5 Things I Wish I'd Known About Eating Disorder Recovery

I recovered from not one but two eating disorders. And honestly, the second one was much harder to recognise than the first - partly because it was so much less obvious. In this post I share my experience with two different eating disorders and five things I’ve learned looking back.

As you know, I help women heal their relationship with food and their bodies, but things weren't always that way. My own relationship with food started to unravel when I began dieting at 16, after some comments about my body. Dieting felt like the obvious thing to do — I'd watched the women around me do it my whole life. So I tried out a couple of magazine diets, cut back on food, lost some weight, and got a lot of positive comments. It was definitely this external validation that kept me going.

Over the years, though, the restriction started to spiral into bingeing. I would go through phases of cutting back, followed by phases of eating everything in sight. Eventually that became bulimia, which I struggled with through my late teens and early twenties. I got some good help in my mid-twenties and had a real period of food freedom after that. I honestly thought I'd fixed my relationship with food.

Looking back, I can see I hadn't - not completely. I was still mentally restricting, still avoiding certain foods, still doing the odd fad here and there. But nothing extreme, and because there was no bingeing or purging, I thought I was fine.

Then I got pregnant. And after my youngest was born, I decided it was time to "get my body back." I knew I didn't want to diet again, so instead I decided to “get healthy”. I jumped on the clean eating bandwagon, and started cutting out more and more foods - all in the name of wellness. Again, I got lots of positive comment. People told me I was disciplined, they asked how I did it and that praise kept me going, just like it had when I was 16.

What I didn't realise at the time was that I was developing orthorexia - an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. It started to impact my social life, my mental health, and how I showed up for the people around me. And the really tricky thing about orthorexia is that from the outside, it looks like you're doing everything right.

Eventually I recovered from that too… and it was that recovery experience that led me to the work I do now. Looking back across both experiences, here are five things I learned that I genuinely wish I'd known sooner.

1. Diets are a terrible idea

When you restrict food - whether that's cutting calories, eliminating food groups, or following rigid rules - two things happen. Biologically, your brain interprets restriction as famine. It doesn't know the difference between a diet and actual starvation, so your hunger hormones increase, your brain starts fixating on food, and you become preoccupied with eating. This is your brain literally doing its job and trying to keep you alive.

Psychologically, the moment you tell yourself a food is off limits, you want it more. This is called the forbidden fruit effect. Those banned foods get placed on a pedestal, and when you eventually eat them - because you usually do - you feel an extra layer of guilt and shame on top of it. If you've ever binged after a period of restriction, that's a predictable result of the restriction itself.

2. The diet and wellness industries are designed to keep you stuck

The diet industry, the weight loss industry, and the wellness industry, all have a financial interest in you never quite getting there. There's always something more to aspire to. You're not quite thin enough, not quite healthy enough, not quite disciplined enough. And because diets don't work long-term, the cycle keeps repeating: you try a new plan, it doesn't stick, you feel like you've failed, and then you're ready to buy into the next thing. That cycle is brilliant for the industry, but it's exhausting for you.

3. We are so much more than our bodies

Diet culture and wellness culture are very good at convincing us that how we look is the most important thing about us. When I was deep in both of my eating disorders, so much of my mental energy was taken up by thinking about food and my body. There wasn't much space left for anything else.

But we are so much more than our bodies! We are our relationships, our creativity, our curiosity, our passions, our connections with the people we love. Those are the things that actually make us who we are. When the mental chatter about food quietens down, it's remarkable how much space opens up for real life.

4. Food is not “good” or “bad”, it's just food

I spent years moralising food. During my dieting phase and my orthorexic phase, I had everything sorted into categories: good or bad, clean or toxic, healthy or unhealthy. The problem with that framing is that when you eat something you've labelled as bad, you feel bad too. The guilt and shame that follows can be really damaging.

And yes, some foods are more nutrient-dense than others. However, attaching moral weight to food creates a relationship with eating that's full of anxiety. When I stopped seeing food as good or bad, I also stopped binging on chocolate. Now I’m able to have a couple of squares most days, enjoy it, and move on. It feels very different.

5. Healing is not linear

My own journey is probably the best evidence of this. I went through dieting, binging, bulimia, what I'd now call a quasi-recovery, and then orthorexia before I reached something that felt like genuine freedom. If you've relapsed, or feel like you're going one step forward and two steps back, you haven’t failed, it’s just your journey of recovery and that’s what recovery actually looks like for most people. The overall direction matters more than how straight the path is.

If you have any questions, do reach out! You can use the form below, and I will share tips to support you in your journey, wherever you are. Or, you can complete my free food noise quiz to uncover the hidden reasons you are feeling stuck right now.