Building a Healthy Relationship with Food

Key points

Forming a healthy relationship with food gives you freedom to be yourself

Loneliness is often a part of having an eating disorder. Forming connections can help

Rigidity and perfectionism restrict you. Take some steps toward flexibility and human fallibility

Life after an eating disorder can feel both exciting and uncertain. For so long, food may have felt like the center of your world—something to control, fear , or avoid. Food may have taken over your life.

Maybe you stopped being social because you were preoccupied with food. Maybe what you ate defined your identity and sense of success or not. Maybe it controlled your mood. Maybe you continually compared yourself to others in terms of body image . Maybe you lived with rigid food rules and didn't attend parties or