Recovery from an eating disorder gets called a “journey” all the time, but if we’re being honest? It sometimes feels more like treading water in the ocean, with your “eating disorder voice” vacillating between silence and non-stop chatter. Some days, the water is calm. You feel clear, grounded, and hopeful. Following your meal plan is challenging but doable, and it feels pretty easy to call out your own disordered thoughts.

Other days are choppy and overwhelming, like you’re struggling just to keep your head above water. Finishing meals feels almost impossible, food feels scary, and it’s impossible to separate your eating disorder voice from your true feelings.

As eating disorder dietitians, we work with people in all stages of recovery. Some clients are getting help for the first time, some are months into their recovery, and others have been on their eating disorder recovery journey for years. We’ve seen first hand just how not-linear the process can be, and we’re here to reassure you that it’s common to hit a rough patch (say, a bunch of your friends started taking weight loss medications and you’re feeling triggered by that) or feel like you’re moving backwards (maybe a relationship ended and you find yourself falling back into disordered behaviors as a way to cope). The more we can normalize the fact that recovering from an eating disorder doesn’t require constant forward motion towards a healthy relationship with food, the better.

If you’re in recovery (or supporting someone who is), it’s important to know that this variation isn’t a sign of failure or relapse. Rough days are part of the progress and learning to ride the waves is part of what recovery looks like longer term. 

Why eating disorder recovery is never linear

One of the biggest myths about eating disorder recovery is that progress should be steady and upward. That if you’re “doing it right,” things should just keep getting better. Realistically,  that’s not what 99% of people’s recovery journey looks like. Instead, recovery moves in cycles. You might have stretches where things feel lighter. Maybe meals are feeling more manageable, your thoughts are quieter, and you may even catch yourself thinking, “Wait… do I even have an eating disorder?” (That thought in particular is one I’ve heard countless times from various clients.)

On the flip side, you might push yourself to be challenged with something new. Try a fear food, eat in a new environment, or have more flexibility around eating windows and then wake up the next day emotionally wiped out. Then that’s when doubt creeps back in and the eating disorder voice suddenly gets louder. Resulting in you questioning whether recovery is worth it. 

To make things feel even more complicated, there can also be a mix of pride and grief. You feel proud of how far you’ve come while still grieving your eating disorder body. Feeling freedom and sadness within the same day (sometimes the same minute). 

Why the eating disorder recovery lows happen, even when you’re doing well

Hard days can feel especially discouraging when they pop up after progress. It’s easy to think, “I was doing so well. Why am I struggling again?”

But lows often happen because healing is happening not because it’s failing. You may have heard the term extinction burst, which Science Direct defines as “a temporary increase in the rate or intensity of the behavior” that happens right before it disappears or goes extinct.” In this case: When your eating disorder feels threatened, your eating disorder voice gets LOUD.

Your brain is literally rewiring. Neural pathways built around restriction, bingeing, or purging don’t disappear overnight. Your body is learning to trust you again; hunger cues, fullness signals, metabolism are ALL recalibrating. And when the eating disorder quiets down, emotions that were numbed for a long time tend to resurface.

Add in regular life stress (because recovery doesn’t remove that), and of course there will be waves. It’s kind of like holding a beach ball underwater. When you finally let go, it doesn’t gently float up. It pops up with force. That doesn’t mean you should have kept holding it down. It just means release has energy.

How calling out your eating disorder voice helps you ride the waves if recovery

We can’t eliminate the highs and lows of recovery (and we wouldn’t really want to, because the lows are how we learn!), but we can change how we move through them.

One of the most important skills in recovery is learning to separate your voice from the eating disorder’s voice. The eating disorder voice can be loud, convincing, and urgent. It might sound like the truth. It might sound protective. But it isn’t you, it’s a learned survival pattern.

When a hard thought pops up, instead of immediately believing it, try getting curious. Ask yourself: Is this thought in line with my values and who I am as a person, or is this my eating disorder trying to regain control?

For example, you might find yourself thinking, “I’m going skip lunch today because I don’t want to gain weight.” But, you know that skipping lunch will make it hard to focus during your organic chemistry class, and a good grade in that class is important for getting into medical school in a few years (your dream). Skipping lunch isn’t in line with your goal or the things you value: weighing less won’t help you get accepted to med school, and skipping lunch makes it harder to get the grades you need. So, you can label the thought directly: “That’s my eating disorder voice.”

That small act of separation creates space and space gives you choice. That’s not to say that you’ll be able to “disobey” your eating disorder voice every single time. Remember, perfection is never the goal. But, you’re pursuing recovery because you want freedom from your eating disorder and more space to be who you really are. Doing the work to separate your eating disorder from yourself by questioning these thoughts is a good way to work towards that goal.

Two fantastic books that talk a lot about distancing yourself from your ED voice are Goodbye Ed, Hello Me and Life Without Ed.

Naming your eating disorder voice can also shift your perspective on your recovery.

If you name an eating disorder thought but don’t actively push against it, try not to spiral into thoughts of failure. Instead, tell yourself, “I’m in a hard recovery moment,” or “My ED voice is loud today.” Reflect on other moments when you’ve been able to push back against your eating disorder, and acknowledge that you’ll have plenty of those moments again in the future.

In these moments, you can also try to separate facts from feelings. Feelings can fluctuate wildly in recovery, even when the facts (behaviors like eating consistent meals, resting your body, and showing up at appointments with your treatment team) are fairly consistent. When you’re in your feels about the recovery process, think about all of the recovery-promoting behaviors you’ve engaged in recently, and give yourself some credit.

And honestly? Expect emotional whiplash. Recovery can shift from hopeful to hard quickly. When you anticipate that, it feels less scary when it happens. Instead of, “Oh no, something’s wrong,” it becomes, “Okay. This is part of the progress, I’ve got this.”

Building a low-day toolkit ahead of time can make a huge difference too. Think safe and easy meals or snacks, comfort shows, low-effort crafts, a great playlist, and body-neutral clothing. When you’re in a tough recovery moment, you won’t have to think of a whole new set of coping skills because you’ll already have a repertoire.

And if you’re in a recovery slump for more than a day or two? Try zooming out and thinking long-term. What do you picture for your life 10 years from now? How will recovering from your eating disorder help you reach your goals? How do you want people to describe the person you’ll be then? Thinking about the future can take a little bit of pressure off the present while also giving you some motivation.

As your eating disorder voice gets quieter, your recovery starts to feel more stable.

Over time, you’ll start to notice that your eating disorder thoughts become less frequent. You build healthy coping skills and self-trust. And on a deeper level, you start to connect with who you really are as a person, which makes it easier to ignore the eating disorder voice that’s clearly not you.

Recovery isn’t about avoiding difficult moments or killing off your eating disorder voice completely. It’s about building a strong enough sense of self that you can experience disordered thoughts and then dismiss them.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, we can help! We’re a group of dietitians who take a non-diet, body-positive, identity-affirming approach to recovery and healing your relationship with food. Go here to learn more about nutrition counseling for kids, teenagers, and adults, in-network with most major insurance companies and offered virtually to clients in North Carolina and over a dozen other states.

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