The body you see isn't the body you have.
Specialized, evidence-based treatment for adult eating disorders and body image distortion — covered by your insurance, delivered virtually across California.
In-network with Dr. Habashy: Aetna · Carelon · Cigna · Oscar. Don't see your plan? The 15-minute consultation is free regardless of insurance. Out-of-network superbills provided for PPO reimbursement. HSA/FSA accepted.
Body checking isn't vanity
You know the ritual. The angles, the lighting, the waistband test, the pinch at the back of the arm, the way the bones look from this angle but not that one. You've been told you're vain. You haven't told anyone what the mirror is actually for — that it's how you decide whether today is going to be a safe day or not.
Body checking is not simply about appearance or vanity. For many individuals with eating disorders, it becomes a compulsive safety behavior used to manage anxiety, monitor perceived body changes, and determine self-worth or “worthiness” to eat. It is a maintaining factor in restrictive and binge-purge eating disorders, and an important target in evidence-based treatment.
An evidence-based path that actually works
In Enhanced CBT (CBT-E) — the dominant evidence-based treatment for adult eating disorders — body image sits at the center of the formulation. The disorder runs on an over-evaluation of shape and weight, and CBT-E gives you a structured way to interrupt that engine. It isn't positive thinking or self-acceptance affirmations. It's skill-building grounded in 30+ years of research.
What the research says
Across major published trials of CBT-E, approximately two-thirds of adult patients who complete the protocol achieve full remission, with effects sustained at 60-week follow-up. CBT-E is recommended as first-line care for adult eating disorders by the UK's NICE guidelines. (Fairburn CG, et al. American Journal of Psychiatry, 2009; updated trials through 2015. University of Oxford / CREDO.)
What this will actually feel like
You learn to see body checking and avoidance as symptoms, not personality. Once you can see the behaviors clearly — without shame about them — you can start to change them.
You learn to recognize “feeling fat” as a signal of underlying emotional distress. Body image work helps you identify and respond to emotions such as anxiety, shame, inadequacy, or loss of control that the eating disorder may misinterpret as body dissatisfaction.
You build a broader sense of self-worth than your body alone. The over-evaluation of shape and weight is the engine. You learn to build other engines — work, relationships, values, the parts of you the disorder has been crowding out.
You leave with relapse-prevention skills you keep. Body image slips will happen. You learn to recognize them early and use what you've built to stay grounded. Specialized ED care covered by insurance is genuinely rare in California; Grounded Therapy is one of the few practices doing both.
Dr. Jessica Habashy, PhD
Licensed Clinical Psychologist · CA PSY36582
Dr. Habashy specializes in evidence-based eating disorder treatment across the lifespan — anorexia, bulimia, ARFID, OSFED, and binge eating disorder. She trained at UCSD's Eating Disorders Center (one of the country's leading FBT training sites) and in Stanford-area private practice, and works with manualized FBT, CBT-E, DBT, and ACT. She works virtually with families and individuals across California, with particular care for first-generation, LGBTQ+, and culturally marginalized families whose experiences have often been dismissed in conventional treatment.
If your reflection has been running your life.
No commitment, no intake forms — just a conversation about what you're facing and whether CBT-E is the right next step. In-network: Aetna · Carelon · Cigna · Oscar; out-of-network superbills + HSA/FSA accepted.