Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2026

By windoverwaterAnti-Diet, Compassion

#EDAW Fighting for Change When Every Body Belongs

Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2026 carries a theme that sounds obvious until you sit with it. Every body belongs. Not every body once healed. Not every body once productive. Not every body once disciplined enough, calm enough, thin enough, or healed enough to stop being inconvenient.

Every body. Period.

I have spent over twenty years treating eating disorders. I have watched people starve in bodies praised by the culture. I have watched people binge in bodies shamed by medicine. I have watched trauma responses get renamed as personal failures. I have watched mindfulness get weaponized into another performance metric. None of this happens by accident.

Eating disorders thrive in systems obsessed with control, optimization, and moral worth. They do not begin with food. They begin with the belief that your body is a problem to manage instead of a place to live. It is no coincidence that the “skinny girl” aesthetic has started to show up online and in social media spaces – it is about control. The GLP-1 craze is not about health – I guess a 50/50 chance is better than a 95% failure (like diets are known to have – what asinine doctor prescribes something with a 95% failure rate? Answer: a weight-stigmatizing, uninformed one). Why does it always come back to that?

But all the information in the world does not make our relationships with our bodies and with food clear. It is much too complicated, even for people who have never been on a diet or had a negative body image. So this week is not about awareness in the soft sense. Most people already know eating disorders exist. This week is about change. Structural change. Relational change. Internal change. The kind that asks harder questions and refuses easy answers.

‘Every Body Belongs’ Is Not a Slogan. It Is a Line in the Sand.

Belonging does not mean approval of harm. It means refusing to exile people for how their nervous systems adapted. Eating disorders make sense in context. They develop in bodies shaped by trauma, chronic stress, perfectionism, and relentless evaluation.

When we say every body belongs, we reject a few deeply embedded lies.

One, thinness does not equal health.
Two, weight does not diagnose an eating disorder.
Three, self-control is not the same as safety.
Four, productivity is not proof of recovery.

These lies persist because they reward systems that value output over well-being. Eating disorders often look like success until they collapse the system entirely.

Belonging asks something different. It asks whether your body gets to exist without auditioning for care.

Self Perception Is Learned. It Can Be Unlearned.

Most clients do not walk into therapy saying, “I hate my body.” They say things like, “I should be doing better,” or “I just need more discipline,” or “Other people manage this fine.”

Self-perception forms under pressure. Families. Schools. Medicine. Wellness culture. Productivity culture. Trauma. None of these contexts stay neutral.

From a trauma-informed lens, eating disorder behaviors often function as regulation strategies. Restriction narrows sensation. Binging soothes overwhelm. Purging discharges distress. Control creates temporary safety.

From a DBT and ACT lens, the problem is not the presence of these strategies. The problem is when they become rigid, punishing, and fused with identity.

From a self-compassion perspective, shame thrives when suffering feels like a personal flaw instead of a human response.

Challenging self-perception does not mean forcing body positivity. It means questioning the rules you absorbed without consent.

Who taught you your body was unreliable.
Who benefited from you staying small.
Who decided rest had to be earned.

Those questions change the work.

Mindfulness Without Judgment Is Not Passive. It Is Subversive.

Mindfulness has been flattened into a productivity tool. Calm down. Focus harder. Optimize attention. Perform serenity.

Real mindfulness disrupts this entire agenda.

Mindfulness without judgment means noticing hunger without assigning virtue. Noticing fullness without panic. Noticing body sensations without turning them into data points for self-evaluation.

From a clinical standpoint, this kind of mindfulness restores choice. It interrupts automatic shame loops. It widens the space between sensation and story.

From a RO-DBT perspective, overcontrol often hides behind discipline, stoicism, and self-denial. Mindfulness helps loosen rigidity without demanding collapse.

From a self-compassion framework, awareness paired with kindness rewires threat responses. The nervous system learns that noticing does not equal danger.

This is not indulgence. It is skillful resistance to cultures that profit from your disconnection.

Diet Culture and Productivity Culture Share the Same Nervous System Logic

Diet culture and productivity culture run on identical fuel. Control. Measurement. Moral ranking. Scarcity.

Eat less. Do more. Rest later. Earn relief.

For many clients, recovery does not stall because they lack motivation. It stalls because they try to recover using the same tools that created the disorder.

Meal plans become performance metrics. Therapy becomes homework. Self-care becomes another item to fail.

From an ACT lens, values-based living asks a different question. Not “Did I do this perfectly?” but “Did this move me toward a life that feels meaningful and humane?”

From a trauma lens, bodies learn through safety, not coercion. Recovery requires enough internal permission to exist without constant self-surveillance.

Change does not come from replacing one rigid rule set with another. It comes from dismantling the belief that worth requires constant proof.

Warning Signs Do Not Always Look Like You Expect

Eating disorders do not wear one face. They show up across body sizes, genders, ages, and identities. Many people delay seeking help because they do not look sick enough, thin enough, or distressed enough.

Warning signs include preoccupation with food, weight, or control. Shame after eating. Avoidance of social meals. Rigid food rules. Compulsive movement. Emotional numbness. Chronic self-criticism. Fear of rest.

Physical signs vary widely and often get dismissed, especially in higher weight bodies. This delay causes real harm.

Early screening matters. NEDA’s confidential screening tool offers a starting point for reflection and next steps. Education about eating disorders, including less visible diagnoses like OSFED and ARFID, reduces misdiagnosis and dismissal.

Belonging includes believing people before their bodies reach crisis.

Self-Compassion Is Not Soft. It Is Precise.

Many clients fear self-compassion because they equate it with giving up. In practice, self-compassion requires more honesty, not less.

It asks you to tell the truth about suffering without adding insult. It asks you to respond to pain the way you would respond to someone you care about.

From a Mindful Self-Compassion framework, compassion involves awareness, common humanity, and kindness. None of these excuse harm. They reduce it.

Clinically, self-compassion lowers shame, improves emotional regulation, and increases treatment engagement. It supports accountability without cruelty.

Fighting for change means teaching people how to stop attacking themselves in the name of improvement.

Change Happens in Rooms, Relationships, and Systems

Individual recovery does not occur in a vacuum. It unfolds in families, workplaces, medical offices, and social systems.

Advocating during medical appointments matters. Weight stigma and diet-focused care delay treatment and increase risk. Preparing questions, bringing resources, and seeking second opinions protect recovery.

Supporting loved ones requires education, patience, and firmness without simplification. “Just eat” is not care. Curiosity and steadiness are.

Challenging diet culture includes changing everyday language around food, bodies, and worth. These shifts reduce harm long before someone meets diagnostic criteria.

Change happens when systems stop confusing control with care.

What Fighting for Change Looks Like in Therapy

After twenty-five years in this field, I trust a few things deeply.

People heal when they feel safe and without being managed.
Bodies settle when safety replaces surveillance.
Insight matters, but hope and compassion sustain change.

My work integrates HAES-informed care, trauma treatment, DBT, ACT, RO-DBT, and self-compassion. I also pay attention to space. Feng shui and environmental psychology matter because nervous systems respond to context before cognition.

Recovery is not about becoming easier to tolerate. It is about becoming more fully yourself without apology.

Every body belongs means therapy does not ask you to shrink, hustle, or prove readiness. It asks you to arrive.

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