If you suspect someone struggles with body image, ask them how they are, but do not comment on their food, your food, their body, or your body. We need to get away from self-deprecating conversations about what we eat and how we look
Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that affect millions worldwide, transcending age, gender, and cultural boundaries. They are not simply about food but involve a range of psychological, physical, and social issues. Supporting a loved one through this struggle can be challenging, requiring understanding, patience, and knowledge of the right approaches to truly make a difference.
In this series, we aim to shed light on the most effective ways to offer support, understanding, and hope to those battling an eating disorder. We are talking to psychologists, nutritionists, doctors, therapists, and survivors, who can provide valuable perspectives on nurturing recovery, fostering resilience, and promoting healthy relationships with food and body image. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Emily Van Eck.
Emily is a registered dietitian who specializes in eating disorders, intuitive eating, and body image. She helps women+ reclaim trust in themselves and their bodies so they can care for their reproductive health without diet culture’s oppressive thumb. You can read more about her here www.emilyvaneck.com
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I had my own struggles with dieting and body image when I was younger, feeling certain that shrinking my body was what I was “supposed” to do. I saw my grandma and mom obsess about losing weight for decades, so I think I inherited it. We spent so much time and energy trying to be just one size smaller, despite the immense amount of body privilege we’d all inherited.
After college, I moved to New York City and got the food education I never knew I wanted. I started working in restaurants while I went to school part-time, to concerts every night, and explored the city. I was inundated with the best food in the world, and worked alongside the people making it.
The restaurant I worked at for 5 years served delicious and very simple food — not fussy at all. There was a focus on making vegetables and salads that were unique and mouthwatering (as the Italians do it) but It was never a “health food restaurant”, it was just about flavor.
I was spending all my money on rent, so even with the employee discount, I couldn’t really afford to eat there much. I started learning their recipes and it turned out it was basically just assembly and simmering, no skillets involved. I was hooked. I dove into learning to cook — finding that sweet balance of delicious, nutritious, and simple.
I also saw that the dominant cultural dialogue about women and bodies was harming people. Friends I knew were preoccupied with perfecting their bodies. I thought that if I could help people at this intersection — bodies, pleasure, and food, I could have an impact. Once I went back to school to study nutrition and got my hands on the Intuitive Eating book, this all came together. I wanted to help people eat well, be healthy, and feel better about themselves, not shrink themselves to adhere to an oppressive double standard.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
In the past 10 or so years, I’ve realized how much I’ve been conditioned to believe there are things that I “should” want and ways I “should” be, that simply do not align with the real me. And I see this in my clients every day.
Women are constantly worried about being pleasing to others at their own expense. I believe that women have an outrageous amount of love and brilliance to bring this world and that we won’t be able to do that if we’re worried about pleasing others all the time. I don’t have one little quote to sum this up, but I might say something like “Find out who you are and be that person well”.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I am! Over the past couple years, I have been building and refining a really special group experience called The Love Food Again Program. It is a 6-month guided coaching and support group, where women+ come together to unlearn oppressive beauty standards and re-learn how to eat and move in ways that fully align with them as individuals.
It incorporates the intuitive eating framework, along with some groundwork in body image, listening to yourself, learning how you’ve internalized the patriarchy, and coming together with other women to explore this. I’m super proud of it. It’s ideal for people who have been dieting on and off for way to long, or those struggling with disordered eating, chaotic eating, or body image.
According to this study cited by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, at least 30 million people in the U.S. of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder. Can you suggest 3–5 reasons why this has become such a critical issue recently?
The statistics about the upsurge of eating disorders are certainly upsetting. I think this increase is for a few major reasons:
- Social and cultural pressure to “be good”. Despite what we may want to believe, women still experience a strong pressure to be thin, look perfectly, be pleasing to others, and adhere to an idealized beauty standard. But recently there is an added pressure to eat a certain way or avoid certain ingredients deemed “dirty” or types of foods (sugar, processed foods, white flour, etc). There is an unstated assumption that doing so makes you a better, more moral person, someone who cares more about their body and the planet. The idea you can “heal your hormones” and come off medication if you just avoid gluten, dairy, all processed foods, and everything else, may cause someone predisposed to go down a spiral of obsession and fear. We even have a new eating disorder that has popped up because of this obsession, orthorexia nervosa. And because we see a 2x higher rate of eating disorders in BIPOC compared to white folks, I have to wonder how much this white-washed way of eating has caused people who’s cultural food traditions are different and demonized to feel more pressure, and farther away from adhering to this way of eating.
- Covid and social media — We all know teenagers have had a really rough few years with the pandemic, being isolated from their friends and going to social media for community. Sadly, it’s well documented that use of social media has negative effects on self-esteem, body image, and causes young people to compare themselves with others more readily. High use of social media has been linked to higher rates of eating disorders. Covid also made accessing treatment more difficult than it already was.
- General stress due to world events — In times of distress, vulnerable folks may turn to food as a coping mechanism. This may be eating more food to distract or numb, as in the case of binge eating disorders and bulimia, or restricting food as a way of dealing with anxiety. People are stressed out. The post-covid economy has been a whirlwind, housing crisis, climate change, war all over the world, increasing food prices, there are countless things to be worried about.
- Increased awareness / advocacy / diagnosis — On the plus side, there are more people bringing awareness to the prevalence of eating disorders, especially the ones that we have not been typically programmed to recognize. Eating disorders are more common in larger bodied people, BIPOC, queer and trans people than they are in young, white, affluent teenagers and we’re finally waking up to this point.
Binge eating disorder (BED) and orthorexia nervosa are new diagnoses, which has added to the number of people being diagnosed.
Based on your insight, what can concrete steps can a) individuals, b) corporations, c) communities and d) leaders do to address the core issues that are leading to this problem?
I’d like to start with leaders here, because this is really a systemic issue that the majority of the work therefore needs to be done at a systemic level.
We need radical change to the way we talk about weight and bodies. We need to understand that weight is not entirely controllable by the individual, that not everyone should be thin, and we need to create protections for larger bodied people. Weight-based discrimination is legal in 49 states.
The media needs to stop scrutinizing women’s bodies. This feels like a pipe dream, but it must be said.
The idea that shaming larger people by discriminating against them and alienating them from public spaces is unjust. All this does is create more blame and shame and worsens self-esteem and depression, which lead to eating disorders and folks to avoid public spaces and the doctor’s office.
Doctors need to stop prescribing weight loss, especially before throughly screening someone for an eating disorder. Since diets do not work and 98% of people who attempt weight loss gain the weight back, it does not make sense to keep trying to convince people to lose weight.
Businesses need to stop offering weight loss workplace challenges. Stick to “get more veggies and exercise more” challenges that address health behaviors, not weight outcomes.
As you know, one of the challenges of an eating disorder is the harmful, and dismissive sentiment of “why can’t you just control yourself”. What do you think needs to be done to make it apparent that an eating disorder is an illness just like heart disease or schizophrenia?
As I mentioned in the above question, we need to start with a conversation about body size. Being at a higher weight is not a personal failing, but a normal bodily process. We need to talk about the dangers of extreme dieting and stop our cultural obsession with the idea that becoming thin is the most important thing someone could do with their life.
Women’s mental health needs to be a higher priority in our society. Once the conversation shifts toward the importance of overall wellbeing and mental health, it will hopefully become easier for us to see that eating disorders are really serious mental illnesses, and that shrinking your body is not worth it.
Here is the main question of our interview. Can you please share with our readers 5 ways to support a loved one who is struggling with an eating disorder? If you can, can you share an example from your own experience?
This assumes that you know someone is struggling. So many folks with eating disorders feel a ton of shame about their body and the way they eat and never talk about it. It is likely there are people in your life that are struggling that you do not know about.
1 . If you suspect someone struggles with body image, ask them how they are, but do not comment on their food, your food, their body, or your body. We need to get away from self-deprecating conversations about what we eat and how we look.
2 . If someone is struggling to eat enough on a daily basis, you could help them nourish themselves. Eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and at least one snack (if not more) every day is a key part of eating disorder recovery, no matter what eating disorder they have. If someone has binge eating disorder, they still need to be eating enough during the day, so you can help them get food in their house, remind them that all food is good food, or just remind them to eat.
3 . Use neutral language about food and bodies. Eating disorder recovery is the last place we want to be placing judgements about what foods is “good” or “bad”. Do not judge their food choices, no matter what size their body is.
4 . Do your own inner work about body size and body privilege. Unpacking and unlearning anti-fat bias can go a long way toward supporting a loved one in eating disorder recovery.
5 . Be a friend. Eating disorders can be very lonely places, so let your loved one know that they can talk to you, lean on you if they’re struggling, and that you’ll always be there for them. Folks with eating disorders often feel like a burden, so letting someone know that is not the case could be so helpful.
How do you navigate the balance between offering support and respecting the autonomy of a loved one with an eating disorder?
This is a tough one, and I think it depends on how serious someone’s eating disorder is. If you are worried about someone, make sure they have a team of weight-neutral eating disorder professionals helping them, who will be clear about when someone needs a higher level of care.
Your job is to offer support, and unconditional love, but also recognize the work is something that only they can do.
Is there a message you would like to tell someone who may be reading this, who is currently struggling with an eating disorder?
You are not alone!! Do not blame yourself for your struggles. There are so many reasons our society is set up to cause people to develop eating disorders, so please try not to blame yourself. Your body is fine just as it is. Reach out for help if you’re struggling — you deserve support. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling that you aren’t sick enough.
In your experience, what are the most effective strategies for building resilience and a positive self-image in individuals recovering from an eating disorder?
I work with many individuals with binge eating tendencies and many of whom are in larger bodies or have been told to lose weight by people they trusted. I find that building body image resilience and trust in one’s body is hard, deep work but is essential for full recovery. Find things you love about yourself that have nothing to do with the way you look, and then pursue interests and hobbies related to those things. Spend time in your body doing things that bring you pleasure. Work toward dismantling your internalized anti-fat bias.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have helped people with this struggle? Can you explain why you like them?
There are so many books and podcasts that I love on this topic, it’s hard to name just a few. I think Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison is a great introduction to how diet culture has harmed so many of our relationships with food and what a systemic problem is really is.
I’m also very fond of Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith. She does an excellent job of helping us understand how to talk to kids about fatness, and Dietland by Sarai Walker, a wonderfully hilarious and poignant novel about diet culture.
The Body Is Not An Apology is Sonya Renee Taylor is another must read. I have a full list of resources I love here: https://www.emilyvaneck.com/resources/
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the largest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I believe that women would be so much more powerful if we stopped hating our bodies and distrusting ourselves. I want to live in a world where all women feel empowered and at home in the body they have. If this was the case, it would be easier to feed ourselves well and without the overwhelming fear that one mistake will be the end of us.
How can our readers continue to follow your work online?
The best way to stay in the loop and hear from me regularly is to sign up for my newsletter, Lunch & Liberation. I send weekly stories to inspire you to eat well and listen to your perfectly imperfect body. I am also active on instagram at @emily.nutrition and would love to connect with you there!
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Emily Van Eck On How To Support A Loved One Who Is Struggling With An Eating Disorder was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.