I believe you are the expert on your experience. I believe we must seek to understand each person’s unique experience with an eating disorder—asking questions and listening rather than making assumptions. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to recovery. Coaching is a partnership, and you hold valuable expertise on yourself. You know yourself and your life much better than I do, so I believe your input is equally as important, and often more important, than mine in our work together.

I believe an eating disorder has served a purpose that makes sense in someone’s life. I validate the ways an eating disorder makes sense and has been a survival strategy—an attempt at a solution by a part of us to cope with pain, trauma, and oppression/internalized oppression. Healing asks us to honor our eating disorder’s attempts to help us survive while also acknowledging the harm it has caused in our life. I believe we must compassionately hold space for both of these truths without judgement.

I believe we must factor in the social messages and systemic inequities that contribute to eating disorders and add barriers to recovery. Each person faces a unique combination of factors contributing to their eating disorder and challenges in their life influenced by the systems and environment we exist within. I believe we must speak about the interconnection between identity, oppression, social justice, societal messages, and eating disorders/disordered eating. I believe liberation for all will allow for more healing collectively and individually.

I believe full recovery from an eating disorder is a possibility while also acknowledging and respecting that we are complex humans living in a complex world. Not everyone is in a place where recovery is their priority and not everyone wants to recover. The idea that we are obligated to recover creates a sense of morality which perpetuates feelings of shame and disempowerment. I believe someone is always worthy of compassion, support, and an increased quality of life regardless. I always hold hope for the possibility of full recovery.

I believe in harm reduction to minimize the negative consequences of disordered eating behaviors to reduce suffering and increase someone’s quality of life no matter where they are in an eating disorder or recovery.

I believe in Health at Every Size, weight-inclusivity, body diversity, and state not weight. I believe eating disorder support must be free of anti-fat bias and inclusive to people of all sizes with a focus on well-being not weight. I believe only our bodies can decide what they need to weigh in order to fully heal from an ED. Harm occurs in the process of trying to force our body to a lower weight than it’s meant to be at. Research shows that being in an energy deficit is a major contributing factor to developing and sustaining an eating disorder. Anti-fat bias is everywhere and harmful to the well-being of everyone. I believe your body is wise and trustworthy, and it’s normal for bodies to change throughout life.

I believe your internal experience is more important than any external measurement of well-being. Even if everything appears fine on the outside, what truly matters is your internal experience—how you are experiencing food, exercise, your body, and being with yourself. Your struggles are valid even if they are not visible. I believe it’s crucial to have supports who prompt us to explore our internal experience rather than simply define our well-being and needs by external markers.

I believe diet, wellness, and hustle culture can be insidious even in recovery from an eating disorder. Restricting ourselves and proving our worth through eating and exercise habits, our weight, our health/wellness status, and our productivity levels is so normalized in our society. Sadly these messages are too often normalized in healing from an eating disorder as well. So much judgment has been placed on something neutral and biological—hunger. To be fully free will ask us to let go of all rules, compulsions, and conditions around eating, movement, and weight—even the ones that are normalized in our culture and that others cannot see. If we wanted seconds but we didn’t have it because our meal plan didn’t require it—that is still restriction. If we are approved by our team to exercise, but are doing it from a place of fear and would feel anxious if we didn’t—that isn’t serving our healing. I believe we must root out any and all restriction, mental and physical, if we want to heal. To eat and enjoy food in a culture that tells us not to is an act of courageous reclamation.