LENA ALINE - eating disorder recovery (2026)

18/12/2021

There is only one person who knows what you “should” do to recover from your eating disorder.⁣
⁣
You.⁣
⁣
Your recovery road map is yours only. ⁣
⁣
Don’t let anyone tell you what you “need to do” in order to recover.⁣
⁣
Does that sound mad to you?⁣
⁣
Because I am out here, too, talking about how to recover?⁣
⁣
It’s true, I have a lot of suggestions.⁣
⁣
A lot of experience.⁣
⁣
A lot of knowledge.⁣
⁣
A lot of opinions, ideas and convictions. ⁣
⁣
It’s easy for me to see what might need to happen for someone to recover.⁣
⁣
What internal conflict might need resolving, what pain might need love and presence, what shifts would be beneficial.⁣
⁣
But I will never know what is right for you better than you do. And neither will anyone else.⁣
⁣
No one but you can know what you should do, because what you “should” do is for you to determine.⁣
⁣
There are so many suggestions out there about eating disorder recovery, it can make your brain hurt.⁣
⁣
If you tried to follow it all, the journey would get wildly messy and complicated - because a lot of it is confusing and conflicting.⁣
⁣
You know why much of the advice is confusing and conflicting?⁣
⁣
Because not all of it is meant for 𝘺𝘰𝘶.⁣
⁣
The steps you take in order to let go of your eating disorder should (😉) be determined entirely by where you are at in your journey, the energetics that cause you to cope with (or without) food, your individual needs based on that and your inner authority.⁣
⁣
Don’t mistake everything that you could do for something you should do.⁣
⁣
There is beautiful and truly helpful wisdom out there on how to recover. I like to think that I offer some of it.⁣
⁣
And - maybe it’s not what you 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 do. ⁣
⁣
Whatever next step you think you should take, can you check back in with yourself and feel if it is truly aligned? If it is the step for you?⁣
⁣
What feels right for you? What would feel sustainably and lastingly good? What would someone who loved themselves do?⁣
⁣
It’s not like there is the journey you should be on - and the one you’re actually on.⁣
⁣
There is only the one you are on.⁣
⁣
And maybe that’s exactly the one you “should” be on.

01/11/2021

“If you knew for a fact that you were never going to have the body of your dreams, how would that change things?”⁣
⁣
“I wouldn’t want to be here anymore. I would want to die.”⁣
⁣
Real words from a real coaching session.⁣
⁣
“I can’t let go, because if I did, my life would be empty. It’s the one thing giving me hope.”⁣
⁣
Bold, painful words.⁣
⁣
Edgy truth.⁣
⁣
The kind of truth that leads to freedom, because it leaves no more room for self deception.⁣
⁣
The kind of truth most people fear to acknowledge.⁣
⁣
Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. ⁣
⁣
That letting go of your behaviours around food (while you kind of want to) would actually crush you.⁣
⁣
Because sometimes, the idea that someday, you’ll exist in the body of your dreams (or follow the perfect diet or…), is your only hope.⁣
⁣
The fantasy the only thing lending purpose to a life that has felt empty and hopeless for a very long time.⁣
⁣
Two things are true here:⁣
⁣
There is a part of you that’s in so much pain, it doesn’t want to be here.⁣
⁣
And - there’s a part of you that does want to be here, which is why you’re pouring your entire hope into sculpting your body to finally meet your needs.⁣
⁣
But you know how it goes. If you do reach that body, it will never be enough.⁣
⁣
Because you need the fantasy, not the body.⁣
⁣
You need the fantasy to overpower the part of you that doesn’t want to be here.⁣
⁣
But that part isn’t scary, it’s scared.⁣
⁣
It’s drowning in pain that you keep using fantasy to get away from. ⁣
⁣
And it doesn’t want to continue to live in pain.⁣
⁣
This isn’t a problem.⁣
⁣
It’s that your obsession with food/body… is keeping you from tending to the wounds that keep torturing this part, which is actually what would set you free.⁣
⁣
Your freedom isn’t waiting for you in your perfect body.⁣
⁣
It’s in the healing of the pain that made you not want to be here anymore.

30/10/2021

What is causing you more suffering than your eating disorder is the way you relate to your eating disorder.⁣
⁣
Shaming yourself for it, being hell bent on recovery because you hate it so much, needing it to go away so you can feel good and normal again.⁣
⁣
It takes courage to create a peaceful relationship with a pattern you perceive to be causing you so much pain.⁣
⁣
And yet the real pain isn’t caused by your eating disorder, it’s caused by your judgment about it.⁣
⁣
Making it mean so much about yourself when really having an eating disorder just means you are using food as a coping mechanism for a deeper pain.⁣
⁣
Often times, we are scared to be loving and kind to ourselves in the middle of a pattern we’re trying to overcome, because we believe that if we realised we deserve love already, then why would we still want to change?⁣
⁣
A valid fear if we’ve only ever initiated change in our lives with the fuel of shame and threat.⁣
⁣
And it’s true.⁣
⁣
When you’ve cultivated a truly intimate and friendly relationship with your eating disorder, the desperate need for it to leave you the f alone disappears.⁣
⁣
When you can welcome it, love it, hold it and not make yourself wrong for it, when you can love yourself inside of it, when you loosen your tight grip around it, the intense desire for recovery does slow down.⁣
⁣
But here is the unexpected plot twist:⁣
⁣
Because you’re already LIVING what you thought you could only get as a result of recovery (self love, self acceptance, freedom, peace…), you’re 1000000x closer to recovery than ever before.⁣
⁣
And when you can feel deeply whole INSIDE of your eating disorder, you do in fact get to a point of “If this never shifted, I’d be fine”. ⁣
⁣
Which is the moment you land fully in reality, fully in your power and where your resistance falls away.⁣
⁣
And with no resistance - not towards your eating disorder and not towards recovery - the doors to recovery just flung wide open.⁣
⁣
I promise that gifting yourself compassion inside of the mess is not going to make you reject recovery.⁣
⁣
It’s going to make it possible.

29/10/2021

Did you know that honey bees deliberately seek out water when they are about to die?⁣
⁣
I didn’t know this until recently when a bee priestess shared this deep wisdom with me.⁣ ()
⁣
I used to always “save” bees from drowning in the water.⁣
⁣
Feeling accomplished and good about myself and like I had done the right thing.⁣
⁣
I had no idea I was interfering with innate intelligence.⁣
⁣
As humans, our perspective has become so limited and so honed in on always finding what is “wrong” and then fixing it.⁣
⁣
So much so that we have lost that sense of reverence and trust in something greater than ourselves.⁣
⁣
What looks wrong to our human eyes isn’t always asking to be fixed.⁣
⁣
We are so quick to judge and jump into action without inquiring first, learning first, understanding first.⁣
⁣
Yes, I am going to make this about eating disorders now.⁣
⁣
Because in my humble opinion, this is why so few people get to experience true recovery.⁣
⁣
Because we are failing to notice the innate wisdom inherent in the behaviours that we hate so much. ⁣
⁣
We judge them as wrong, disturbing or bad, when they’re actually designed for self preservation.⁣
⁣
We try to force ourselves to stop them when we still need them.⁣
⁣
We think we can change the symptom without addressing the cause.⁣
⁣
Meanwhile, we are actually clueless and declare full recovery from an eating disorder as simply unachievable.⁣
⁣
And that’s the real madness.⁣
⁣
To disrespect the greater wisdom inherent in the eating disorder, to see it as pathological, when truly, it’s a deeply intelligent adaptation to out of control circumstances.⁣
⁣
Don’t let the fearful ones “save you from drowning”.⁣
⁣
Inquire deeper. Lean in. Listen to the wisdom that is running your behaviours around food.⁣
⁣
You don’t need saving.⁣
⁣
You cannot fix what isn’t broken.⁣
⁣
And when you stop seeing yourself as that, you are well on your way to recovery.

25/10/2021

This is the biggest I’ve ever been in my life.⁣
⁣
And it feels really uncomfortable.⁣
⁣
When I look at my body, I feel shame.⁣
⁣
And - it is not fatphobia or the remnants of an eating disorder. ⁣
⁣
I don’t hate my body. I don’t hate that I gained weight. I am not taking any steps to lose it. ⁣
⁣
If I were to stay this size for the rest of my life, I would be okay.⁣
⁣
If I were to gain more weight, I would be okay.⁣
⁣
I don’t judge myself as less worthy or less loveable or otherwise somehow “less”.⁣
⁣
And, there is shame.⁣
⁣
But it has nothing to do with my body and everything to do with what this weight gain holds energetically.⁣
⁣
It holds the energy of neglect. Self sacrifice in order to be seen as good and worthy. Biting my tongue when things needed to be spoken.⁣
⁣
This weight gain had nothing to do with food. If anything, I may have eaten a little bit less in this time period.
⁣
This weight feels like a barrier between me and the world. ⁣
⁣
It feels like all of the boundaries I didn’t set in the beginning of last year when I thought I needed to hold for my best friend what not even the professional hospital staff could help her with. ⁣
⁣
It feels like the late nights, over delivering and offering too much to the detriment of my own well being when I took on more clients than I truly had inner capacity for.⁣
⁣
It feels like all of the moments where I chose to be seen as good over showing up for myself.⁣
⁣
I do not blame my body. This body only responded to reality.⁣
⁣
I will not use intentional weight loss to eradicate the shame.⁣
⁣
Instead, to melt the shame, I am loving the part of me that still feels she only deserves love when she is “of service”.⁣
⁣
Holding her with so much compassion and allowing her to explore what it is like to not be “good”. To say no. To speak her truth.⁣
⁣
The weight gain stopped the moment I took a break from everything last year and fully tended to my own needs.⁣
⁣
The weight is still here. It is still needed. I am still learning. ⁣
⁣
But the biggest learning of all?⁣
⁣
Has been that not even weight gain is truly about… weight.⁣
⁣
It’s simply the body expressing what we don’t.

21/10/2021

The driving force behind your patterns around food that you want to get rid of so badly is just one thing.⁣
⁣
You believe it will make you feel better.⁣
⁣
Not sustainably, not really and not consciously, but the sole reason you do what you do with food is simple.⁣
⁣
You want to feel better.⁣
⁣
And you haven’t yet learned how to hold the thing that is causing you pain in a way that allows it to shift.⁣
⁣
When there is pain that we don’t know how to ease, we opt for relief. ⁣
⁣
And isn’t this what you feel before the guilt and the shame and the “I don’t know why I keep doing this” sets in?⁣
⁣
The first seconds when you let go and binge? Relief. ⁣
⁣
Purging? Relief.⁣
⁣
Planning out a perfect week of food when you feel out of control? Relief.⁣
⁣
Denying yourself food all day and feeling that sense of power, of superiority? Relief.⁣
⁣
It’s fleeting, of course.⁣
⁣
And - if a few moments of relief are worth the repercussions of an eating disorder, that’s valuable feedback on the severity of the pain you’re experiencing.⁣
⁣
Nothing is wrong with you for using food in whatever way you use it to create a sense of hope.⁣
⁣
You don’t need to shame yourself for wanting to feel good.⁣
⁣
We will always - naturally, biologically, evolutionarily - seek to avoid pain and to find well being.⁣
⁣
And while it’s valid to hate your eating disorder, recovery beyond just switching your food coping mechanisms for healthier ones will require you to understand how the very patterns you want to eradicate from your life… are serving you.⁣
⁣
What pain they are alleviating, even if ever so momentarily.⁣
⁣
Your eating disorder did not fall from the sky.⁣
⁣
It is only here because it is n e e d e d.⁣
⁣
It’s needed until you no longer need it, which is the moment you learn to move through the pain.⁣
⁣
Until then?⁣
⁣
Don’t make yourself wrong for needing soothing. ⁣
⁣
Don’t fight what is helping you survive.⁣
⁣
It’s truly okay to need food for comfort.⁣
⁣
And - it’s also possible to no longer need it. 🙌🏼⁣

06/09/2021

The body receives only raw, unfiltered truth.⁣
⁣
And it responds accordingly.⁣
⁣
We know that restoring our relationship to our bodies in recovery is crucial.⁣
⁣
Yet often, we limit this restoration to making peace with what our bodies look like or how much they weigh or we escape into body neutrality, paying even less attention to the innate wisdom that lives in every single cell.⁣
⁣
For me, after a life time of self destruction and hating my body, my desire went far beyond body neutrality or body acceptance in my own recovery.⁣
⁣
I wanted to feel deeply connected. I wanted to know every inch of my body intimately. I wanted to listen to and truly honour my body’s innate intelligence. No. More. Fighting.⁣
⁣
And so I have been on this journey of reconciliation, exploration and surrender for a while now. Long past no longer hating my body and long past having accepted what she looks like.
⁣
This past week, I was in the presence of an awakened and truly powerful man, when he said some things that triggered me into a trauma response.⁣
⁣
On the surface, my mind went into overdrive, like “Ahhh this is just another untrustworthy man feeding off of my openness, how could I be so stupid to trust him”. I could feel my heart begin to race and my throat to close up.⁣
⁣
But I was able to feel deeply enough to feel through to the deepest layer.⁣
⁣
And, on the deepest level, I felt pure safety. ⁣
⁣
I could feel both things at the same time - the raw truth of my body, signalling safety.⁣
⁣
And the conditioned trauma response - a reaction to my own thoughts about it all. Rooted in the past.⁣
⁣
Because the truth of the moment was that this man had no intentions to take anything at all from me.⁣
⁣
Being able to feel both at the same time gave me a choice in the moment where, if I had not been able to feel my body’s truth and separate it from trauma, there had been no choice.⁣
⁣
I could choose to surrender to the truth of my body.⁣
⁣
Our bodies receive pure energy. They do not respond to words or actions, but to their vibration. ⁣
⁣
And thus, the more deeply and intimately we are able to feel our bodies, the more access we have to not only body acceptance, but also to…. truth.⁣

03/09/2021

Why is it so damn interesting to find out what someone eats in a day?⁣
⁣
Actually, it is not.⁣
⁣
Or: only on the surface.⁣
⁣
The truth is that you wouldn’t really care what a complete stranger you’ve met once on the bus eats in a day.⁣
⁣
You wouldn’t really feel “inspired” by the meals of an 80 year old lady in a nursing home.⁣
⁣
You only care about what someone eats in a day when they have something you want.⁣
⁣
When you low key… wish you could be them.⁣
⁣
You may think they have the body you wish you had. (Which is just the top layer - wanting their body is really only wanting what you believe having “their” body would give you a sense of)⁣
⁣
You might admire their confidence or their success or their popularity or any other quality you perceive to be lacking from your own life.⁣
⁣
Can you see now?⁣
⁣
Knowing exactly what they eat in a day creates the illusion of touching that quality.⁣
⁣
The base line strategy of an eating disorder is to project things onto food, because it is so easily controllable.⁣
⁣
You may not know how to create confidence in yourself or how to feel as loved as you think they are.⁣
⁣
But you can copy what they eat in a day.⁣
⁣
Get their same Starbucks order, eat the same Buddha bowl for lunch, re-create what they made for dinner.⁣
⁣
Subconsciously, this makes you feel in control of the quality you admire in them.⁣
⁣
There is nothing wrong or bad about this.⁣
⁣
It’s just that it doesn’t work.⁣
⁣
So you might start re-creating their life in other ways.⁣
⁣
Watch some daily vlogs, use their phrases, dress like them.⁣
⁣
But all of that is doing one thing - throwing your own power at them.⁣
⁣
Your power to tap into the thing you REALLY see in them is in YOU, not in their food or lifestyle choices.⁣
⁣
What is it you really want to cultivate inside of yourself? What do you want that they seem to have?⁣
⁣
If you can identify your true desire here, you can stop trying to substitute for it with someone else’s food preferences and actually go for the real thing.⁣
⁣
It already lives inside of you as a potential.⁣
⁣
But it doesn’t get activated with food.⁣
⁣
It comes alive when you go there directly.

01/09/2021

At this point in my life, I’d rather spend 500 hours learning from, listening to and reconciling opposing inner parts of myself than move into action when there is even subtle resistance present.⁣
⁣
I’ve learned that anything you suppress will 100% show itself as shadow.⁣
⁣
Shadow = “self sabotage”⁣
⁣
“Why do I keep getting in my own way?”⁣
⁣
“I thought I was doing so well, but now I am back to where I was before. What is wrong with me?”⁣
⁣
Nothing is wrong.⁣
⁣
But when we find ourselves on a battlefield where everything we’ve been working towards seems to be in shambles, it’s a sign that we haven’t been paying attention to parts of ourselves that were afraid of where we wanted them to go.⁣
⁣
All resistance is based in fear.⁣
⁣
Parts of us that are subconsciously projecting something bad will happen if we continue toward the change we consciously feel so damn ready to make.⁣
⁣
And so we ignore them, because they will clearly hold us back if we give them attention.⁣
⁣
We shut them up, like NO, I want this. Leave me alone.⁣
⁣
We bulldoze their needs and requests because now we are afraid of their power over us.⁣
⁣
And then we gasp with disbelief when these parts really do try to stop us.⁣
⁣
Whether we were committed to recovery, but suddenly restrict again, or we were on our way to meet a friend we didn’t really want to see and “coincidentally” find ourselves on the road with the most traffic and get there late - what we suppress WILL come out sideways.⁣
⁣
And so an absolute game changing skill to learn is to take note of resistance when it is subtle. ⁣
⁣
To allow the part of you resisting your mission to be there. ⁣
⁣
To get to know this part, to find out what it is afraid of.⁣
⁣
Because hearing this part out gives you the chance to take care of it and to find a solution that gets the part on board.⁣
⁣
Pushing harder when faced with resistance will not work long term.⁣
⁣
Trust me on this, I’ve tried countless times.⁣
⁣
In the end, I always wish I’d spent time listening to all of my parts.⁣
⁣
If you’re tired of getting in your own way…. Realise that what’s getting in the way isn’t an opposing part.⁣
⁣
It’s your dismissal of it.
⁣
⁣
⁣

16/08/2021

“I’m not sick enough”, “I just need to hit this weight and THEN I’ll recover”, “I need to earn recovery by suffering some more first”…⁣
⁣
All thoughts based on one belief:⁣
⁣
My worthiness to receive support is directly dependent on the amount of my suffering.⁣
⁣
Or simply ⁣
⁣
Suffering = worthiness.⁣
⁣
You are trying to earn your right to deserve love and support by making yourself miserable.⁣
⁣
Know that nothing is wrong with you if hitting a new low on the scale gives you a hit of excitement. ⁣
⁣
If pushing your body to breaking point makes you feel accomplished.⁣
⁣
If you kind of enjoy “relapsing” after you were seemingly on track to recovery.⁣
⁣
There is nothing wrong with the part of you that takes pleasure in your low points.⁣
⁣
This is the only way you know how to feel worthy of receiving love and support.⁣
⁣
That rush of excitement you judge as f*ed up is the celebration of the part that derives worthiness from pain.⁣
⁣
“I’m not sick enough” is code for “I am desperate to find validation for my pain to the point where I see no value in any kind of vitality that would get in the way of someone noticing my agony.”⁣
⁣
I see “not sick enough” posts regularly, but the general advice given is that it’s just the eating disorder voice that is to be ignored or encouragement that you are in fact sick enough.⁣
⁣
This is feeding the fire.⁣
⁣
Shutting down the part of you that wants to prove its worthiness by suffering will make this part want to prove it EVEN MORE.⁣
⁣
This part wants to be seen and acknowledged in its efforts to make your pain visible. ⁣
⁣
Ignoring or braining your way out of it is just pushing it out of your conscious awareness and opening the door for this part to sabotage your recovery from the shadows.⁣
⁣
Pull it into the light instead. ⁣
⁣
Stop shaming it and making it wrong and ignoring its screams for attention.⁣
⁣
The problem isn’t the existence of this part, it’s how you’ve been relating to it. ⁣
⁣
This part already IS worthy of receiving love and attention, it just cannot realise this as long as you treat it with disgrace.⁣
⁣
Because “not sick enough” …really means “please see me”.

LENA ALINE - eating disorder recovery

18/12/2021

01/11/2021

30/10/2021

29/10/2021

25/10/2021

21/10/2021

06/09/2021

03/09/2021

01/09/2021

16/08/2021

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share