diagnostic categories.
The treatment looks beyond food alone.
Eating disorders can become maintained through interconnected patterns involving eating behaviors, thoughts, emotions, body image, self-evaluation, rules surrounding food, and attempts to control weight or shape.
CBT-E helps the client and therapist identify the individual mechanisms keeping those patterns going—and systematically work to change them.
One of the most important features of CBT-E is its transdiagnostic model. Transdiagnostic means that treatment is not limited to one specific eating disorder diagnosis.
Instead, CBT-E recognizes that anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, OSFED, and other eating-disorder presentations can share important psychological and behavioral mechanisms.
A person might experience:
The exact behaviors may look different from one person to another, but the processes maintaining the eating disorder can overlap.
That is the power of the transdiagnostic model. We treat the person and the mechanisms maintaining the eating disorder—not simply the diagnostic label.
CBT-E can be used in the treatment of anorexia nervosa, particularly with adults and older adolescents when clinically appropriate.
Treatment may address restrictive eating, rigid food rules, fear surrounding eating or weight change, body checking, avoidance, and the ways shape, weight, and eating become tied to self-worth.
For individuals who are underweight or medically compromised, psychological treatment cannot occur in isolation. Medical monitoring and appropriate nutritional support are essential components of safe eating-disorder treatment.
At Healing Stones Therapy, eating-disorder care may involve collaboration between psychotherapy, nutrition professionals, and medical providers depending on the client's needs.
Yes. Cognitive behavioral approaches have an especially strong history in the treatment of bulimia nervosa. CBT-E helps identify and interrupt the patterns that can perpetuate the binge-purge cycle.
For many people, restriction and rigid dietary rules actually increase vulnerability to binge eating. A binge may then lead to guilt, shame, compensatory behaviors, or renewed restriction—beginning the cycle again.
Treatment works toward breaking this pattern rather than simply asking someone to “stop” bingeing or purging.
CBT-E can also be used to treat binge eating disorder (BED). Treatment may focus on establishing more consistent eating patterns, reducing dietary restraint, identifying triggers and maintaining mechanisms, challenging rigid beliefs surrounding food and body image, and developing different responses to difficult emotions or situations.
Importantly, treating binge eating is not simply about weight loss. Effective eating-disorder treatment addresses the psychological and behavioral relationship with food rather than reinforcing the dieting and restriction cycle that can contribute to continued binge eating.
Traditional CBT examines connections between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. CBT-E builds on those principles but was developed specifically around the psychopathology of eating disorders.
Treatment is highly individualized. Instead of applying the same worksheet or strategy to every client, the therapist develops an individualized understanding—or formulation—of what is maintaining that person's eating disorder. That formulation guides treatment.
For one person, rigid restriction may be central.
For another, binge eating and body dissatisfaction may dominate.
Another person may struggle with perfectionism, low self-esteem, difficulty tolerating emotions, or interpersonal problems that intensify eating-disorder behaviors.
CBT-E allows treatment to address these differences while remaining structured and evidence-based.
One of the damaging misconceptions surrounding eating disorders is that someone has to look a certain way before they deserve treatment. Eating disorders occur across body sizes, ages, backgrounds, and athletic abilities. A person's appearance cannot tell us how much psychological distress they are experiencing or whether their eating behaviors are dangerous. You also do not need to wait until an eating disorder becomes severe before asking for help. Early intervention matters.
If food, exercise, weight, body image, binge eating, restriction, purging, or fear surrounding eating is consuming significant mental energy or interfering with your life, it is worth talking with an eating-disorder professional.
Healing Stones Therapy provides specialized treatment for eating disorders and disordered eating using evidence-based and individualized approaches.
Our work may include psychotherapy, nutritional support, medical collaboration, and other appropriate members of the client's treatment team.
We work with individuals experiencing:
Anorexia Nervosa (AN)
Bulimia Nervosa (BN)
Binge Eating Disorder (BED)
OSFED and other eating-disorder presentations
Chronic dieting and restrictive eating
Binge eating and feeling out of control around food
Body image distress
Fear of weight gain
Food guilt and anxiety surrounding eating
Healing Stones Therapy provides in-person eating-disorder treatment in Laramie, Wyoming, along with virtual therapy in Utah, Montana, Nevada and Oklahoma. We provide Registered Dietitians.
Food behaviors are important, but lasting eating-disorder recovery involves much more. Recovery can mean being able to eat without spending the rest of the day analyzing it. It can mean attending dinner without calculating how you will compensate afterward. It can mean exercising because movement adds something to your life rather than because missing a workout feels unbearable. It can mean having mental space for relationships, athletics, school, work, creativity, and the parts of yourself that existed before the eating disorder began taking up so much room.
CBT-E provides a structured way to understand what keeps an eating disorder going and begin changing those patterns one step at a time.
If you or someone you care about is struggling with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, restrictive eating, chronic dieting, or another eating disorder, you do not need to determine the perfect diagnostic label before reaching out.
At Healing Stones Therapy, we begin by understanding what you are experiencing and determining what level and type of support may be appropriate.
Schedule a free consultation with Healing Stones Therapy to learn more about CBT-E and our eating-disorder treatment options.
If you’re struggling with binge eating, late night eating, or feeling out of control with eating, you are not alone — and you are not broken.
Many clients at Healing Stones Therapy come to us saying:
These experiences are not failures of willpower. They are often the result of diet culture, restriction, and a dysregulated nervous system.
As a specialized provider of eating disorder therapy in Wyoming, we help individuals move from shame and control toward stability, body neutrality, and healing.
Body neutrality removes moral judgment from your body.
Instead of:
“I feel fat.”
“I need to shrink.”
“My body is wrong.”
Body neutrality says:
“My body is a body.”
“My body deserves care.”
“I don’t have to love it to respect it.”
For individuals experiencing binge eating disorder, chronic overeating, or feeling out of control with food, body neutrality reduces shame — which is one of the biggest triggers for late night eating and binge cycles.
Diet culture teaches:
But biologically, food is food. When we restrict certain foods, the brain increases urgency around them. That urgency can lead to:
Research shows that chronic dieting is one of the strongest predictors of binge eating.
At Healing Stones Therapy, we use evidence-based approaches including CBT-E (Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to stabilize eating patterns and reduce binge eating episodes within a structured 20–40 session framework.
When someone says, “I can’t stop eating,” we look deeper:
Many individuals struggling with binge eating in Wyoming have never had access to specialized outpatient eating disorder care. Without support, late night eating can become the only time the body feels safe. That’s why we integrate trauma-informed therapy and EMDR to address the root causes of eating behaviors — not just the symptoms. Healing isn’t about more control. It’s about nervous system safety.
The Impact of Diet Culture in Rural Wyoming
In rural communities across Wyoming, access to specialized eating disorder treatment has historically been limited. Many individuals are told to:
These approaches often increase binge eating and feelings of being out of control with food.
As a specialized provider of binge eating therapy in Wyoming, Healing Stones Therapy offers structured, evidence-based outpatient treatment so individuals do not need to travel out of state for care.
You may benefit from specialized eating disorder treatment if you:
You do not need to wait until behaviors become severe to seek support.
Healing Stones Therapy provides:
Our approach focuses on:
You deserve support that goes beyond dieting advice.
Binge eating is often caused by a combination of chronic dieting, restriction, emotional stress, trauma, and nervous system dysregulation.
Late night eating often occurs when the body has been underfed, emotionally overwhelmed, or suppressing needs throughout the day.
“Feeling fat” is usually a placeholder for emotions such as shame, anxiety, sadness, or lack of control.
Yes. EMDR can help process underlying trauma that contributes to out of control eating behaviors.
Negative thoughts, self-doubt, anxiety spirals, and inner criticism are part of the human experience—but many people feel overwhelmed by them, as if every thought demands attention or action. At Healing Stones Therapy, serving Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, we help clients step off the mental rollercoaster through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), an evidence-based treatment that teaches us how to accept our internal experiences while living a life rooted in personal values.
Whether you are navigating sports anxiety, sports performance challenges, eating disorders or disordered eating, or generalized anxiety, ACT offers a powerful, compassionate approach to living with greater freedom and intention.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a mindfulness-based behavioral therapy that focuses on:
Instead of trying to eliminate unpleasant thoughts or feelings (which often causes more suffering), ACT teaches people how to change their relationship to these experiences.
You learn to say, “This thought is here—but I don’t have to follow it.”
One of the central teachings of ACT is this:
Human brains create thousands of thoughts every day—many of which are negative, repetitive, unrealistic, or rooted in old learning. Trying to control or eliminate thoughts actually increases their intensity.
ACT helps clients understand that:
This shift—called cognitive defusion—is one of the most liberating parts of ACT.
Athletes often struggle with:
Traditional approaches try to “fix” or suppress anxiety, but ACT helps athletes:
ACT helps athletes stay psychologically flexible—allowing them to perform with clarity, presence, and confidence.
Eating disorders often involve:
ACT offers a non-judgmental approach that helps clients:
Paired with somatic awareness and trauma-informed care, ACT is a powerful tool for shifting long-standing patterns.
Anxiety often comes from trying to control the uncontrollable—thoughts, sensations, outcomes, or other people’s perceptions.
ACT helps clients:
When clients stop battling anxiety and instead work with their internal experience, anxiety loses its power.
At the heart of ACT is the idea of living by values, not by fear or self-judgment.
Values are not goals—they are ongoing directions.
Examples include:
When you clarify your values, you gain:
Values help clients move toward the life they want, even when difficult thoughts or emotions show up.
ACT teaches that suffering is not a personal flaw—it is a shared human experience. Psychological flexibility means:
This flexibility becomes a pathway to freedom, authenticity, and emotional resilience.
Healing Stones Therapy supports clients across Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Oklahoma with:
Our therapists don’t strive for perfection—we strive for presence, compassion, and connection. ACT helps us walk alongside you as you build a life that reflects who you truly want to be.
If you’re seeking support with anxiety, performance issues, trauma, or eating-related concerns, ACT offers a grounded, evidence-based path toward clarity and freedom. Give us a call and get started today!
Healing from an eating disorder takes more than willpower, it takes understanding, structure, and compassionate support. At Healing Stones Therapy, we specialize in helping individuals find freedom from emotional eating, binge eating, and feeling out of control with food.
We know that recovery can be a long and painful process when faced alone. That’s why we walk beside you, offering collaborative, evidence-based outpatient treatment that helps you reconnect with your body, rebuild your relationship with food, and rediscover hope.
CBT-E (Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is the gold standard psychological treatment for eating disorders. It’s a structured, evidence-based approach designed to help people understand and change the patterns of thinking and behavior that keep eating difficulties in place.
At Healing Stones Therapy, our clinicians use CBT-E to help you:
CBT-E empowers you to become your own therapist over time, learning lifelong tools for balance, nourishment, and emotional regulation.
We believe healing doesn’t happen in isolation. Our collaborative outpatient treatment team brings together professionals from multiple disciplines to create a holistic and supportive experience:
Together, we create a safe space for transformation, where every part of you is supported in recovery.
At Healing Stones Therapy, we understand that healing from an eating disorder is deeply personal. Everyone’s story is different, and every recovery path looks unique. That’s why we design individualized treatment plans that align with your current needs, goals, and readiness for change.
You don’t have to face recovery alone. We are here to hold your hand through each step, providing empathy, structure, and a nonjudgmental space to grow.
Healing does not come from pressure or harshness, it grows from compassion, acceptance, and hope.
Many of our clients struggle with emotional eating, binge eating, or feeling out of control around food. These patterns often arise as a way to cope with stress, anxiety, or unmet emotional needs.
Through gentle therapeutic exploration and CBT-E strategies, we help you:
Our goal is not perfection, it’s progress toward peace, balance, and self-kindness.
Recovery from an eating disorder is a journey of courage and patience. At Healing Stones Therapy, we provide the supportive outpatient environment you need to heal, body, mind, and spirit.
Let us help you move toward freedom, nourishment, and self-acceptance.
Learn more about our CBT-E outpatient treatment and compassionate care approach on our website.
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.
