Eating Disorders: coaching enquiries from across the UAE
Eating disorders are serious medical and psychiatric conditions that can affect physical health. They require assessment and treatment by qualified professionals. Coaching is not an eating disorder treatment.
Eating disorders need medical care
Please speak to a doctor about any eating difficulty. Eating disorders can cause serious physical complications that require medical monitoring.
If you are in immediate danger or at risk of harming yourself, contact your local emergency services or go to the nearest hospital emergency department. Coaching is not a crisis or emergency service.
Understanding the concern
Anxiety often accompanies eating difficulties, and some people seek help understanding that anxiety. That is legitimate, but it does not replace medical monitoring or specialist treatment.
Any coaching would focus on general anxiety education and only alongside a treatment team.
What an enquiry might involve
- 01Your coach will ask whether you are under medical and specialist care before discussing anything further.
- 02If you are not, the first step will be signposting you to a doctor.
- 03Where a treatment team is in place, coaching would only proceed if it complements their plan.
Practical session expectations
- 01Sessions would not give dietary, weight or nutritional advice.
- 02Coaching focuses only on general anxiety education.
- 03Your coach will pause and signpost if physical or mental health appears to worsen.
Worth discussing with your doctor or practitioner
- 01Weight changes, dizziness, fainting, missed periods or heart symptoms, which can be medically serious.
- 02Specialist eating disorder assessment and treatment.
- 03Whether adding coaching is appropriate within your treatment plan.
Suitability and boundaries
Coaching is not suitable as a primary response to an eating disorder and makes no claims about restoring eating or body image.
Coaching is educational support. It does not diagnose, prescribe or replace care from a doctor, psychiatrist or licensed psychologist, and no particular outcome or timeline is guaranteed. Condition names on this site describe what people tell us they are experiencing, not services that diagnose or treat those conditions.
About the approach
LAR coaches draw on Threat Recalibration Therapy (TRT) and the related HSF framework, which were developed by and belong to the Institute of Applied Psychophysiology. Descriptions of TRT and any programme figures are the Institute's own. You can read the Institute's material directly:
Next steps
Start with your doctor. If you have a treatment team and want to ask about complementary coaching, you may enquire.