Recovery is one of the most used and most misunderstood words in the eating disorder world. For some, it’s a destination. For others, it’s a daily practice. Either way, it’s rarely linear, and it doesn’t always look the way people expect it to. You don’t need to “look” sick to need support, and you don’t need to reach some perfect, polished version of health to be in recovery.
What matters most is that the eating disorder is no longer running the show. Still, recovery is often measured—and misunderstood—through a limited lens, shaped by outdated assumptions about what eating disorders are and what they look like.
Rethinking What It Means to Be Recovered
For many people, being “recovered” is assumed to mean that symptoms have disappeared, weight has stabilized, and life has returned to normal. But eating disorders aren’t just defined by behaviors, and recovery isn’t either. According to the DSM, a diagnosis requires a certain frequency or duration of symptoms, along with measurable impact on functioning. Those criteria can be useful for treatment planning or insurance coverage, but they don’t always reflect the lived reality.
Someone can stop engaging in behaviors and still feel consumed by anxiety, shame, or obsessive thoughts. Others may appear stable from the outside but still be struggling internally. Recovery is about more than what a person does or what they weigh. It’s about how they’re coping, how they’re thinking, and what’s shifted beneath the surface.
More Than One Way to Name the Work
For some, the word “recovered” offers closure. It marks a turning point, a sense that the eating disorder no longer defines their identity or shapes their choices. For others, identifying as “in recovery” feels more accurate, not because they’re stuck or struggling, but because they’ve chosen to live with a certain awareness, a daily commitment to care, boundaries, and attunement.
There’s no hierarchy here. People relate to their recovery in different ways, and those relationships often change over time. What matters isn’t what someone calls it, but what has shifted in their life. The sense of clarity, capacity, and internal freedom that comes when the eating disorder is no longer used as a way to manage pain or gain control—that’s the part that matters.
When Diagnosis Gets Confused With Appearance
There is a persistent and harmful belief that eating disorders look a certain way. People often assume that someone with anorexia must be visibly underweight, or that someone with binge eating disorder must be in a larger body. These assumptions are not only inaccurate, they are dangerous. They delay diagnosis, distort treatment goals, and reinforce the stigma that only certain people deserve care.
In reality, eating disorders exist across the weight spectrum. A person can meet the full criteria for anorexia while living in a larger body. Someone can be severely malnourished and still be told they “look healthy.” Comments like “you didn’t gain as much as you think” aren’t supportive; they reinforce fatphobia, deepen body mistrust, and uphold the very fears that keep people stuck. The use of BMI in diagnosis only deepens this problem, tying recovery to an external measure that was never designed to reflect individual health.
Eating disorders are diagnosed based on psychological distress and behavioral patterns, not appearance. Recovery must be grounded in that truth, or we risk centering the very beliefs that contribute to harm.
Not All Eating Disorders Involve Body Image—And When They Do, It’s Complicated
Some eating disorders, like ARFID or Orthorexia, have nothing to do with body image. Orthorexia, while not an official diagnosis, describes a pattern of disordered eating rooted in a fixation on health, purity, or clean eating. ARFID may stem from fear of choking, sensory aversions, or early feeding trauma. These experiences are valid and distressing, and they deserve recognition without being mischaracterized as weight-related.
Even when body image is part of the picture, it’s often misunderstood. Eating disorders are rooted in anxiety, shame, trauma, and often function as maladaptive coping strategies. Focusing on weight or appearance oversimplifies what’s happening internally and reinforces the very fears that many people are working to unlearn.
Recovery means understanding the function of the eating disorder, not just the surface symptoms. When we fixate on what someone looks like or assume that healing must involve liking their body, we miss the point. The real shift happens when we stop asking how someone appears and start asking how they’re coping.
Shifts You Can Feel
Recovery doesn’t always look like progress, but often, it feels like space. Space to think, to rest, to choose something different. Sometimes it shows up in medical labs, stabilizing, hunger cues returning, sleep coming more easily, or digestion improving after years of disruption. These physical markers matter. They signal repair and resilience, even when the outside hasn’t changed.
There are emotional markers too: fewer intrusive thoughts, less rigidity, the absence of panic in a once-triggering situation. Maybe meals feel less like negotiations and more like nourishment. Maybe movement becomes optional, not obligatory. These shifts are quiet, but powerful.
Relationships often change as well. Boundaries strengthen. Connection deepens. There’s more energy to be present with people and with yourself. Healing brings a growing capacity to self-regulate, to tolerate discomfort, and to return to center without relying on the eating disorder.
For providers, it’s essential not to reduce recovery to the absence of behaviors or changes in weight. What matters is what’s happening underneath. Recovery may not be linear or perfect, but it is possible, and it’s worth it.
A Recovery That Belongs to You
There’s no single way to measure recovery. It’s not found in a number, a weight range, or a checklist of behaviors. It’s shaped by the person doing the work, their history, their needs, their values, their pace. And while no two experiences will look the same, there is a shift that often marks the turning point.
Recovery is when you’re no longer using your eating disorder to cope.
That shift may be slow. It may be uneven. But when it happens, it opens the door to something else. Something fuller, quieter, and more your own. That’s the milestone that matters.
If you or someone you know is seeking compassionate and effective treatment, reach out and contact ‘Ai Pono Hawaii to discuss the diverse options available and start the journey to recovery today.
