🧠 Grab the free guide, 3 Tools for Sitting With Discomfort — three practical tools to help you keep going when recovery feels like it’s getting worse, not better.
“Will I ever stop gaining weight in ED recovery?” is one of the most common fears I hear, and it’s often the one standing between someone and going all-in. In my last post I talked about gradual recovery vs. all-in, and why all-in is eventually the only way to get to full recovery. Today I’m answering the questions you sent me after it.
“I’m scared that if I go all-in I’ll gain too much weight. When will I stop gaining?”
This is such a common fear in recovery. The first thing to know is that your body has a set point weight. This is the weight range where your body is meant to naturally sit when it’s fully nourished and not under stress. In recovery, your body will find that range too. It won’t just keep gaining endlessly.
If going past that range is the part that scares you, I have a separate post about overshooting set point weight.
What your body needs before it can settle
For your body to arrive at its set point, it truly has to feel safe. That means you are no longer restricting or dieting, and you are not holding back with food. You eat to your full hunger and full satisfaction. You stop exercising, purging and other compensating behaviors. And you do your best to create a low-stress environment.
When your body feels safe, it can speed up your metabolism, normalize your hunger and digestion, and balance your hormones. You also get back the mental freedom of no longer obsessing over food and your body. Then your body can regulate its own weight without you having to constantly manage it.
If you keep restricting and compensating, you keep your body suppressed, and it can never feel safe enough to relax. So don’t ask “When will my body stop gaining weight?” Ask “Am I doing everything on my part so my body can start to feel safe and finally normalize its functions?”
“I’ve been in recovery for 2 years and I’m still not free. Why isn’t it working for me?”
It’s not so much about the length of time you’ve been in recovery. It’s about what you’ve done within that time.
Have you fully let go of all restriction and compensation? Are you truly eating to your full hunger, mental hunger included? Have you challenged your fear foods and food rules? And most importantly, have you done those things consistently, or are you still holding back a lot and doing things halfway?
Being in recovery can look so different from person to person. Some people take longer to recover and are making genuine progress the whole time. Others think they are doing recovery gradually, when actually they are stuck in quasi-recovery. And quasi-recovery will never lead to full recovery.
“How do I know if I’m in real recovery or just stuck?”
Here are some questions to ask yourself. If I look back over the last three or six months, have I made genuine progress? Are the majority of my actions on a day-to-day basis reflecting more recovery or more eating disorder? Am I consistently increasing my intake, challenging my fears and stopping my behaviors, or am I trying to stay safe more often?
Real recovery moves you forward, with signs and symptoms pointing to more progress over time. You stay aware not to get too comfortable. You keep challenging yourself and keep taking bold steps toward freedom. And you’re not willing to settle for anything less than full recovery. Until you’re there, you know you simply have more recovery actions to do.
“My family or partner doesn’t understand recovery, and it makes it harder to stay consistent.”
It’s so understandable. When the people closest to you don’t understand recovery, or don’t even support it, going through it is harder. But it doesn’t make recovery impossible.
The key is to separate your recovery from their opinions and take full responsibility for it. There will always be people who stay brainwashed by diet culture, and people who don’t understand the weight gain or the extreme hunger. Their complete understanding is not needed for you to make progress. You’re a separate person from them. You know the problem you have and what you need to do to recover from it, even if they don’t. And even if they disagree, you are still the one responsible for whether you do the recovery actions or not.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about the situation. You can set boundaries. You can point them to a resource where they can learn more, and stay open if they want to understand. You can find people who are in recovery or who understand it, including online communities. You can set up your home to be as trigger-free as possible. You can ask for help from a coach or an eating disorder therapist. Work on the things you can control, and let go of the things you can’t.
“What does all-in recovery actually look like day to day?”
First, all-in doesn’t mean you never have discomfort, never have fear, or always feel motivated. You will still have some fears. You will still feel uncomfortable. You won’t feel motivated all the time. All-in means you keep taking the action anyway. That’s what rewires the brain. It’s how the fears fade over time, how the discomfort passes, how the thoughts get quieter, and how recovery starts to feel easier.
Day to day, all-in means eating regularly, which can look like three meals and three snacks a day. If you have extreme hunger or you recognize mental hunger, you respond fully, without holding back. There’s no restriction, no compensation, no purging, no exercising and no other diet behaviors. There’s more rest, more sleep and more relaxation. You challenge your fear foods and food rules consistently. And you practice sitting with discomfort instead of using eating disorder behaviors to cope with it or get rid of it.
The core skill that keeps you going
That last part matters more than it sounds. When the fear and discomfort show up, the eating disorder offers a quick way to make them stop. Learning to sit with that discomfort, and to cope in a healthy way instead, really is the core skill to master in recovery.
That’s exactly why I created my free guide. It comes with three practical tools you can start using today to keep making progress.
