On June 24, 2022, an article featuring our very own CEO, Rebecca Eyre, was published on Vogue.com. Rebecca emphasizes how holding onto “skinny clothes” is a form of self-oppression and discusses how to cultivate a healthier, more joyful relationship with our clothing and bodies.

In 1998, Jane’s entire family unit fled Kyiv, Ukraine as political refugees. She explores how she went from “Zhenya” (short for Yevgeniya) to Jane as she grew up in the U.S. and sought to appear as the typical American girl. Eschewing her mom’s cooking became a source of control, and she was deemed the “ungrateful” daughter. She writes, “Immigrants from the USSR didn’t know about eating disorders because every scrap of food was so important that they couldn’t imagine somebody denying food.”

Societal messaging that infertility suggests something fundamentally “wrong” with one’s body is pernicious. Camille Patrick discusses how her battles with self-worth, with projecting a visage of achievement and perfection, were complicated by health issues from a young age. Gradually, she learned that she is indisputably worthy of love, of being a mom, of fully embracing herself and her body.

Too often, eating disorder behaviors are misconstrued as signs of coveted “discipline” when one does not align with dominant (and false) constructions of the “typical” eating disorder patient. A medical professional with lived experience of anorexia, Jillian Rigert describes how the medical system initially praised her disordered behaviors, leading her to feel misunderstood by the very folks supposed to care for her, and the importance of practicing self-compassion in recovery.

The link between chronic illness and eating disorders is insufficiently discussed in recovery and healthcare settings. Teryn Brodish describes her battle with Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome, which eroded her trust in her body and incited a fear of food. She articulates the importance of clinicians believing the patient and not making external assumptions about health.

In a world in which aesthetic ideals and structural valuations of bodies abound, there is a veritable epidemic of negative body image. In this post, Dorothy Watson outlines a few ways in which parents can help their children cultivate a healthier body image and promote their overall well-being.

While there is no “typical” individual with an eating disorder, physicians often sustain the false notion that a person’s struggles with food and exercise can be visibly discerned via “dangerous thinness”. Jordyn describes how such convictions led doctors to dismiss her illness until she was just a shell of herself. When her new clinicians finally just listened to her, they saved her life. Centering patient input, preventing conceptions of “expertise” from impeding care, and dismantling oppressive beliefs are clearly indispensable components of mental healthcare.

As Megan Bazzini adeptly illustrates, the global rise of “wellness” has been inseparable from the commodification of thinness, the vilification of bodies, and the turning of health into an "aesthetic". An anorexia survivor who witnessed a loved one battling muscle dysmorphia, Megan demonstrates that “wellness” has bred a hidden culture of disordered eating and poisoned our notions of self-worth.

In honor of National Pride Month (June), Project HEAL is expanding the eating disorder conversation to include more LGBTQ+ voices. The week of June 27, we will be hosting different high-impact conversations each day on Instagram Live, amplifying a variety of LGBTQ+ stories aimed at raising awareness and creating a safe space for both learning and healing.

Professional beach volleyball player Molly Turner describes the painful feeling of being “at war” with her own body while balancing recovery from an eating disorder and her athletic career, especially given the pressure for female athletes to be both thin and strong. With the assistance of her therapist and MyClearStep (a numberless scale), she is gradually unlearning and finding healing—and feels as if she’s truly been reborn.

Taking action in the eating disorder field isn’t just about raising awareness. In this piece, Project HEAL MarCom Manager Serena Nangia shares her two cents on advocating with the Eating Disorders Coalition and what it means to make a difference as one individual in the midst of systemic issues that feel insurmountable.

This year, Project HEAL is excited to be celebrating 14 years of operation - or our 14th Birthday, as we like to call it. In May 2008, Liana Rosenman and Kristina Saffran - two teenagers who met in treatment for their own eating disorders - founded a nonprofit called Project HEAL in response to the inequities in access to treatment they had witnessed firsthand. What started as a passion project has become one of the leading eating disorder nonprofits in the U.S. providing direct service, education, research and advocacy for thousands of people a year.

Project HEAL, the leading nonprofit in the U.S. focused on equitable access to eating disorder treatment and long-term healing, is proud to announce the launch of its new Clinical Assessment Program that will help to solve the alarming need for accessible and inclusive diagnostic tools for all patients and professionals in the eating disorder field.

In eating disorder recovery spaces, fatphobia shows up in deeply harmful ways, including through pernicious, all-too-common assurances from clinicians that their clients “won’t get fat”. Such remarks uphold the oppressive belief that being fat is something to avoid and reprehend—that fat people ought to be devalued. Sarina illustrates why we must interrogate our own anti-fatness in recovery and beyond, shaping more safe, equitable spaces for all bodies.

The indisputable reality is that eating disorders do not have a “look”; the misconception that eating disorders predominantly affect folks who identity as women is detrimental. Ethan Feinstein shares his journey in finding HEALing from an eating disorder as a man; in spite of flawed societal messaging that his illness was somehow less valid, he gradually overcame his eating disorder’s domineering voice and mended his relationships with friends, family, and himself.

As a Mexican immigrant who works to help Latinx heal their relationships with food through an intersectional lens, Dr. Jimenez reflects on how dominant power structures conditioned her to be calladita, or silent. She now unapologetically takes up space to discuss the lack of BIPOC voices in anti-diet movements and how diet culture disconnects a person from their cultural and ancestral roots.

“The practice of loving your inner child is an opportunity to heal our shame, explore our emotional attachments, and let go of some of the armor we carry from childhood that may no longer serve us in adulthood. Loving your inner child is an opportunity to remember who we were so we might become who we are.”

As a body-positive yoga instructor, Grace Izzo often reminds her students to “take what you need, and leave the rest.” This mantra has proved meaningful in her recovery journey as well. Grace relays how despite feeling imprisoned by her eating disorder, she simultaneously derived a sense of safety from sexual harassment and disrespectful comments about her body; her illness rendered her body invisible to objectifying individuals for the first time. In pursuing recovery, she has found healing in practicing yoga and gratitude while continually grappling with patriarchal power structures.

Eating disorders are often thieves of joy, leading to missed opportunities to form lifelong memories. In this deeply moving blog post, Rachel Yates describes her courageous journey to reclaim her life—partaking in treatment, finding support in loved ones, and resolving not to let her eating disorder steal away her life and fundamental sense of self.

Most people are quick to characterize eating disorders as solely afflicting adolescents. Yet eating disorders are far from a “teenager thing”. In this latest blog post, Teresa Schmitz describes her journey of recovering from binge-eating disorder at midlife, gradually disputing the messaging that her body was the problem and ultimately finding true freedom.