Kelly Lopez

I am a Licensed Associate Counselor, specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, trauma, abuse/neglect, relationship problems, and basic human issues related to personal development and well- being.
I am committed to maintaining our reputation for providing excellent, compassionate, and innovative care to each of our cherished clients. I am also the Co-Founder and Program Director of Happy Weight, an innovative program dedicated to helping people affected by emotional eating and related body image issues.
My mission is to help you make connections between your current struggles, such as excessive stress and anxiety, people-pleasing, or an eating disorder, and unresolved painful past experiences. In this process I will guide you with compassion, helping you understand that all behavior makes sense when put in context of our basic human need and adaptive coping strategies.
Whether the pain manifests as a persistent eating disorder, relationship codependency, low self-esteem, and/or existential struggles with your meaning and purpose, my gift is the ability to create a safe environment for your personal stories, guiding you to discover your personal power and helping you create the life you desire and deserve.
I am well-trained in various evidence-based modalities of psychotherapy, including Emotionally-Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR),and Inner Child Work, and Attachment Styles.
Kelly Lopez

Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017