The second job nobody applied for

Disordered eating therapy in California — for the second job nobody applied for.

Online therapy in California for disordered eating, restriction, binge eating, body image concerns, purging and over-exercising. Weight-inclusive, non-diet, body-respectful care for adults in their 20s and 30s.

Reviewed by Molly Binenfeld, LMFT (CA BBS #151728) Updated October 2026

Counting. Comparing. Earning. Compensating. For a lot of people, disordered eating feels less like a problem and more like a second job nobody applied for: the running commentary about what you ate, what you'll eat, what you have to do to make up for it. In our work, we see it as a relationship with food and your body that has organized itself around a job it's doing for you, usually control, regulation or worth. It doesn't have to meet the criteria for anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder to be worth treating. Much of what quietly runs a life never gets a diagnosis. The problem was never your willpower.

The short version.

  • What we treat: restriction, binge eating, purging, body image, over-exercising, and disordered eating
  • Approach: weight-inclusive, non-diet and body-respectful. CBT for the food rules, DBT for emotion regulation and Compassion-Focused Therapy for the shame underneath, with IFS, ACT and ERP from the wider team when those patterns are part of it
  • Who leads it: Molly Binenfeld, LMFT (CA #151728). About half her caseload is disordered eating
  • Level of care: weekly outpatient talk therapy. We coordinate with physicians and dietitians when medical or nutritional oversight is needed, and refer to residential, partial hospitalization (PHP) and intensive outpatient (IOP) programs when that's the right fit
  • Not treated here: active medical instability, or patterns that need daily structure or meal support. We'll say so at the consultation and help you find the right setting
  • Format: entirely online, anywhere in California, weekly 50-minute sessions
  • Fee: $200 a session, out-of-network with monthly superbills, and a few reduced-fee places
  • Languages: English and Spanish (Fidel Quintanilla)

What disordered eating is.

It runs underneath everything else, organizing your day, your mood and your sense of worth around rules, numbers and control. Some people call the constant background version of it food noise: the thoughts about food that keep going when you aren't hungry, aren't eating, and would very much like to be thinking about something else.

It also hides well. It can pass for discipline, health or "being good," and it often gets praised. That's a big part of why so many people carry it for years before anyone, including them, calls it what it is.

None of this happens in a vacuum. It's a culture that sells you a smaller body as the price of being enough, and then sells you the fix when you can't keep up. People don't invent food rules out of nowhere. They pick them up from a system that has been handing them out for a long time.

Framework

The three functions the food is serving.

The food is rarely the real problem, which is why "just eat differently" so rarely helps. In our practice we describe disordered eating as usually doing one of three jobs. The clinical point is that you can't remove the food behavior without building another way to do the job it was doing.

1. Control. When life feels unmanageable, with a family that won't listen, a career that isn't landing, or a body that's changing, food becomes the one thing you can regulate. The rules are precise. The numbers are predictable. Restriction, tracking, exercise to earn a meal: all of it can feel calming, because it gives you control in the one place control seems available.

2. Regulation. Food as comfort. Food as distraction. Food as numbing. Food, or not eating, as punishment. Here the eating is managing a feeling (anxiety, grief, loneliness, anger at yourself) that has nowhere else to go. A binge is often the loudest version. Grazing, skipping meals to go numb, purging and compulsive exercise can be quieter ones.

3. Worth. The equation where eating "right" makes you good and having the "right" body makes you lovable. This is the one that goes unnamed longest, because the culture rewards it. It gets complimented as discipline. It usually only shows itself when someone tries to stop and finds the shame underneath was never about the food.

So the work goes after the function the eating serves, which takes longer than changing the food. I'm not going to nod along while you describe a war with your own body. I'm going to help you put the weapons down.

How it shows up.

A few of the ways it tends to show up:

  • Food noise: the constant mental tally of what you ate, what's allowed, and what comes next
  • Restricting, then bingeing, then guilt, then restricting again: a cycle that usually starts with the restriction, not with a lack of willpower
  • Purging, or "making up for" food with fasting, laxatives or extra exercise
  • Over-exercising: workouts that are about earning or undoing food rather than moving your body
  • Rules about what's allowed, when, and how much, and anxiety when one gets broken
  • Checking your body in mirrors, photos or clothes, and a running commentary you'd never say out loud
  • Clean eating, orthorexia and constant optimizing that feel like health and work like rules
  • Old messages about food and bodies from your family that still take up room

If the constant hum of food thoughts is the part you recognize most, Molly wrote about it in The food noise, including what GLP-1 medications do and don't change. If it sits inside people-pleasing, Marjolaine wrote about that pattern in The exhausting yes. If comparison is what sets it off, Jasmeet's The comparison that isn't real information takes that apart. And if staying in motion is how you keep feelings from landing, Fidel wrote The busy you're using to not feel.

What's underneath.

What the food is managing varies from person to person. These come up most:

  • Control, when the rest of life feels like it isn't yours to steer
  • Core shame, a body and a self that never quite feel like enough
  • Emotion regulation, food as comfort, punishment or numbing
  • Family and cultural messages about food, bodies and worth
  • Anxiety and perfectionism, the same patterns pointed at the plate

The questions you should be asking.

The National Alliance for Eating Disorders publishes questions to ask any eating disorder treatment provider. They're the questions we'd want you to ask us, and everyone else you're considering. Here are our answers.

Do you have specialized training in eating disorders?

Molly does. About half her caseload is disordered eating and eating disorders, and she has worked inside an eating disorder treatment center, not only in weekly outpatient therapy. Her training and memberships are listed in the team section below.

What's your treatment philosophy?

Weight-inclusive, non-diet and body-respectful. We don't treat weight loss as a health goal, we don't use BMI as a measure of progress, and we don't prescribe diets. The work is on your relationship with food, your body, and the job the eating has been doing, not on changing your body to fit someone else's standard.

What do you treat?

Restriction, binge eating, purging, body image, over-exercising, and disordered eating, including the named diagnoses (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, OSFED) at the outpatient level and the patterns that never get a name: chronic dieting, orthorexia, and the rules that hide inside "wellness."

Do you work with a treatment team?

Yes, and when medical or nutritional oversight is needed, we require it as part of working together. Therapy is one part of eating disorder care. Physicians handle medical stability and registered dietitians handle the nutrition side. We don't do either, and we won't pretend to.

What if I need a higher level of care?

We'll tell you, plainly and early. Molly has worked inside an eating disorder treatment center and a crisis residential program, so she knows what higher levels of care look like from the inside and can help you find one that fits, rather than starting work we can't safely see through.

Will you weigh me?

No. We don't weigh you, and sessions aren't about changing your weight. Body image comes up, because it has to, but we work with it rather than measure it. If medical monitoring is needed, that sits with your physician. The person weighing you shouldn't also be the person you talk to about your body.

Do you work with people like me?

Molly works with women, men and nonbinary clients from a range of backgrounds, including LGBTQ+ clients, South Asian and Asian American clients, and high-achieving professionals. Culture and family shape how food and bodies get talked about, or don't. She works with that rather than around it.

How do you define recovery?

Not by a number on a scale or a body that looks a certain way. It looks more like the food noise getting quieter, food and your body taking up less of your day, eating without the rules running the meal, and a life organized around what you actually care about. It rarely moves in a straight line, and we won't put a deadline on it.

How therapy helps.

We work with the named eating disorders and with the quieter patterns that never got a name. What we're working toward is a life that's no longer organized around food, in whatever body you're living in.

In practice that means understanding what the eating has been doing for you, building other ways to meet that need, and slowly loosening the rules' grip. In practice, that tends to look like skills for the moments a feeling gets too big, slowly testing the rules instead of obeying them, and a lot of work on the shame, which is often the hardest part to shift. When the rules behave like compulsions, Danielle's ERP work can help. For more on why these patterns become automatic, and how they change, see Why Therapy Works.

An honest limit: eating disorder work takes time, and progress has setbacks in it. What tends to change first is how much room food takes up in your head, and how much of your day it takes. You're allowed to be a person, not a project.

Who does this work at Align.

Molly leads this work, and she's the only clinician here who takes eating disorder cases. That's deliberate. Eating disorders need specialized training, and a therapist who treats them now and then isn't the same as one who treats them every week. Several other clinicians treat the patterns that often travel alongside disordered eating.

  • Molly Binenfeld, LMFT — therapist at Align Online TherapyMolly Binenfeld, LMFT (CA #151728). Reviews this page and leads eating disorder work at Align. About half her caseload is disordered eating. Currently Clinical Director and Senior Primary Therapist at an intensive outpatient program for college students focused on primary mental health. Previously Director of Clinical Services and Primary Therapist at Alsana: An Eating Recovery Community, and a Marriage and Family Therapist at Exodus Recovery Crisis Residential Treatment Program. Member of the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP), with specialty-level training in DBT and in assessing suicidality. CBT, DBT and Compassion-Focused Therapy, weight-inclusive throughout.
  • Julia Melvin, AMFT — therapist at Align Online TherapyJulia Melvin, AMFT (CA #137797). Brings Internal Family Systems to body image and self-criticism when an eating disorder isn't the main concern but shame about your body is doing a lot of the work. Also works with chronic illness, where your relationship with your body is an ongoing negotiation you didn't choose.
  • Danielle Miller, AMFT — therapist at Align Online TherapyDanielle Miller, AMFT (CA #144995). Treats the OCD-spectrum side of food and body, where the rules work like compulsions. If food thoughts feel more like intrusive thoughts and rituals than like a diet, she's the right room. ERP, ACT, CBT, somatic and mindfulness.
  • Fidel Quintanilla, AMFT — therapist at Align Online TherapyFidel Quintanilla, AMFT (CA #125756). Takes men's body image, which is undertreated across the field, including the version that hides inside training, "cutting" and macro tracking. When an eating disorder is part of the picture, he works alongside Molly. High-achiever burnout and men's mental health are his named specialties.

All associates are supervised by Jasmeet Bhullar, LMFT #117019.

What our students and peers say

Because we don't solicit client testimonials as a policy, the voices below come from former graduate students. They describe Jasmeet, Align's Clinical Director, and Fidel, who works with men's body image here. What they describe is the same presence our clients meet in session.

"He has an ability to break down complex topics in a thorough and straightforward manner, while prioritizing his students' feedback throughout the learning process." Kimberly Montes, MA in Psychology Student on Jasmeet Bhullar, LMFT
"Whether you are learning about DSM criteria or how to administer a specific intervention, Professor Bhullar always incorporates aspects of real world applications and lessons on professional development within his coursework." Jessica Emde, PsyD Candidate on Jasmeet Bhullar, LMFT
"Fidel is personable, charming, professional, and very straightforward. He will have your best interest in mind when working with him." Bianca Flores, MFT Trainee on Fidel Quintanilla, AMFT

Read all our teaching and colleague testimonials →

Our approach at Align.

Weight-inclusive and non-diet throughout. Molly's work is grounded in CBT, DBT and Compassion-Focused Therapy, and she coordinates with physicians and registered dietitians whenever medical or nutritional oversight is needed.

Every clinician at Align holds a Master's in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy from Pepperdine University, and the whole team trains together in weekly supervision. Sessions are weekly, 50 minutes, online, with a California-licensed therapist who's yours alone. $200 per session.

Who we work with.

Adults in their 20s and 30s, of any gender and in any body, whose relationship with food has quietly taken over. That includes people whose patterns pass for healthy habits, people who have never been diagnosed with anything, and people who have been told they don't look like someone with an eating disorder. We work with undiagnosed disordered eating as readily as with diagnosed eating disorders.

What we don't do.

We provide weekly outpatient talk therapy at the weight-inclusive, non-diet end of the field. We're not the right fit for:

  • Active medical instability, such as unstable vital signs or electrolyte problems from restriction or purging. That needs a treatment team first, not talk therapy first
  • Daily structure or meal support. If the pattern needs daily contact to interrupt, or you can't eat without support in the moment, that's what IOP, PHP and residential programs are built for
  • Meal plans or nutrition prescriptions. That's a registered dietitian's role. We coordinate with one; we don't replace one
  • Medical monitoring, including weight. That's a physician's role
  • Minors. Our practice is adults
  • Weight-loss coaching. We don't offer it, and a therapist who offers it as eating disorder treatment isn't doing eating disorder treatment

If any of these is where you are, we'll help you find the setting that fits.

If you are in crisis: call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline is 1-866-662-1235 (Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm ET), with free, confidential support and referrals to eating disorder treatment.

Disordered eating therapy: common questions.

Do I have to have a diagnosed eating disorder to come?

No. A lot of what we treat never meets the criteria for anorexia, bulimia or binge eating disorder, and it still runs people's lives. You don't have to be "sick enough." If food and your body are taking up more of your day than you want them to, that's enough of a reason to talk to someone.

What are the three functions disordered eating serves?

In our practice we describe disordered eating as almost always doing one of three jobs. Control: when life feels unmanageable, food becomes the one thing you can regulate. Regulation: food, or not eating, as comfort, distraction, numbing or punishment when feelings get too big. Worth: the equation where eating "right" and having the "right" body is the price of being enough. You can't remove the behavior without building another way to do the job it was doing. That's why "just eat normally" doesn't work, and why we treat the function rather than the food.

Can disordered eating be treated online?

For many people, yes. Weekly online therapy can work well for disordered eating and for eating disorders that are safe to treat at the outpatient level, and some people find it easier to talk about food and their body from their own space. What online therapy can't do is monitor medical stability. If that's needed, a physician or a higher level of care has to be part of the plan, and we'll tell you so.

What's the difference between disordered eating and an eating disorder?

An eating disorder, such as anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder or OSFED (other specified feeding or eating disorder), is a diagnosis with specific criteria. Disordered eating is the wider range of patterns that cause real distress without meeting those criteria: chronic dieting, rigid rules, skipping meals to compensate, bingeing now and then, exercising to undo food. The two sit on a spectrum, and disordered eating can become an eating disorder over time. For therapy purposes, the line matters less than how much room the pattern takes up in your life.

Do you work with people taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Wegovy?

Yes. We don't take a moral position on the medication either way, and we don't set weight-loss goals. In Molly's experience, GLP-1s can quiet some of the biological side of food noise, but not the psychological or cultural side: the rules, the body checking, the sense that your worth depends on your size. That part is what therapy works on. If you have a history of restriction, appetite suppression can make old patterns easier to slip back into, which is worth talking through with your prescriber, and we're glad to coordinate with them.

Does insurance cover eating disorder therapy at Align?

We're out-of-network. Sessions are $200, and we provide a monthly superbill you can submit to your insurance for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Superbills include a diagnosis code, which we'll talk through with you first. How much comes back depends on your plan, so it's worth calling your insurer and asking about out-of-network outpatient mental health benefits. We also hold a few reduced-fee places.

When is disordered eating too severe for weekly outpatient therapy?

When medical stability is a concern, when restriction or purging is happening daily, when you need support at meals to eat at all, or when the pattern needs daily structure to interrupt. Those are signs a higher level of care (residential, partial hospitalization or an intensive outpatient program) will serve you better than weekly sessions. We'll tell you honestly on the consultation call and help you find and coordinate with the right setting.

More resources.

If you're in crisis, please don't use this page as your point of contact. Call or text 988. For eating disorder support and referrals, call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline at 1-866-662-1235.

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