Eating Disorder Awareness Week
Struggles with food and body image are incredibly common and often deeply misunderstood. Eating disorders are biopsychosocial mental health illnesses that affect individuals of every race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity. Signs and symptoms of an eating disorder can often be overlooked, in part due to the diet culture we live in, and its complexities are under researched. National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which runs from February 23rd through March 1st, aims to destigmatize, educate on the illness, and provide support to those who are struggling. Additionally, it is intended to offer extra resources and compassion for those going through recovery and motivate them towards food freedom. Recovering from an eating disorder is challenging and can feel overwhelming. We will dive in how to support recovery from eating disorders through education about neurological studies, rewiring of the brain, the importance of consistency, highlighting challenges that inspire long-term growth, finding self-acceptance, and the value of discovery as a result of recovery.
Training the Brain with Consistency
Eating disorders are fueled by a sense of control, an attempt to regulate the nervous system, and a desire for the feeling of structure that following disordered habits provides. The brain forms neurological pathways from repeated thoughts and behaviors. In eating disorder recovery, you have the power to rewire your brain by challenging old, disordered rules and rigid habits through repetition of new ones. With that said, we thrive on consistency as humans, and remaining consistent is especially beneficial neurologically throughout recovery. It is important to note that remaining consistent is different from perfection in recovery. Everyone’s journey is different and will present various challenges, but learning how to prioritize consistency by understanding the science behind rewiring our minds will hopefully provide guidance towards growth in recovery.
It is pivotal in eating disorder recovery to understand the importance of training the mind through consistency because it is proven that the mind and gut are directly connected. Visualize your eating disorder as a voice in your mind. That voice is constantly nagging at you, controlling your thoughts and behaviors. Stick up for yourself by treating this voice as if it were another individual causing your mind and body harm. Consistently challenging the eating disorder voice by repeatedly doing the opposite of what it screams at you will inevitably retrain your brain, creating new neural pathways that redefine behaviors that become second nature.
Consistency can be so challenging to fight for in eating disorder recovery because of various psychological and physiological implications, in addition to environmental factors and stress, as addressed by Sarah King in her podcast Holistic Health Radio. She highlights that many individuals struggling with an eating disorder are often simultaneously battling mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. This can further impact body image and self-esteem, and can make the change that comes with recovery feel scary and overwhelming. On a psychological level, nutritional deficiencies as well as an under-fueled brain can make doing new things seem increasingly daunting. Meanwhile, environmental factors, implications from diet culture, and excess stress can all contribute to difficulty staying consistent throughout recovery (King, 2026). Understanding the reasons behind why consistency can be so hard in recovery will be beneficial in knowing you are not alone in feeling challenged by taking the proper steps to heal, and can act as reminders explaining what is going on within your mind and body during the process.
The ultimate goal that consistency provides is allowing your body to feel safe and regain trust. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders has determined that “brain regions involved in sensing internal body states, self-referential thinking, and the neural network that prioritizes importance show altered activation in those who struggle with eating disorders” (Eating Disorders in the Brain: What Neuroimaging Is Teaching Us, 2025). These findings show that physiological implications are shifting the thoughts and behaviors of those with eating disorders. The positive aspect of this is that by using neuroimaging, we can better understand what is happening neurologically to “help people tune in to their internal cues and rebuild trust in their bodies” (Eating Disorders in the Brain: What Neuroimaging Is Teaching Us, 2025). Science has already proven consistency to be effective in recovering from an eating disorder through neuroimaging, which shows that through repeated behavior, the pathways in which brain activity occurs shift, resulting in the formation of a new habit (Tackling Eating Disorders Through Habit Circuitry, 2023).
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Rewiring the Brain
The following are some tangible tools that can be used throughout recovery to actively work towards effectively rewiring the brain and obtaining food freedom.
- Visualize your recovered self and remind yourself of this version of you.
- Create a scenario in your mind or lay it out on a vision board for tangible access.
- Provide yourself with a clear “why” to work towards through recovery. For example, maybe your eating disorder has led to complications with fertility, and you have dreams of having kids one day. When recovery gets challenging, visualize your recovered self with children of your own and allow it to fuel you with intentionality and purpose in fighting against the eating disorder.
- Give it a name – Naming the disordered voice in head can help separate it from your own voice and you can challenge it as if it were a bully in your mind.
- The all-consuming voice in your mind coming from disordered thoughts around food should be challenged and shut down to reach food freedom. That voice is holding you back in recovery, just as another individual could be holding you back from reaching your full potential. Treat it as such and talk back to it, not allowing that noise to influence any behaviors that don’t support recovery. Understand that that voice is not you but “remnants of a survival mechanism that no longer serves you” (King, 2026).
- Support: Ask for help and lean on resources for support.
- Nobody should have to go through recovery alone. It is quintessential that you reach out to people who care about you and your health. Having someone like a family member or friend who can be trusted and provide additional emotional support throughout your journey, along with the help of a dietitian and/or a therapist, will be of great benefit.
- Practice mechanical eating tactics often used by dietitians in early recovery.
- Mechanical eating is a structured plan for eating that ensures your body is properly nourished, used particularly in the early stages of recovery when your mind and body are still trying to trust each other. This approach may seem contradictory to obtaining food freedom through the dismissal of rules and rigidity. Although while your body is still learning to trust you, this strategy can provide a sense of consistency and a guide to lean on when recovery gets rough.
- This can be as simple as implementing daily behaviors that become non-negotiables, such as making sure you are eating three meals a day or getting adequate rest.
- It is important, while having non-negotiables that support recovery, to simultaneously maintain a go with the flow mindset that allows you to have fun with food and not trigger mental stressors around eating.
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The Messy Middle
It is common to hear that recovery is not linear, and this can seem discouraging, especially when you are in the midst of fighting for recovery. The messy middle is the point in eating disorder recovery where your body is no longer in a state of immediate crisis, but you are not yet free from the mental shackles of your disorder. In this stage, you may feel stuck, caught between not wanting to go back and feeling as though full recovery is too far out of reach. Sarah King provides an analogy on her podcast, Holistic Health Radio, that depicts the messy middle. She says, imagine you are getting ready to go on a plane heading to a beautiful destination, but the plane is delayed. You have apprehensions about the trip, and now the plane is delayed, so you are feeling even more discouraged, but waiting is an amazing experience (King, 2026). The messy middle can feel similar to this: if you let your apprehensions and the challenges of recovery stop you from pushing through, you will risk missing out on the beauty that recovery brings on the other side.
Although challenging and mentally taxing, the messy middle is a beautiful part of recovery where individuals experience growth through newfound resilience and self-compassion as they learn to live free from rules and rigidity. It is encouraging to note that, right before a habit dies, it feels louder than ever. This is apparent throughout the messy middle, but by accepting the challenges, noticing that you are so close to reaching your goals, and practicing new habits repeatedly until they become second nature, you will eventually make it out the other end completely free.
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Self-Acceptance
Discovering food freedom is essential for recovering from disordered eating, but with that comes appreciating your body and all it does for you. It can be challenging to think of going from hating your body to loving it. Rather, focus on getting to a place where you are able to accept your body and be appreciative of your health over how your body looks. This might look like actively choosing to show love to yourself even when you don’t feel love for yourself. Marisa Crane describes the foundation of finding radical acceptance in eating disorder recovery as understanding that it is not a linear process and emphasizes that perfection is not the goal.
Eating disorders are fueled by perfectionism. Individuals with perfectionist traits often set unrealistic expectations for themselves to achieve certain goals, creating a rigid lifestyle around the need to control food, exercise, and their body’s appearance. This can ultimately lead to feelings of guilt when these perfectionistic standards are not met, and the feelings of failure begin to dictate self-worth. Marisa Crane explains that in recovery, perfectionism can be challenged by self-compassion and acceptance. Through practicing self-compassion and acceptance, you will be able to look at your failures with understanding rather than judgment. In eating disorder recovery, self-acceptance is beneficial in finding flexibility throughout challenges that present, such as specific triggers, anxieties, challenges, or even relapses (Crane, 2025).
Discovering a “Life Worth Living”
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Kate Willsky, senior manager of the Equip eating disorder home treatment program, describes what “building a life worth living” in recovery looks like from her perspective. She says that for herself, along with many others, treatment for her eating disorder gave her her life back and allowed her to find joy and meaning in life through connection with hobbies and strengthening of relationships. By letting go of food rules and a need for perfectionism around eating and exercise, Willsky describes no longer “floating” through life. Finding food freedom allowed her to no longer miss out on opportunities, promoting both her social life and career. Everybody’s story and reason to fight for recovery is different, but universally, your recovered life is “chosen by you and not by the eating disorder” (Willsky, 2026). That is the beauty in reclaiming your life through recovery: you are also building resilience, nurturing relationships, promoting your overall health, discovering things you love, and setting positive intentions for your future self. When recovery feels overwhelming, and you feel stuck or unmotivated, remind yourself of your why, picture your “life worth living”, and visualize the fully recovered version of yourself.
Sources
Crane, M. (2025, September 11). How to use radical acceptance in eating disorder recovery. How to Use Radical Acceptance in Eating Disorder Recovery. https://withinhealth.com/learn/articles/self-compassion-and-radical-acceptanc
Eating Disorders in the Brain: What Neuroimaging Is Teaching Us. National Alliance for Eating Disorders. (2025, November 12). https://www.allianceforeatingdisorders.com/eating-disorders-in-the-brain-what-neuroimaging-is-teaching-us/#:~:text=Brain%20regions%20involved%20in%20sensing,someone%20without%20an%20eating%20disorder
King, S. (Host). (2019-present). Holistic Health Radio [Audio Podcast].
Tackling Eating Disorders Through Habit Circuitry. NewYork-Presbyterian. (2023, July 10). https://www.nyp.org/advances/article/psychiatry/tackling-eating-disorders-through-habit-circuitr
Willsky, K. (2026, February 18). What we mean by “Building a life worth living” in recovery. Equip Health. https://equip.health/articles/treatment-and-recovery/building-a-life-worth-living-eating-disorder-recovery
