You don't understand why you can't stop.
There are certain foods you genuinely don't want to keep eating the way you do. You've told yourself countless times that you're going to cut back, get control of it, or stop altogether.
And you mean it.
But when it comes to certain foods, having one doesn't necessarily make you feel satisfied.
You don't want one chip. You want the whole bag.
You don't want one cookie and then forget about the cookies. You want another one. And another.
Sometimes you are eating the food while a part of you is already telling yourself to stop.
And yet you keep eating it.
That can be incredibly confusing.
Because this isn't something you don't care about.
You desperately want it to be different.
You've tried to control it in more ways than you can probably count.
You've gotten the food out of the house. You've sworn off sugar. You've started diets. You've tracked. You've planned. You've made rules. You've tried moderation. You've tried not buying it. You've told yourself you'll only eat it on certain days. You've promised yourself that tomorrow you're starting over.
Some of those things may even work for a while.
But eventually, the food comes back.
And so does the cycle.
The craving may show up when you're stressed or after a conflict. It may show up when you're tired, overwhelmed, or need relief.
But it isn't always because something is wrong.
It can happen on your day off. At a restaurant. On vacation. At a celebration. When you're having fun. When you simply see the food or know it's there.
And once you have that first bite, you may feel like the decision has already been made.
Now you want more.
The plan you felt so committed to earlier can suddenly feel very far away.
And then comes the part no one else may see.
The guilt.
The shame.
The disappointment in yourself.
You may replay what you ate, worry about what it's doing to your health or your body, and wonder why you did it again when you promised yourself you wouldn't.
Maybe you tell yourself you shouldn't have eaten it. Maybe you decide you need to make up for it tomorrow. Eat less. Exercise more. Get back on track.
And once again, you make another plan, and reassert your efforts.
Tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, you really are determined.
Until the craving comes again.
After repeating this cycle enough times, you're not just frustrated with food.
You're exhausted from trying to control it.
Exhausted from thinking about what you should and shouldn't eat.
Exhausted from starting over.
Exhausted from making promises to yourself and breaking them.
Exhausted from feeling guilty afterward.
Exhausted from wondering why something that seems like it should be simple has become so difficult.
And maybe most of all, you're baffled.
Why do certain foods seem to have this kind of hold on me?
Why do I keep eating them when part of me doesn't even want to?
Why isn't one enough?
Why haven't all the things I've tried worked?
Those are important questions.
At Ruby House Counseling, I'm not interested in giving you another plan to try harder.
I want to help you understand why this keeps happening.
For many people, the struggle isn't only about the food.
You may also have spent years struggling with your body.
Maybe you've gained and lost weight repeatedly. Maybe the number on the scale can change how you feel about yourself that day. Maybe you avoid photographs, don't feel comfortable in your clothes, or find yourself thinking about what your body used to look like - or what you believe it should look like.
You may have spent years dieting, tried all of the plans, restricting, starting over, and trying to compensate for what you ate.
That matters.
Because cravings, loss-of-control eating, binge eating, restriction, body-image distress, shame, and addiction-like experiences with certain foods can overlap.
But they are not all the same thing.
Sometimes what feels like being “out of control” around food may be affected by restriction or not eating enough. For someone else, certain foods may seem to create a particularly strong pull even when adequate nourishment is in place. And for many people, there may be more than one thing happening at the same time.
That's why we won’t decide what your eating means until we understand your whole relationship with food and your body.
We'll look at the food.
We'll also look at hunger and fullness, your history of dieting and restriction, body image, shame, stress, trauma when relevant, the situations that trigger cravings, and what happens once you begin eating certain foods.
The goal isn't to squeeze your experience into a diagnosis.
It's to understand what's actually happening so we can determine what kind of support makes sense for you.
Ultra-processed food addiction, sometimes referred to as UPFA or food addiction, is an emerging area of research looking at whether some people experience addiction-like responses to certain highly processed foods.
Food addiction is not currently a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR, and there is ongoing debate about exactly how it should be understood.
That matters. I don't believe in taking an emerging area of research and presenting it as though every question has already been answered.
But I also don't believe we should dismiss what people are experiencing.
For some people, certain foods seem to be different.
They may experience strong cravings, repeatedly eat more than they intended, have difficulty stopping once they begin, spend a significant amount of time thinking about certain foods, and make repeated attempts to cut back without being able to sustain the change.
They may continue eating those foods despite consequences they genuinely care about.
Looking at these experiences through an addiction-informed lens may help us ask different questions.
But we don’t begin treatment by deciding that you have a food addiction.
We begin by understanding you.
If you've already spent years trying to control your food, the last thing I want to do is hand you another list of foods you're not allowed to eat.
Before asking:
“How do we stop the food?”
I want to ask:
“What is the food doing?”
Maybe it's providing relief.
Maybe it's reward after a long day.
Maybe it's comfort.
Maybe it's stimulation when you're bored.
Maybe it's something you look forward to.
Maybe eating has become part of the way you come down after holding everything together all day.
Maybe certain emotions, places, people, times of day, or activities have become connected to particular foods.
Maybe you're genuinely hungry because you haven't eaten enough.
Or maybe certain foods simply seem to create a stronger response for you than other foods do.
There isn't one answer that applies to everyone.
That's why curiosity comes before conclusions.
If we take something away before we understand the role it has been playing in your life, we haven't necessarily solved the problem.
We may have simply removed one of the ways you've learned to cope.
This question matters because chances are, you haven't ignored the problem.
You've been working very hard on it.
You've probably learned a tremendous amount about nutrition, diets, weight loss, sugar, carbohydrates, calories, macros, fasting, exercise, or whatever approach you hoped might finally help.
The problem may not be that you haven't found enough information.
Sometimes the intervention has been aimed at controlling the food before anyone has fully understood your relationship with the food.
And there can be a painful cycle:
Craving → eating → relief or reward → guilt and shame → new rules and restriction → craving → eating again.
Not everyone experiences that exact cycle.
But if you do, simply adding another rule may not interrupt it.
It may actually become part of it.
That's why our work isn't about finding a more powerful version of try harder.
It's about understanding what keeps bringing you back to the same place.
We are not going to start with a list of foods to cut out.
First, we're going to understand what is happening.
That means looking beyond what you ate yesterday.
We may explore:
We may discover that there are several things happening at once.
That is normal.
You don't have to arrive already knowing whether this is food addiction, emotional eating, binge eating, years of restriction, trauma, habit, or something else.
Figuring that out is part of the work.
Once we understand the pattern more clearly, we can begin making changes together.
My approach to this work is grounded in harm reduction.
That means I'm not automatically going to tell you that you can never eat sugar or another particular food again.
It also doesn't mean we ignore the fact that some foods may genuinely be causing problems for you.
Instead, we look at what will actually help.
That may include making sure you're adequately nourished, reconnecting with hunger and fullness, understanding cravings and cues, reducing shame, working with your nervous system, changing your environment, developing additional ways to find comfort or reward, and making thoughtful changes around foods that have become difficult.
Your treatment doesn't have to look exactly like someone else's, and likely it won’t.
Progress doesn't require perfection.
The goal is not to create another set of rules you're terrified of breaking.
It's to help you develop a relationship with food that feels less consuming, less confusing, and more manageable. It is to help you develop some freedom around food.
My interest in this work is both professional and personal.
I am a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in trauma and addiction, and I also understand addiction and recovery personally.
My own experiences eventually led me to become deeply interested in why certain foods can become so difficult for some people - and why the usual advice to cut it out, simply eat less, use moderation, or try harder doesn't always match what a person is actually experiencing.
It changed the questions I began asking.
Instead of only asking:
“How do we get this behavior to stop?”
I became much more interested in asking:
“Why is this happening?”
“What is keeping it going?”
“What is this doing for the person?”
“And what needs to be in place before meaningful change becomes possible?”
Those questions are at the heart of the work I do at Ruby House Counseling.
No. Food addiction and ultra-processed food addiction are not currently diagnoses in the DSM-5-TR.
This is an emerging and debated area of research. I believe it's important to be transparent about that while also taking seriously the experiences of people who report intense cravings, loss of control around certain foods, and repeated difficulty cutting back despite wanting to.
Ultra-processed foods generally refers to industrially formulated foods that often contain combinations of refined ingredients, additives, flavorings, and other substances that aren't typically used in home cooking.
But simply labeling something “ultra-processed” doesn't tell me everything I need to know about your experience with it.
I'm also interested in: What happens for you when you eat it?
Researchers are actively studying this question.
There is growing interest in whether certain highly processed foods may have particularly reinforcing properties and whether some people experience addiction-like patterns around them.
The science is still developing, which is one reason I don't assume that every person who struggles with food has an addiction.
No.
There can be overlap, including cravings, loss-of-control eating, guilt and shame, but they are not interchangeable.
Binge eating disorder is a recognized eating-disorder diagnosis with established diagnostic criteria. Ultra-processed food addiction is an emerging construct and is not currently a DSM diagnosis.
Restriction, dieting history, body image, compensatory behaviors, nourishment, and other eating-disorder symptoms can also affect someone's experience around food.
That's why careful assessment is so important.
No!
Therapy at Ruby House is not a diet program.
We may talk very specifically about food, nourishment, hunger, fullness, cravings, patterns, and how certain foods affect you.
But I'm not going to hand you a restrictive food plan and tell you that following it is the answer.
Not automatically.
My approach is individualized and harm-reduction oriented.
Before making significant changes, I want to understand your eating, nourishment, cravings, cues, history, and what happens for you around particular foods.
From there, we decide together what changes may be helpful.
It can.
For some people, food has become connected to comfort, safety, relief, reward, numbing, or regulating difficult internal experiences.
That doesn't mean trauma explains every difficult relationship with food.
It means that when trauma is part of your story, it may be important for us to understand how it connects to what is happening now.
Harm reduction means we don't require perfection or total elimination of foods before change counts.
We look for ways to reduce harm, increase nourishment and stability, understand cravings and patterns, develop additional coping strategies, and gradually change your relationship with food.
It isn't “anything goes.”
It's an individualized approach that recognizes meaningful change can happen without beginning with an all-or-nothing demand.
Yes. Ruby House Counseling provides in-person counseling in Dallas, Texas, and virtual counseling for clients located throughout Texas.
You don't have to decide today whether “food addiction” is the right name for what you're experiencing.
You don't have to figure out whether it's ultra-processed food, binge eating, years of dieting, stress, trauma, body image, learned patterns - or several of those things tangled together. And you don't have to prove that your struggle with food is bad enough to deserve attention.
If you keep eating foods you genuinely don't want to keep eating...
If you've tried again and again to control it...
If you're exhausted from starting over...
And if you still don't understand why this continues to have such a hold on you... That's enough to begin a conversation.
Let's start by understanding what's happening
She is far more precious than rubies. - Proverbs 3:15
Depression Counseling
OCD Counseling
Relationship Counseling
Trauma Counseling
Perinatal & Postpartum Counseling
Anxiety Counseling
Addiction Counseling
