The ultimate goal of an eating disorder is to make you comfortable. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, right? You would think a disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year would want to make you uncomfortable but on the contrary. And that’s why recovery is so hard. But we’ll get to that later.

First, let’s talk about the meaning of comfort, according to Google’s handy dictionary.

• Comfort is a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.

Let’s explore how comfort is pivotal to eating disorder recovery.

How comfort kills

There is a glaring dichotomy in eating disorder recovery that centers around comfort. We often hear such terms as they relate to eating, such as “comfort foods” or trying new foods as “getting out of your comfort zone.” But in eating disorder recovery, we find comfort in only a few select foods, ones that ED has deemed as acceptable to consume.

Comfort in ED recovery is not limited to foods, however. It also can apply to certain environments, proximity to safe places (like bathrooms or gyms), or allowing for enough time in the day to engage in rituals and behaviors.

Sometimes, the competitive nature of the eating disorder may push us to restrict even more or find new ways to descend into said darkness. It wants us to take it even further, outdoing itself and, therefore, growing stronger. We’re applauded by the ED for the creativity in finding new behaviors and commended for our exceptionalistic methods of ensuring even less food enters our bodies. The deeper we descend and the higher the limits we placed on ourselves, the more powerful the eating disorder becomes, which produces a constant desire to placate the ever-nagging voices.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

Very early on in my recovery, I first heard this phrase from one of my recovery mentors:

In order to recover from an eating disorder, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

This behavior is the obvious antithesis of everything the eating disorder does to thrive in our minds. When we’ve eaten too much, we try to purge. When we’re unhappy with how our bodies look in the mirror, we have to fix it…now.

I was extremely hesitant to give this a shot—after all, isn’t a human’s goal in life to avoid discomfort, displeasure, and pain at all costs?

But I was also fed up. I had been trying all the therapies and nutrition counseling, and I still felt stuck. So I tried it. And simply put, it was hard.

It was really hard. Every cell in my body wanted to take action, to go for a walk, to clean out my cabinets, to do something to alleviate the discomfort I felt after a meal. But I made myself sit on my sofa.

Against my ED’s desires, I kept practicing being uncomfortable. I made time to sit still after meals and observe how I was feeling, and not just physically. I asked myself questions like:

• What is the eating disorder saying to me right now?

  • What is true and untrue about what I am hearing?

• What is my mind telling me I need right now?

  • How can I honor what my mind and body are really asking for in this moment?

Among all the hard parts of eating disorder recovery, I’d definitely rank this action as one of the top five. It takes tremendous patience, dedication, and restraint. But building this skill has been one of the most powerful tricks I’ve learned to challenge the eating disorder and make progress in my recovery.