There are so many beautiful memoirs out there about eating disorders that eloquently describe the shame and pain of it all. They’ve made me feel quietly seen – other people do understand what this experience feels like. How horrible and powerless it can make us. I read so many of them during recovery, and even now while maintaining recovery. But one thing that feels like it’s missing is: Where is the step-by-step guide to how to get better? Just tell me how to do it. Give me a guide.
So that’s what I’m offering here. These are the steps that I’ve taken, the practices that I’ve practiced, to achieve recovery and maintain it. This is what worked for me. This is something I wish I could have handed to my teenage self. Maybe if she had worked through all of these steps then, she might have gotten better so much faster. Maybe she would have hurt less, wasted less time, and seen, sooner, how lovely this little lifetime can be.
In reality, I struggled with eating in some shape or form – restriction, binge eating, then the spiral into bulimia (bingeing and purging) – for at least 10 years. What’s worse: that timeline is nothing compared to some people. Too many people struggle for 20 or 30 years before they get better. Or they never get better. It’s devastating.
Some quiet part of me wanted to get better, and I clinged to that. I worked really hard to get better. And after years of starting and stopping and trying again, I finally got better.
I discovered and worked through 13 practices that helped me achieve and maintain recovery from both binge eating and bulimia. This page is the outline, the beginning. Each step is worth learning more about and practicing on a deeper level than what’s listed here. I’ll keep adding to and expanding on each one.
For now, let’s get started.
13 Steps that helped me recover from binge eating and bulimia
1. Set an intention. Keep returning to it.
Throughout my disordered years, I struggled with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and lack of self worth. Those feelings partly led to my disorder, and my disorder didn’t do me any favors in getting me unstuck from those feelings. I didn’t know how to talk about what I felt or what I was doing to myself. I didn’t love myself, which meant I didn’t want to get better for myself.
By my mid-twenties, some part of me wanted to dig myself out, to figure out how to be a healthy, happy adult who could be in a healthy, happy relationship. I chose to focus on getting better for someone I loved, who I wanted to be healthy and capable for. That turned into an intention: I am a healthy, happy adult for someone I love. That someone was my boyfriend, now my husband.
I don’t believe the concept that “you have to learn to love yourself before you can love someone else.” If you’re in a dark enough spot, that self-love may never come first. It certainly didn’t seem like it was going to come for me. What worked for me was to allow someone else into my healing process, to help me have a reason to get better.
The beautiful thing is, I did get better. As I became healthier, I became a version of myself I could like and love. Now, I stay healthy for me – and for my husband, and for my dogs, and for my daughter. Intentions can grow and evolve. But we need somewhere solid to start.
2. Talk about the disorder.
I struggled in secret for so many years. Even today, I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve admitted this to in person. But when I started to get serious about getting better, I told my therapist about it. My boyfriend (now husband) already knew.
Telling my therapist about it opened a new door. I started talking about my problems, and what was bothering me, regularly. She wasn’t an eating disorder specialist, so we weren’t necessarily digging into how to eat or what to eat. We were digging into how I got here, why I was so stuck in it, and tools for managing my stress and anxiety.
There was a new sense of accountability that wasn’t there before. I never wanted to show up for a therapy appointment and have to tell this person that I was continuing to sabotage my body and my life.
3. Understand why it started and what continues to drive it.
Therapy was so helpful in uncovering this for me. Journaling helped, too. But the more I reflected on my ongoing stress and anxiety, and the years in which my disorder took root, the more clear I got on why this happened.
I won’t forget it. My earliest memory of restricting food was when I was 15 and getting ready for a date at the movies. Mirroring a couple of friends who were struggling with anorexia, I ate an apple and a bowl of lettuce for dinner.
My earliest memory of binge eating arrived at age 16. I was overwhelmed by late-night math homework I just couldn’t figure out. I felt stupid and stressed and frenzied. I don’t know why I chose this behavior – maybe I was hungry from restricting, too – but I crammed multiple peanut butter protein bars into my mouth to numb it all out.
Oof. I liked that numbing. So I kept doing it. Episodes of restriction and episodes of stress and anxiety kept leading me back to binge eating – this was my coping mechanism. In college, this spiraled into bulimia when I didn’t want to keep all of that food and potential weight gain in my body. I had seen another girl using that “trick.”
Whether it was binge eating or bulimia that I was dealing with, stress and anxiety and restriction always started the spiral.
Becoming aware of these early memories helped me understand two ways I might start preventing disordered eating behaviors.
- Avoid restriction.
- Manage stress and anxiety so I don’t cope by eating.
This leads me to my next two steps.
4. Manage triggers.
For me, that means managing stress and anxiety. I had to learn how I could stay proactive about keeping my stress and anxiety under control. I came up with numerous options to routinely build into my schedule to stay ahead of it: Almost-daily exercise, breathwork and yoga, frequent time with friends, planning self-care days and massages, taking time to just sit and read and decompress.
5. Build balanced meals.
This step also removes the trigger of food restriction. I could never have gotten better from binge eating or bulimia if I didn’t start consistently feeding my body – and feeding it intelligently. For breakfast, lunch and dinner, I make sure my plate includes fats, proteins, carbohydrates and plant color. This way, my body is well-fueled and satisfied. For me, this reduces food noise, helps me maintain steady energy levels, and supports better, brighter moods.
Dive deeper into this practice here.
6. Avoid trigger behaviors.
I define trigger behaviors as actions that may trigger binge eating or episodes of bulimia. Standing in the kitchen and eating out of an open bag or container. Watching TV while eating out of an open bag or container. Actions that open the door to mindless, unlimited eating.
I also avoided skipping or skimping on meals, which makes me feel deprived and amplifies my hunger cues. I had to stop doing these trigger behaviors, and I had to catch myself any time I would start to engage with them.
Dive deeper into this practice here.
7. Choose better behaviors when the urge to binge comes up.
Bingeing (or bingeing and purging) can get compulsive. When I was at my worst, it felt like a habit I didn’t know how to break. Something I would just do ritualistically and not think about. I felt controlled by it.
During recovery, I worked on noticing: noticing stress creeping up and the urge to binge. Then I started turning to a short list of other, better behaviors. What can I do that’s healthy and productive, that can give these urgent feelings time to dissolve? Clean the house, go for a walk, go to the library to get work done, etc.
Note: I found it’s important to be fully fed and satisfied first, so I’m just working through emotions and urges, not actual physical hunger.
Dive deeper into this practice here.
8. Be flexible with exercise.
I was always into movement and sports, but I started overdoing it when my eating disorder started to show up. At first, I started overexercising to lose weight. Then I started overexercising to compensate for my bingeing. In my head, one workout was never enough. One hour was never enough.
Fitness took over my free time. It wore me down. And it kept me hungry.
My therapist challenged me to get more flexible with fitness. Did I really want to look back and see all of this time I spent burning calories instead of time spent on other meaningful things in my life?
I practiced getting comfortable with changing up:
- The times of day I worked out (not just first thing in the morning)
- The types of exercise I did (not just cardio)
- The amount of time I spent on exercise (I had good reason to move for 2 hours in a day unless I was half-marathon training)
These days, I run, or cycle, or practice yoga, or lift, or hike. Some days I work out in the morning, some days midday, some days after my daughter’s bedtime. And now that I have three dependents (daughter and dogs) on top of full-time work and maintaining a marriage and friendships, I cherish a 30-minute workout to feel strong and healthy and clear-headed.
9. Follow routine, predictable mealtimes.
I typically eaty three meals a day and often an afternoon snack. No skipping, no skimping. I generally know when I will eat, which reduces any anticipatory stress around mealtimes.
I’m not depriving myself – I’m building balanced meals. I’m also not constantly snacking, can keep my food noise loud and constant.
10. Eat mindfully.
I worked on sitting down, eating without distractions, experiencing texture and temperature and taste, and slowing down while I ate by chewing fully and taking pauses. I started focusing on my hunger and fullness cues to really get to know what it’s like when I’m comfortably full and satisfied. To be in tune with my body’s needs and feelings.
Dive deeper into this practice here.
11. Make peace with foods that used to be off limits.
This is an intuitive eating practice where you give yourself permission to eat any type of food. No guilt, no restriction. Because I had restricted foods like bread, waffles and pasta for so long, I started by trying trendy, “healthier” versions like high-fiber bread, protein waffles and chickpea pasta.
This was a gateway. Over time, I felt safe enjoying the true versions of each type of food.
Dive deeper into this practice here.
12. Forgive any slipups quickly.
One isolated episode of binge eating or bulimia does not have to derail all your hard work. It doesn’t put you back at the beginning. It doesn’t mean you should give up. It doesn’t mean you’re still this stuck person you don’t want to be. It just means you’re still practicing getting healthier.
When those episodes happened to me, I’d take a shower, go to bed, and practice forgiving myself. And continue to stick to all of these practices on this page, starting with reminding myself of my intention – who and what am I doing this for?
13. Be consistent.
I kept coming back to all of these practices. I repeated them, again and again and again, day after day after day, until they simply became habits. That’s where all of this hard work is leading. It took so much effort at the start, and then it just became part of me. This healthier me. This happier me.
I am someone who sets intentions, because I want to follow through.
I am someone who talks about what’s bothering me, because I’ve seen what happens when I don’t.
I am someone who remembers why all of this happened, who avoids trigger behaviors and chooses better behaviors when I do notice old urges.
I am someone who is proactive about my stress and anxiety.
I am someone who is flexible with exercise, and builds balanced meals, and is
routine and predictable about meals.
I am someone who eats mindfully and enjoys making peace with foods as my life goes on.
I am someone who tries to forgive myself faster.
I am someone who is consistent in practicing all of these practices.
I keep coming back to these practices. They’re how I recovered, and they’re how I stay in recovery. 10 years later.
It works. I just had to do the work.
