If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve already done a tremendous amount of hard work in your recovery. Maybe you’ve been to eating disorder treatment, worked with a therapist or dietitian, or started making changes in your relationship with food, movement, and your body.

That matters. Recovery is hard work, and making progress is a huge accomplishment.

But one of the things people don’t talk about enough is that recovery can feel especially difficult after treatment or once things are “better.” Transitioning from a higher level of care back into everyday life can be incredibly challenging. Often, you go from having consistent support and structure to navigating a world that is full of eating disorder triggers and messages that directly contradict recovery.

You may suddenly find yourself surrounded by:

• Diet talk
• Conversations about intentional weight loss
• Messaging that frames weight loss as “healthy” or morally good
• Fear and shame around weight gain
• People labeling foods as “good” or “bad”
• Pressure to pursue control, discipline, or “clean eating”

For many people - especially people in larger bodies - maintaining recovery can feel exhausting in a culture that constantly reinforces eating disorder thinking. It can be incredibly difficult to continue working toward eating enough, challenging fear foods, or accepting your body when someone around you is praising restriction as “healthy” or calling themselves “bad” for eating dessert.

And recovery doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Life stressors, grief, trauma, relationships, work, financial stress, parenting, chronic illness, and mental health struggles don’t pause just because you’re trying to recover.

Long-term recovery often isn’t about never struggling again. It’s about building support, self-awareness, flexibility, and compassion so that when hard moments happen, you don’t have to face them alone.

Here are some things that can help.

1. Build a supportive outpatient team

Continued support matters. Recovery is often much more sustainable when you have people in your corner who understand eating disorders and share recovery-oriented values.

Ideally, this might include:

• A therapist
• A dietitian
• A PCP or medical provider who understands eating disorders

Support groups can also be incredibly helpful.

Having people who can validate your experiences, help you reality-check eating disorder thoughts, and provide accountability can help counterbalance all the messages - both internal and external - that pull you away from recovery. You deserve support that feels compassionate, collaborative, and nonjudgmental.

2. Set boundaries around food and body conversations when you can

Protecting yourself from harmful conversations is not selfish - it’s part of recovery. You are allowed to step away from conversations that reinforce shame, restriction, or body obsession. You are also allowed to redirect or gently challenge those conversations if that feels accessible and safe.

Some examples might sound like:

• “I prefer not to focus on food or weight. I’d love to hear more about how you’ve been doing otherwise.”
• “I’m actually working on moving away from seeing weight gain as bad or weight loss as good.”
• “I’m trying to have a more neutral relationship with food and body size.”

You do not have to educate everyone around you or disclose more about your eating disorder than you’re comfortable with in order to deserve boundaries.

3. Make a plan for coping with triggers and stressors

Triggers will happen. Stressful life events will happen. Recovery is not about eliminating all discomfort - it’s about having ways to respond when things get hard.

It can help to think ahead about:

• Who you can reach out to
• What kind of support actually helps
• What coping skills tend to work for you
• What coping strategies don’t help
• What signs might indicate you’re struggling more than usual

Sometimes recovery means learning how to ask for support before things get unbearable.

4. Remember that recovery is not linear

Setbacks, hard days, eating disorder thoughts, and periods of struggle do not mean you are failing. They also do not erase your progress.

Recovery is rarely a straight line. What matters most is often how you respond when things feel difficult:

• Do you shame and criticize yourself? Or can you approach yourself with curiosity and compassion?
• Can you view difficult moments as information instead of proof that recovery is impossible?

Self-compassion is not “letting yourself off the hook.” It’s often what makes sustainable recovery possible.

5. Remind yourself that you deserve care at every stage of recovery

Many people in recovery fall into the “not sick enough” trap. Maybe you’re functioning better than before. Maybe your behaviors are less severe. Maybe your body has changed. Maybe you think other people “have it worse.” None of that means you stop deserving support.

You deserve nourishment, care, rest, and help regardless of your weight, appearance, or how “bad” things seem compared to the past. A huge part of recovery is unlearning the idea that you have to earn support by struggling enough first. You do not have to hit a crisis point before you’re allowed to ask for help.

6. Explore what needs the eating disorder was meeting

Eating disorders often serve real emotional, psychological, or relational needs. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean letting the eating disorder continue or giving up on recovery - it means being honest and compassionate about why your eating disorder developed in the first place.

With support, it can be helpful to explore questions like:

• What was the eating disorder helping me cope with?
• What did it protect me from?
• What needs did it meet?

Sometimes eating disorders help people:

• Cope with anxiety, depression, or trauma
• Communicate distress or pain
• Create a sense of control or predictability
• Feel a sense of belonging or identity
• Manage overwhelming emotions
• Feel temporarily “safe” or numb

These needs are real, and they deserve attention, not dismissal. Recovery often involves finding other ways to meet those needs with more care, flexibility, and sustainability.

7. Allow space for grief

Grief is a deeply normal part of recovery.

You may grieve:

• Time lost to the eating disorder
• Relationships or experiences affected by it
• The impact it had on your body or mental health
• The loss of the eating disorder itself
• Changes in your body
• Letting go of control over weight or appearance

Many people feel conflicted about recovery because the eating disorder may have felt protective, familiar, or deeply intertwined with their identity. That grief deserves space and compassion too.

8. Celebrate your wins

Recovery can feel heavy sometimes. It’s important to intentionally notice the moments that reflect growth, courage, and healing.

Wins might include:

• Trying a fear food
• Eating more consistently
• Resting when your body needs it
• Setting a boundary
• Going to a social event
• Challenging an eating disorder thought
• Having a realization in therapy
• Asking for help
• Doing something you may not have been able to do in the depths of your eating disorder

Some people like journaling about these moments, sharing them with loved ones, creating rituals around milestones, or finding small ways to celebrate themselves.

You deserve to fully experience the positives of recovery too - not just the challenges.

Recovery is not always easy, especially in a world that often reinforces eating disorder behaviors. But long-term recovery is possible, and you do not have to navigate it perfectly in order for it to matter.

Every moment you choose nourishment, flexibility, connection, rest, honesty, or self-compassion is meaningful. And if recovery feels hard sometimes, that does not mean you’re doing it wrong.