CCI - Disordered Eating Self-Help Resources

An eating disorder is a serious mental illness characterised by extreme concerns about weight, shape, eating and/or body image. These concerns lead to disordered and unhealthy patterns of behaviour, including restricting food intake, fasting, counting calories, vomiting, misuse of laxative use, and excessive or driven exercise. These behaviours can greatly affect a person’s physical, psychological and social functioning. Approximately 9% of the Australian population suffer from an eating disorder according to the NEDC. Eating disorders affect men and women of all ages, of all socio-economic backgrounds, and of all shapes and sizes.

Workbook - Overcoming Disordered Eating - Part A

Overcoming Disordered Eating - Part A: This information package is designed to provide you with some information about disordered eating - how it develops, how it is maintained, and strategies to start to change the problem behaviours associated with disordered eating. This package is organised into modules that are designed to be worked through in sequence. We recommend that you complete one module before going on to the next. Each module contains information, worksheets, and suggested exercises or activities.

Module 1: What is an Eating Disorder?

This module provides an overview of what eating disorders are, their impact, and the role of dieting and healthy weight.

Module 2: How Ready am I to Change?

This module explores preparedness to change disordered eating behaviours, and also outlines some of the treatment options for eating disorders.

Module 3: How Eating Disorders are Maintained

This module outlines some of the factors which maintain disordered eating and create a vicious cycle.

Module 4: Self-Monitoring

This module explains the importance of self-monitoring of eating behaviours, and provides a food log worksheet.

Module 5: Regular Eating and Weighing

This module provides a rationale for regular eating and weighing, along with guidelines and worksheets.

Module 6: Binge Eating, Purging and Driven Exercise

This module explains the role of binge eating, purging, and driven exercise, and how these behaviours maintain disordered eating in a vicious cycle.

Module 7: Moods and Disordered Eating

This module explores the way emotions and difficulty handling moods can affect disordered eating behaviours, along with strategies to manage moods.

Module 8: Dietary Rules

This module explores the role of dietary restriction and rules in maintaining disordered eating, along with guidelines for normal eating.

Module 9: Progress Review and Barriers to Change

This module helps you to review your progress through the modules so far and to identify any potential barriers to progress.

Download the entire workbook

Click the link above to download all modules in this workbook at once, as a zip file.

Workbook - Overcoming Disordered Eating - Part B

Overcoming Disordered Eating - Part B: This information package follows on the Overcoming Disordered Eating - Part A, and provides some strategies and techniques to change the thinking patterns associated with disordered eating. This information package is organised into modules that are designed to be worked through in sequence. We recommend that you complete one module before going on to the next. Each module includes information, worksheets, and suggested exercises or activities.

Module 1: Overevaluation of Weight and Shape

In this module we will explore in more detail how people with eating disorders place an unusually high value on controlling their eating, weight and/or shape, and how they judge their self-worth accordingly. We will show how this leads to an over-evaluation of control over eating, weight and/or shape, and how this preoccupation and other factors keep the disordered eating going.