Body Image Therapy in Tampa, FL
You don't have to earn the right to feel okay in your body
In person in Tampa · Virtual throughout Florida and vermont
You’re not broken. You’re exhausted.
You've spent years (maybe your whole life) trying to fix, shrink, or manage your body. You've followed the rules, ignored the hunger, avoided the photos, and still woken up every morning dreading the mirror.
And you're tired. Not just of the struggle, but of how much mental space it takes up. The constant calculations. The comparing. The way a single comment or outfit can derail your entire day.
You don't need another “program.” You need someone who actually gets it.
You don't have to be in crisis to need help. Feeling this way for years is reason enough.
if any of this sounds familiar, you’re in the right place
Getting dressed in the morning feels like a battle you never win
You spend more mental energy on food and your body than on basically anything else
You assume everyone around you is judging your size or appearance
You've pulled back from things you used to love - the beach, photos, dating, showing up
You're stuck in a cycle of restriction, guilt, and starting over
Your self-worth fluctuates based on how you feel about your body that day
You've tried everything and still feel like you're failing
You wonder if you're "sick enough" to deserve real support
You were taught to feel this way. By family, by our medical system, by every magazine and algorithm and offhand comment that told you your body was a problem to be solved. That you'd be more lovable, more confident, more worthy once you got it under control.
That's not a personal failing. That's a world that was never built to support you.
I know this firsthand because I experienced it. Years of chronic dieting left me feeling not good enough, and that my whole life’s purpose was shrinking myself (in every possible way).
And if you live in a larger body, you know that world can be extra cruel. Not just in your head, but in medical offices that lecture instead of listen, stores that don't carry your size, and public spaces that weren't designed with you in mind. So instead of being angry at those systems (which makes total sense), you end up angry at yourself. And the shame just grows over time.
Here’s the thing that nobody talks about
The way you feel about your body didn't come from nowhere.
Body image therapy is about untangling all of that. Where it started, why it stuck, and what it's been costing you.
Not to "fix" your body. To get your life back.
You don’t have to keep doing this alone.
I offer a free 15-minute consult so you can get a feel for whether this is the right fit — no pressure, no commitment.
Accepting new clients · Tampa in-person & virtual throughout Florida & Vermont
Here’s what we’ll do together
What Body Image Therapy in Tampa, FL Looks Like
Warm, grounded, anti-diet, weight-neutral care for adults.
Body image therapy isn't about learning to love your body all the time - that bar is exhausting and honestly kind of unrealistic. It's about building enough peace that your feelings about your body stop running the show.
We explore:
✔ Where your feelings about your body came from
the messages you absorbed from family, diet culture, and the world around you, and what they've cost you
✔ How your inner critic operates
and how to stop letting it make all your decisions
✔ The ways body shame has shrunk your life
in relationships, at work, in moments that were supposed to be fun
✔ Practical tools for the hard moments
so you can respond to a bad body image day without it taking you out
What We Don’t Do Here
We're not trying to change your body. We're not tracking, weighing, or optimizing anything. And we're definitely not doing the toxic positivity thing where you force yourself to love your reflection. That's just diet culture in a mirror.
The goal is reclaiming your attention - so your body takes up appropriate space in your life, not all of it.
Your struggle with your body is not your fault. You've been taught to feel this way. That's where we start.
How We Get There
I'm not a one-size-fits-all therapist (no pun intended). I pull from approaches that actually work for the kind of deep, embodied stuff body image struggles are made of
The part of you that hates your body? It's not all of you - it's a part, usually one that's been trying to protect you for a long time. IFS helps us understand what that part is carrying, and what it actually needs. This is where real softening happens.
Some of this stuff lives in your body, not your thinking brain - and talking about it only goes so far. Brainspotting works directly with the nervous system to process the internalized messages that have gotten stuck. It's a powerful tool for body image work.
As a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, I bring this work directly into body image therapy. We untangle the food rules diet culture handed you, rebuild trust with your body's signals, and work on separating your worth from what or how much you eat. If food has felt like a source of shame or anxiety for most of your life, this is where that starts to shift.
Embodied, evidence-based, and completely judgment-free. This is body image work that goes deeper than the mirror.
This work is for you if
I work with adults who are exhausted by the way they feel about their bodies. You don't have to have a clinical eating disorder diagnosis to deserve support. A lot of the folks I work with have never even thought about getting “treatment” - they've just been quietly struggling for a very long time and finally want something to actually change.
Specifically, I work with people who:
Have been dieting, restricting, or fighting their body for years (or decades)
Live in a larger body and are tired of a world that treats that like a problem
Have complicated, anxious, or guilt-ridden relationships with food
Experience weight stigma, including from medical providers
Want care that is anti-diet, weight-neutral, and HAES-aligned
Are done being told to just "eat less and move more"
Identify as LGBTQIA+ and want a provider who gets it
Feel like they've fallen through the cracks - not sick enough for treatment, but not ok
Virtual sessions available across Florida and Vermont. In-person in the Carrollwood area of North Tampa.
A little about me
I'm Keri Baker, a licensed clinical social worker and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor in Tampa, FL. I'm trained in IFS and Brainspotting, and I specialize in body image, relationship with food, and self-esteem, because these things are deeply connected and rarely get treated that way.
I'm also a real person who has navigated diet culture, body image struggles, and the exhausting work of untangling what I was taught to believe about my body. I'm not a blank-slate therapist. I bring myself into this work, and I think that matters.
- Keri Baker, LCSW · Brainspotting & IFS Therapist · Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor
Change is possible. I’ll help you get there.
Questions?
FAQs
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Body image therapy is a form of counseling that helps you understand why you feel the way you do about your body - and how to start building a different relationship with it. We explore where your beliefs came from, how they're affecting your life, and what it would look like to carry them differently. This isn't about forcing yourself to love your body. It's about getting your life back from the grip of body-related shame, anxiety, and self-criticism.
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Yes - and this work is particularly meaningful to me! If you live in a larger body, you're navigating real, systemic weight stigma on top of your internal struggle - from medical providers who focus on your weight instead of your health, to spaces and systems that simply weren't designed for you. That context matters here. My approach is weight-neutral, anti-diet, and HAES-aligned, and I'm not going to treat your body like something that needs to be fixed.
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Absolutely! In fact, that's one of the most common experiences I work with. Years of dieting often leave people deeply disconnected from their bodies, their hunger, and their own sense of what they actually want or need. Therapy can help you untangle what dieting has taught you about your worth, your body, and food, and start rebuilding something that actually works for your life.
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Not exactly. Eating disorder treatment (at a clinical level) typically involves a treatment team and a higher level of care for folks with medically serious diagnoses. Body image therapy is a good fit for people who are struggling with how they feel about their body, have a complicated or anxious relationship with food, and want to do deeper work - but don't necessarily need or qualify for a treatment center level of care. A lot of the people I work with feel like they've fallen through the cracks: not sick enough for treatment, but not fine either. This is exactly the space I work in.
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It's incredibly common - but "normal" is doing a lot of work there. We've all been swimming in diet culture, weight stigma, and appearance-based messages since before we could read. So yes, most people have some struggle with body image. That doesn't mean it's inevitable, or that you have to keep living this way. The fact that it's common doesn't mean it's not worth addressing.
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The honest answer: not through willpower, and not by changing your body. Research shows that body image and body size are largely separate - people in all kinds of bodies struggle with this, and changing your size rarely fixes how you feel. What actually helps is understanding where your beliefs came from, building tools to work with hard body image moments, and slowly dismantling the framework that told you your worth was about your appearance. That's the work we do in therapy.
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If your feelings about your body regularly affect how you move through your life - what you wear, where you go, how you eat, how you show up in relationships or at work - that's worth taking seriously. You don't need to hit a clinical threshold to deserve support. If your body is taking up more mental space than you want it to, that's enough.
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Yes - I offer virtual sessions across Florida and Vermont. In-person sessions are available in the Carrollwood area of North Tampa.
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Completely fine. Some folks want to go deep on food and body stuff; others want to focus more on the self-worth, identity, and inner critic piece without making weight a central topic. We go where you need to go. There's no agenda here about what has to be discussed.
Schedule a consult
Schedule a consult
Ready to stop fighting your body?
Let's talk about whether this is the right fit. The consult is free, low-pressure, and 15 minutes - just enough to get a feel for each other.
Accepting new clients · Tampa in-person & virtual throughout Florida & Vermont
Body Image Therapy in Tampa, FL
Services also offered virtually throughout Florida and Vermont