5 Statements to Avoid Saying to Anyone in Recovery from an Eating Disorder
Avoiding these statements will support your loved one’s recovery while also increasing your own mental health.
Watching a loved one recover from an eating disorder can be challenging. It is hard to know what to say or how to help when they are struggling. I wish I could give loved ones a supportive manual or formula to follow that was foolproof in helping those recovering, but everyone’s journey is unique and what might be helpful for one person might feel harmful to another. However, in the early stages of eating disorder recovery, these statements are almost always harmful and, therefore, should be avoided.
1. Don’t talk about food, weight, or exercise during mealtimes.
Even if the comment about the meal feels harmless, save it for later. While sitting at the table with someone recovering from an eating disorder, talk about something unrelated to food, exercise, or your weight. Talk about something interesting you did that day such as a cool movie that you watched or a podcast that taught you an interesting new fact. Mealtimes for individuals recovering from eating disorders are already stressful and it’s best to create a conversation that distracts from any internal thoughts about food and body image. Also, expanding to topics unrelated to food, exercise, or your weight demonstrates to the person in recovery that there are other interesting things to fill our mind with.
2. Don’t mention your diet.
Diet is a dirty word. This is a general rule of thumb if you have a loved one with an eating disorder. Diets signal that you believe in restricting your intake in order to change your body — which is the mentality that commonly lends itself to the development of an eating disorder in the first place. Talking about a diet in front of a person with an eating disorder is like cheering someone on in a race you don’t believe is happening. People recovering from eating disorders are working hard to break away from our diet-centric society because the diet mindset only adds fuel to the eating disorder’s fire. It promotes restriction, weight loss, and unrealistic outcomes. To be on a diet yourself, while a loved one is doing this hard work to recover, is like dismissing the race that they are running. It’s a demonstration that you don’t believe in the effort.
3. Don’t use the word healthy.
This may seem backward, but someone recovering from an eating disorder can interpret healthy in various ways.
First, if a loved one describes their food as healthy, therefore making it good, then unhealthy foods get labeled as bad. This good food, bad food mindset leads to the harmful categorization of food, resulting in immense guilt from someone struggling with an eating disorder when they eat something deemed unhealthy or bad. In eating disorder recovery, we want to neutralize food. It’s not good or bad. Instead consider describing food as flavorful, colorful, sweet, satisfying — words that describe the experience of eating rather than assigning unnecessary morality to the food.
Second, saying someone recovering from an eating disorder looks healthy can be interpreted as “I have gained so much weight” or “I look better because I lost weight”. Commonly individuals with eating disorders (doesn’t matter the type) will be hyper-aware of their bodies and the changes that happen to them during recovery. No matter how tempted you may feel, steer clear of commenting on their appearance. If you want to compliment your loved one, say something about their personality — funny, outgoing, intuitive, loving, kind. Expand messages surrounding their worth to more than how they look.
4. Don’t comment on how much they are eating.
There are many different factors that determine the amount of nutrition someone recovering from an eating disorder requires each day. Regardless of a loved one’s opinion of a person’s intake, don’t mention it. It will never be helpful. I recently had a session with the parents of an adolescent I am working with who is recovering from a restrictive eating disorder. The parents were questioning my client’s meal plan and the mom exclaimed “holy moly, that is a lot of food!” I had to explain to the mom why comments like that would be harmful to their child, who is already anxious about eating too much and gaining weight. Having a loved one say that someone recovering from an eating disorder is eating a lot of food is unwarranted. Especially since the person recovering typically has their intake regulated by a professional dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition.
The metaphor that comes to mind is a passenger on a plane that’s about ready to take off screaming that one of the engines is blown. The passenger isn’t a professional pilot but is making statements that ensue unnecessary fear in the rest of the passengers on the plane. Leave the nutritional needs of someone recovering from an eating disorder to the professionals and leave any opinions about the decided meal plan at the door. It causes harm to the person recovering.
5. Don’t bash your own body.
One goal in eating disorder recovery is to put less and less emphasis on body image and food. Those in recovery are already having to change their relationship with their body and food. They may have to eat a greater quantity, more often, or in more structured environments. Exercise might be unadvisable. Their body might be required to change in order to become more physically well. When a loved one bashes their own body, it normalizes critiquing appearances and brings to the forefront of the recovering person’s mind the reality of their own body’s changes as they recover from their harmful eating habits. Critique and changes, therefore, get paired together, leaving the person recovering with a negative association with a growing body or a harmfully positive association with a shrinking body.
The goal in eating disorder recovery is body neutrality, or, perhaps, even body positivity. Loved ones would be helpful in practicing neutral statements instead of critiquing their bodies. Try out non-judgmental observations such as “I have rosy cheeks”, “my pants are short on my long legs”, “my torso is too long for this shirt, and my stomach peaks out”, “my shorts aren’t fitting. I need to go shopping for a new pair”. Don’t pair these statements with any judgmental words like gross, ugly, bad, horrible. It’s hard, but even loved ones will even notice an increase in their mental health when they neutralize observation of themselves.
Concluding Thoughts
These are only a few statements that should be avoided around those recovering from eating disorders as they add fuel to the already raging internal war happening as those recovering from eating disorders fight to heal. It can be hard supporting a loved one who is in recovery. However, learning to pause and reflect on whether your comments would be harmful, is one of the most impactful ways you can support your loved one.
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