A. Nope, you don’t need to be officially diagnosed. The more important thing is helping you change your disordered eating behaviors.

A. Most likely on Zoom, unless you live nearby and are comfortable getting together in person.

A. Once or twice a week is typically best. The sessions will be either 30 minutes or 60 minutes. It’s best that the first four appointments be 60 minutes so we can do some serious talking. After that, it’s your choice!

A. There are four main parts, but they all overlap to some extent. 1. I will ask you a ton of questions about your childhood and your relationships with your family to help try to get to the root of how your eating disorder started. 2. We will work to examine and then separate your emotions from food 3. Together we’ll look at forms of self-care, including boundaries, and you can incorporate those ways into your life 4. Finally, I’ll help you re-learn how to listen to your body to be more intuitive.

A. I’m going to do everything in my power to make recovery happen. I have no doubt that you can recover.

A. The magic question! Everyone is different, but on average, 6-12 months. That includes a weaning period where we only see each other once or twice a month.

A. First, you need to be committed to recovery. As far as meeting, I offer both packages and one-off sessions. If you book a package, you pay up front, which gives you accountability to help you stay on course. In addition, if you book a package you can email or voice message me in between sessions. If you choose a one-off session, I will invoice you afterwards.

A. Great question! Some experts say - yes, and some experts say - no. I’m a firm believer in full recovery. I think that if we work enough on discovering your trauma(s) from the past, and work through them, along with teaching you healthier coping skills and adding self-care, full recovery is definitely possible. And by full recovery I mean no eating disordered thoughts or behaviors.

A. There will be “assignments” I will give you at the end of one session to help carry you to the next. I promise that the assignments are not hard, and in fact, I think you will find them pretty helpful.

At 13 yrs old I was offered a morning paper round, I woke at 6am, collected the papers and spent an hour delivering in my local village.

On a Friday when I collected the papers I was given my pay, cash in a little envelope. With this, every Friday I started to buy a double Mars bar which I ate while delivering the papers. In fact, the lovely old man who ran the post office started giving me a second Mars bar as a thank you so I was then eating 2 every Friday morning, I loved this, I felt weirdly empowered that I was doing something that no-one knew about, my little secret and my god it felt so good.

With the money I had left I would then go to another shop (I didn’t want the old man knowing I was just pigging out on my paper round money) where I would buy chocolate, biscuits, crisps and cakes which I would then on a Saturday, in my bedroom with the door closed eat, the whole lot in one sitting. I would carefully wrap each empty wrapper as small as I could so I could hide them easily when throwing away or, I would take them to school on a Monday and throw in a bin on route so as not to get found out. Why did it feel so good but so bad too?!

At this point I had no feelings or any realisation that this wasn’t ‘normal’

From the age of 16yrs I started working in a hairdressing salon, I loved it but was desperately unhappy too and felt I was getting unhappier by the day.

My mum had died when I was 12 and I stepped up to ‘be her’, my dad was not there emotionally for me and if I ever mentioned my mum or challenged his decisions around the women he was meeting as he would tell me to be grateful, not be selfish and sometime hit me. I never put the two together and just carried on eating and started gaining weight. He went onto marry a woman who was the complete opposite to my mum within a year of her death, my whole world changed again with no thought of how things were going to affect me.

I then became a gym junkie, EVERY single day straight after work I would buy a packet of biscuits, the same packet every day as I knew the calories and kidded myself they were ok as they contained figs!

I would then get into the gym, sit on a bike for an hours and run run run until I was confident I had worked off ALL the calories gained in the day. People started mentioning how good I looked which made me work harder, I then started taking laxatives too as terrified of putting the weight back on.

This binging and purging went on and on for years until I damaged my back in my 40’s and suddenly couldn’t work out anymore and I had stopped taking laxatives too as I now have IBS, caused by abusing laxatives. Needless to say, the weight started piling on as my eating habits remained the same…

I was now on anti depressants, on the GP watch list as I wanted to end my life. I knew I wouldn’t as I had a son but the overwhelming urge to take my life was too much sometimes and I was convinced everyone would be better off without me.

I am now 54, when I turned 50 I was reading about Binge Eating Disorders and realised that was what I had been doing for over 35 years, I cried and cried as I suddenly realised I wasn’t just out of control, there was a reason of which I couldn’t find.

I paid for private psychology where on day one of being asked the right questions I realised the ‘why’, it was grief from my mum passing and from that day forward never having any emotional support from the one person I had left, my dad. Food was fulling that massive void.

It still wasn’t enough, I felt I was just saying words and I wasn’t making any changes.

My sister, who I had opened up to and told her everything started researching BED herself so she could try to understand and support me, she found Ronni on Instagram who I immediately started following, maybe this is the way for me, someone with lived experience who actually got it and felt it.

I bought Ronni’s book ‘Out of the Pantry’, I cried, smiled, felt sad and felt happy all through the book, so many emotions for me as the descriptions were nearly parallel to mine.

I discussed with my sister in depth who encouraged me to reach out to Ronni for support.

I did, I was really anxious about reaching out and being turned down in case I was too much to handle plus, I live in the UK and wasn’t sure if Ronni would take me on, she did, the best thing I have done alongside having my son.

Very quickly with Ronni I was making changes, Ronni explored in depth what was happening, how I was feeling and gave me resources, hint and tips of how she might consider certain situations which I tried and am so please to say started working.

The Eating Disorder’s voice (ED) was forever sitting on my shoulder telling me I need to go and buy food, I started talking to ED, telling it t go away, sometimes out loud which must have looked odd if I was out and not aware of people looking at me! Slowly ED started becoming quieter, I thanked ED for this as I realise that ED was only there trying to help me, ED has been part of my life for so many years I felt I needed a kind approach to this.

With Ronni’s encouragement I have written letters to various people who have affected my life, I was even writing a letter to my younger 12 yr old self at one point, I though Ronni was going nuts asking me to write to myself but, I was wide open to anything so I did it and, my goodness it was the most heart-breaking letter I wrote but made me feel so much better for putting my life into words.

The letters I will keep, I won’t let people read them who I wrote about, I don’t feel the need, this is my story and recovery plus, these people wouldn’t understand anyway and I am in a place where I will now avoid rejection and expectation that people might one day change.

Ronni’s support has been absolutely life changing, she has in fact saved my life as I now haven’t binged for over 8 weeks, ED is rarely there and if he rocks up I am able to politely say, ‘no, not today thank you’

My future is so looking really positive now, I am planning weekends away and am doing a sponsored walk in memory of my niece in September where I am going to walk 5k a day, no calorie counting, no worrying about how many calories I will burn, just a walk to raise money, so refreshing and uplifting.

Food now is my fuel, it’s my medicine and I actually enjoy preparing and eating, I am aware of when I have had enough and stop, I have never had so many left overs for the following day! I don’t buy huge volumes of food anymore and can walk past the foods I used to binge on without feeling anything.

My sessions are filled with both laughter and tears, always finishing feeling inspired by Ronni and confident I can beat this, the support in between sessions to check in have been super supportive and I will be forever grateful to Ronni, she is part of my world now and I plan on flying to the US to see her at some point to personally thank her, she means so much to me and my sister for using her lived experience to help me recover and feel positive about the future.

Ronni’s honesty, experience and integrity is second to none and I will be forever grateful for this.

Nothing was ever too much, always a kind, genuine and supportive lady who was born to help others.

Forever grateful Ronni, thank you!

Ali xx

In 2005 my ED began, in 2015 I started my recovery because the disease was just too much for me to keep doing. Within 1 year of starting treatment, I had something like 7 therapists, 3 psychiatrists, 2 nutritionists, been to an inpatient facility & completed outpatient treatment. And although I was better equipped to handle my ED & it was less frequent & debilitating, it was still around.

By a chance meeting with Ronni, I learned she was an ED counselor. Although, I wasn’t ready to admit I still needed help to completely eradicate ED in my life, i reached out to her to learn what an ED counselor did & about my history.

To my complete surprise, one of the first things Ronni said to me, in complete sincerity, that I am able to get reach complete recovery. No one had ever told me that before!! In addition to that, Ronni added that with all the previous treatments I had been thru, I wasn’t far from reaching recovery & she could help me get there!

Those simple statements allowed me to be confident in my own abilities & that I could be ED free!! Ronni immediately became my friend, as well as my counselor. She used techniques, words of encouragement & helpful articles/worksheets for me to get thru what was keeping ED a part of my life.

And in my entire ED life up until I started seeing Ronni, my ED was only “manageable” thru sheer will & “white knuckling” thru ED temptations. I made it thru 2 months tops of strong willing myself not to use ED since my 2015 recovery journey started. After a few sessions with Ronni, I was going days, weeks & even months of not using ED!

She had instilled great tools for me to not force recovery, but for recovery to just be my normal, everyday life effortlessly!

I can’t say enough fabulous things about Ronni! What she had done for me, I never thought I would achieve! She’s super personable & very open about her own ED journey. She has inspired me since they day I met her & I know she was meant to help other people struggling with ED.

Ronni helped me in ways I never thought I could achieve in my whole life. I think we met because of fate & I’m thankful everyday that I was fortunate to find her!!

I lived with an eating disorder most of my childhood and adult life. I tried so many ways to stop the nightmare I refer to as ED, but he would never go away. He stole so much from me. Time away from my focus on family, friends, works, etc. I never fully understood the why behind it even working with a therapist that specialized in patients with eating disorders. I talked to them about my childhood until the present date, but nothing stuck.

This all changed when I met Ronni. She was like sunshine to my life. She got me. She had been me. We talked about my childhood and got to the place that I had never reached with anyone else. We got down deep and came out the other side. Today ED is rarely in my life. He whispers every once in a while and I listen. Sometimes I react as I am not perfect, but most times I go back to all that Ronni taught me. It’s 10% event and 90% reaction. I think about that a lot. I now have my life back. I focus more on those important parts of life instead of being consumed by something else. I still have work to do, but I can’t believe where I am today.

Before I worked with Ronni I didn't know ways to soothe in non-food ways. I didn't realize that there were ways to ignore Ed. I was letting him rule!

After I worked with Ronni I was able to shut Ed down. I was much more aware when I was eating for non hunger reasons. She gave me many ideas and tools to combat this.