Health At Every Size (HAES)®-Aligned, Body Liberation-Based Eating Disorder Therapy

Compassionate, Neurodivergent-Affirming Therapy for All Bodies

Side Quest Psychotherapy offers HAES-aligned eating disorder therapy for adults, teens, and children (10+) in Maryland, Virginia, and Florida. Whether you’re navigating restriction, bingeing, purging, orthorexia, compulsive exercise, or an eating disorder shaped by neurodivergence, trauma, or weight stigma — this is a place where your body is not the problem, your experience is not questioned, and recovery is yours to define.

What You Will — and Won't — Find Here

A lot of eating disorder treatment is built on systems that cause harm. Treatment that weighed you without consent. Programs that used food as reward and punishment. Clinicians who told you that you weren’t sick enough, or who only saw your body — not you.

Diet culture didn’t just shape your relationship with food. It shaped the mental health field, too. Anti-fat bias is built into most diagnostic criteria. Weight stigma delays diagnosis, distorts treatment, and causes real harm — especially for people in larger bodies, people of color, disabled people, and trans and gender-expansive people whose experiences have been systematically erased.

Side Quest works differently. Here, you will find:

Weight-inclusive, non-diet care grounded in Health at Every Size® (HAES®) and Body Trust®
Harm reduction as a genuine framework — not a placeholder until you’re “ready for real treatment”
Explicit acknowledgment that anti-fat bias, diet culture, and weight stigma are harms — not neutral background noise
Clinicians who won’t tell you what to eat, pressure you toward weight goals, or frame your body as a problem to be managed
Consent-based, collaborative care — you are not a passive recipient of a protocol
Deep respect for neurodivergent bodies, nervous systems, and ways of being in the world

You will not find behavior charts, weigh-ins, calorie counting, before/after framing, or the assumption that thinness equals health or healing.

Who We Work With

We work with adults, teens, and children (10+) across all genders, body sizes, and neurotypes. Our practice is particularly attuned to people whose experiences haven’t fit the standard clinical picture — people who’ve been dismissed, misdiagnosed, or harmed in prior treatment settings.

We provide therapy for a wide range of eating and feeding concerns:

The presentations most providers know:

Anorexia nervosa — including in higher-weight and larger-bodied people
Bulimia nervosa
Binge eating disorder (BED)
Chronic dieting and diet culture-driven restriction

The presentations that often go unnamed — or get missed entirely:

Orthorexia — compulsive “clean eating,” food purity, wellness culture rigidity
Muscularity-Oriented Disordered Eating (MODE) — disordered eating organized around building muscle or leanness, often missed in men, trans, and nonbinary people
Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) — under-fueling in athletic or active bodies, often minimized or misunderstood by sports medicine providers
Food fears linked to OCD and health anxiety — including emetophobia (fear of vomiting) and phagophobia (fear of choking)
Disordered eating and body image distress — real and serious, even without a formal diagnosis

Presentations shaped by identity, neurodivergence, and systemic harm:

Neurodivergent eating patterns linked to autism, ADHD, PDA profiles, sensory processing differences, and executive functioning challenges
Eating disorders shaped by gender dysphoria, transition, and trans-specific body-based experiences
The impact of anti-fat bias and weight stigma in healthcare on your relationship with food, your body, and your willingness to seek care
Eating challenges at the intersection of chronic illness — including MCAS, POTS, GI conditions, and other complex medical presentations

ARFID and other avoidant/restrictive feeding presentations have their own dedicated page.

Learn more about ARFID therapy →

You don't need a diagnosis to deserve support. If your relationship with food or your body is painful, rigid, shameful, or exhausting — that is enough.

You Don't Have to be "Sick Enough" to Get Help

Eating disorders are mental health conditions — not body types, not weight categories, not lab values. Most people with eating disorders are not underweight. Many are in larger bodies and face serious medical complications while being told by providers that they look “fine” or “healthy.” This kind of dismissal — rooted directly in anti-fat bias — delays treatment and causes genuine harm.

Weight is not a proxy for suffering. Body size is not a measure of how much you need help.

Medical complications from eating disorders — electrolyte imbalance, hormonal disruption, bone loss, slowed digestion, cardiac stress, nervous system dysregulation — can occur in any body. The Academy for Eating Disorders explicitly recognizes that eating disorders in higher-weight individuals are equally dangerous — and go undetected far longer.

You deserve support even if:

You’ve never received a formal diagnosis
People have minimized, dismissed, or misread your experience
You’re functioning on the outside and unraveling on the inside
You’re not sure you want recovery — or not sure what it would even mean for you
Your body doesn’t “look like” an eating disorder

Anorexia in a larger body is still anorexia. Bulimia in a “normal weight” body is still bulimia. Your experience is real.

How We Work

Our approach is transdiagnostic — meaning we focus less on what your eating disorder is called and more on how it’s functioning in your life, what it’s protecting, and what conditions might allow it to shift.

We draw from:

Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT-E) and the Unified Treatment for Eating Disorders
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) — including skills for distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness
Family-Based Treatment (FBT) and Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) — for younger clients and families
Internal Family Systems–informed (IFS) parts work — understanding eating disorder behaviors not as failures or misbehavior, but as protective parts that developed for good reasons and deserve compassion, not elimination
Expressive arts, narrative therapy, and psychodrama — because healing doesn’t only happen in words

A note on IFS and parts work: In this framework, eating disorder behaviors are understood as protectors — parts doing their best to manage overwhelm, shame, and pain. We don’t try to get rid of them. We get curious about them, listen to what they’re carrying, and build conditions where they no longer have to work quite so hard. This is not compliance. This is trust.

A note on intuitive eating: Intuitive eating can be a powerful framework — and it’s not accessible or affirming for everyone. For many neurodivergent clients, especially autistic people and those with MCAS, POTS, or interoceptive differences, internal hunger and fullness cues may not be reliable. Together, we’ll explore flexible, sustainable approaches to nourishment that actually fit your body and your life.

What Working Together Looks Like

Getting to Know Each Other — Without Pressure

Our early sessions are collaborative and low-demand. You’ll have the chance to share what feels relevant — around food, body, identity, sensory needs, past treatment experiences — at a pace that’s actually workable. We bring curiosity and care, and plenty of room to redirect if something isn’t landing.

We’ll set intentions together for our work — not goals handed down from a protocol, but directions that make sense for your life.

Building the Right Support Team

Eating disorder care works best when it’s coordinated. All eating disorder clients are asked to have — or begin working toward — a Primary Care Provider (PCP) and a HAES®-aligned Registered Dietitian (RD) within the first month of therapy. This allows our work together to stay focused on the emotional, relational, and behavioral dimensions of recovery, while your medical and nutritional needs are safely held by providers who specialize in exactly that.

If you’re not yet connected with a dietitian or physician, we can provide referrals to trusted, weight-inclusive providers.

Ongoing, Individualized Care

There’s no one-size-fits-all path. We’ll draw from whatever combination of approaches, tools, and support structures fits your nervous system, capacity, and goals — and we’ll revisit that regularly. This might include Recovery Record, meal support, more frequent contact during hard stretches, coordination with your broader care team, or connection with virtual eating disorder support groups.

If Outpatient Isn't Enough

If outpatient care is safe and sustainable, we’ll work to keep it that way — and we’ll do what we can to increase support before recommending a step up. That might mean meeting more frequently, adding meal support sessions, or strengthening your wider support network.

If medical safety, nutritional stability, or psychiatric risk become a concern, we’ll explore higher levels of care — IOP (Intensive Outpatient), PHP (Partial Hospitalization), or Residential — together, as a collaborative decision. Virtual options exist if access, sensory needs, or mental health factors make leaving home difficult.

We know that higher levels of care have caused real harm — especially for neurodivergent people, fat people, queer people, and people of color who have faced coercive, dehumanizing, or invalidating treatment. Those experiences are valid and they matter. If a step up becomes necessary, we’ll build a plan around your values, your consent, and continuity of the relationship we’ve built. We’ll stay in contact with your treatment team wherever possible, and we’ll be here before, during, and after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a diagnosis to start eating disorder therapy?

No. A formal diagnosis is not required to begin therapy at Side Quest Psychotherapy. If your relationship with food or your body is causing distress — through shame, rigid rules, fear, anxiety, restriction, bingeing, or overwhelm — you deserve support, regardless of whether you’ve ever been diagnosed. Many people come to therapy without a diagnosis, and some never seek one. Your experience is enough.

Do you work with people in larger bodies?

Yes — and explicitly so. Anti-fat bias in healthcare is a real and documented harm, and it shapes who gets diagnosed, who gets taken seriously, and who gets appropriate care. Side Quest is committed to weight-inclusive care for all bodies. Eating disorders are not body types. The size of your body does not determine the validity of your experience or the severity of your struggle.

How do you approach eating disorder therapy for autistic or ADHD clients?

Neurodivergence and eating disorders frequently co-occur — and the intersection is often missed or mishandled in standard treatment. For autistic clients, ADHD clients, and those with PDA profiles, eating challenges may be driven by sensory aversions, interoceptive differences, demand sensitivity, executive functioning struggles, or the need for predictability and autonomy. These are not just “eating disorder symptoms.” They are valid, embodied experiences that require their own clinical lens. We adapt modalities, pacing, and approach to fit your neurotype — not the other way around.

What's your approach to working with parents and caregivers of kids with eating disorders?

Your relationship with your child is one of the most powerful tools in eating disorder recovery — and you deserve support too, not just a list of protocols to follow. We see caregivers as genuine partners in care. We’ll look at what’s working, what isn’t, and what feels sustainable for your family. If your child has a PDA profile or demand sensitivity, we’ll move away from the more rigid phases of Family-Based Treatment (FBT) toward approaches that reduce power struggles and build trust — like Emotion-Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) and low-demand parenting strategies. Caregivers are also welcome to examine their own relationship with food and body image — not out of blame, but as part of building a home environment where healing is possible.

What if I've been harmed by eating disorder treatment in the past?

You are not alone, and your experience is not unusual. Eating disorder treatment has a complicated history — including coercive practices, surveillance-based care, weight-centered protocols, and environments that have been especially harmful for fat, queer, neurodivergent, and multiply-marginalized people. If you’ve been hurt by prior treatment, that history matters and it will shape how we work together. We’ll move at a pace that feels safe. You’ll never be asked to do something without consent, explanation, or the option to say no.

Ready to Start — or Just Exploring?

You don’t have to have it figured out before reaching out. Whether you’re deep in it, cautiously curious, or somewhere in between — you’re welcome here. We’ll figure out together whether this is the right fit.