IIRC it really seemed like that therapist was using Grace to lure people to her insanely expensive and quacky practice. She is also the one that basically encouraged (allegedly) Grace to throw caution to the wind with her eating in the name of accepting herself amongst other bullshit.
The therapist IS dodgy but I don’t think helping Grace to eat whatever she wants was.
She encouraged intuitive eating, which is a useful tool for people with eating disorders or fears around eating. I would imagine that Grace tried to set herself strict diets and then failed and binged - in this case, “allowing” any food to be eaten really helps to get back to a normal eating pattern and not see foods as having moral value.
Unfortunately, Grace hasn’t actually gotten her head around intuitive eating, because it’s a lot more difficult than it seems. She seems stuck in the initial phase of “oh wow I can eat all this food!”. The actual idea is that once freedom is given and no food is seen as “bad”, after an initial period where you eat like a kid in a candy store, all this previously “forbidden” food will lose it’s shine and you’ll realise you only wanted it because it was forbidden, not because it tastes amazing. You’re also supposed to work on portion sizes and feeling full, so the idea is that you come away with a balanced approach to food and become someone who can eat one slice of cake and not freak out about it and think “oh well I’ve fucked up I may as well eat the entire cake”. Grace doesn’t get it and doesn’t use it properly.
Disclaimer: I used intuitive eating as a tool to stop a starve/binge cycle and it was extremely successful for me (I am a healthy weight and actually lost weight from eating intuitively).
ANYWAY, the therapist was definitely dodgy. I remember her saying in Grace’s ‘Clean Eating, Dirty Secrets’ show that her clinic had heard from half of the top Instagram influencers in the country. What an obvious lie! How would you even quantify that?
They also offered Grace private one-to-one sessions which they do not actually offer in general - it’s only group therapy sessions, and incredibly overpriced at that (or at least it was at the time of Grace’s treatment). They basically gave her special treatment in return for advertising them.