You Do Not Have to Have It “Figured Out” to Reach Out
Your struggles are worth taking seriously long before they reach a breaking point. Eating disorders are real health conditions, not a matter of willpower or vanity, and they affect people of every age, gender, and body size.
Many people wait because they are not sure their struggles are “bad enough.” You are allowed to seek support at any point. It may help to talk with someone if you notice any of the following in yourself or a loved one:
- Frequent guilt, anxiety, or shame around eating, food choices, or your body
- Restricting food, skipping meals, binge eating, or compensating through purging, laxatives, or excessive exercise
- Avoiding meals or social situations that involve food
- Intense preoccupation with weight, shape, calories, or “good” and “bad” foods
- Mood changes, irritability, or withdrawal that seem connected to eating
None of these mean anything is wrong with you as a person. They are signals that support could help, and reaching out is a strong first step.
Eating Disorders We Support at Mental Care Plus
Disordered eating shows up in many forms. Our therapists work with the emotional and behavioral patterns behind a range of eating concerns, including:
- Anorexia nervosa: restricting food intake, an intense fear of weight gain, and a distorted experience of body shape or weight.
- Bulimia nervosa: cycles of binge eating followed by compensatory behaviors such as purging, fasting, or over-exercising.
- Binge eating disorder: recurring episodes of eating large amounts of food with a sense of loss of control, often followed by distress or shame, without regular compensatory behavior.
- ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder): limited eating driven by sensory sensitivity, fear of choking or illness, or low interest in food rather than by body image.
- OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder): significant, distressing eating-disorder symptoms that do not fit neatly into one category but still deserve care.
- Orthorexia: an intense preoccupation with “healthy,” “clean,” or “pure” eating that is not yet a formal diagnosis but can still narrow your life and cause real distress.
- Disordered eating: patterns that may not meet full diagnostic criteria yet are harming your health, mood, or daily life.
The National Institute of Mental Health explains that eating disorders are serious illnesses marked by severe disturbances in eating behaviors, and that early support improves outcomes.
How Eating Disorder Therapy Helps
Eating disorder therapy at Mental Care Plus focuses on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors underneath disordered eating, at a pace that feels safe. Your care is personalized rather than one-size-fits-all. Approaches our licensed therapists draw on include:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to notice and gradually shift the beliefs about food, weight, and self-image that keep the cycle going.
- Supportive and emotion-focused counseling to work through the stress, perfectionism, trauma, or low self-esteem that often sit beneath eating concerns.
- Motivational and skills-based work to rebuild steadier eating patterns and healthier ways of coping over time.
- Body-image and self-worth work to loosen the grip of comparison and self-criticism.
For some eating disorders, specialized protocols such as enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-E) and family-based treatment are considered leading evidence-based approaches.
Medication Management for Co-Occurring Conditions
Eating disorders often travel alongside other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, or obsessive-compulsive symptoms. For those co-occurring conditions, our prescribing providers offer medication management as part of a coordinated plan. Medication is never a standalone treatment for an eating disorder, and therapy remains the foundation of care. Any decision about medication is made collaboratively, with your goals and full history in mind.
Evaluation, Nutrition, and Level of Care
Care begins with an unhurried conversation about what you are experiencing, your history, and what you want to change. From there we build a plan together and adjust it as you progress.
Because balanced nutrition and physical health are central to recovery, we will encourage you to work with a registered dietitian or your medical provider when that kind of support would help. Our role is the psychotherapy and, where appropriate, medication management for co-occurring conditions.
It is just as important to be clear about what we do not provide. Mental Care Plus is a general outpatient practice. We are not an intensive outpatient program (IOP), partial hospitalization program (PHP), residential facility, or medical stabilization unit. Severe eating disorders can cause serious medical complications that call for close medical monitoring or a higher level of care. The Academy for Eating Disorders publishes medical and risk-management standards for recognizing these situations early. Choosing the right level of care is part of getting the right help.
Who We Help
We work with adolescents and adults, including people who are reaching out for the first time and those who have had care before and want continued support or relapse prevention. Because eating concerns so often overlap with anxiety and depression, we treat the whole picture rather than a single symptom.
Eating Disorder Therapy in Bergen County and Across New Jersey
Our office is at 560 Sylvan Ave, Suite 2115, in Englewood Cliffs, convenient to communities throughout Bergen County. We also offer secure telehealth for clients across New Jersey, so you can begin care from home if that feels safer or easier. Whether you prefer to meet in person or online, help is close by.
Insurance We Accept
We work to make care accessible and accept most major insurance plans, including
- Aetna
- Carelon
- Cigna
- Fidelis
- Horizon NJ Health
- Horizon BCBS NJ
- Magellan
- Medicaid
- Medicare
- Optum (UnitedHealthcare)
- Oscar
- WellCare
