Weight Gain in Recovery: The Most Common Sticking Point

In my experience weight gain is one of the most common reasons people get stuck or even turn away from recovery altogether.

You want to recover. You want the freedom, you want the peace, you want the normalcy. You know what actions you need to take. But you also don’t want to gain weight. This somehow feels like an unreasonable tradeoff.

Unfortunately for your anxiety, weight gain is often a very necessary part of the recovery process and can be one of the hardest parts of recovery. There are, however, ways that this uncomfortable experience can be made more tolerable so that you don’t get spooked and can push through to that place of full recovery.

I think it is very unlikely for many in recovery that body love is going to be the reality. Instead, my approach is to focus on body acceptance and body neutrality. Because in my opinion, and experience, you don’t need to love your body in order to live a full, meaningful life. The goal is for your body image to stop having such an emotional hold over you - so that it doesn’t dictate your mood, your decisions, or your self-worth. Rather, your body becomes a neutral thing that facilitates the life you want to live.

In recovery body image often gets worse before it gets better. You’re dealing with a brain that’s been wired by an eating disorder to see weight gain as a threat, even if your logical, rational mind knows better. That neural wiring doesn’t go away overnight. It will eventually improve but this will take time and effort to rewire beliefs around your body.

It’s also possible that your perception of your body might be distorted. It may feel “wrong,” “too much,” or “uncomfortable” even if nothing drastic has changed. And in that space of discomfort, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and doubt everything. This is often the point people consider turning back.

But I want you to know: if you stay the course, keep taking pro-recovery actions, and don’t let temporary discomfort dictate your decisions, your body image can and often does improve. If you can tolerate the discomfort long enough, your body will stop feeling so foreign or distressing. The new becomes familiar. Your neural network adjusts, but only if you don’t keep interrupting it.

In my own experience, when I went through weight gain myself, I struggled a lot. I cried, I doubted, I questioned if it was worth it. I didn’t like my reflection. But despite all that, I stayed consistent with the recovery actions I knew were necessary. Over time, with that repeated action in the direction of body neutrality, I was able to reach a place of acceptance. I can now show up in my life, in the way that I want, regardless of my body image on any given day. How I look, or even how I feel in my body, doesn’t determine what I do or how I value myself.

This is the reality we need to face: You cannot be fully recovered while remaining weight suppressed.

Once we can accept this truth, the question then becomes - how can we reduce the distress in the moment and rewire those deeply ingrained beliefs?

Here are a few tools that helped me:

1. Recognising that the fear of weight gain was a symptom of my eating disorder, not a universal truth. I chose to trust that my feelings would shift with time and healing.

2. Avoiding mirrors until I was fully clothed - this helped minimize the intense scrutiny and obsession.

3. Wearing loose-fitting clothes to reduce heightened body awareness and avoid unnecessary distress.

4. Removing old photos used for comparison. Constantly looking back made it harder to be present with where I was.

5. Focusing on other parts of my life - my relationships, hobbies, values. Anything that helped me remember that I am so much more than a body.

Rewiring your brain takes consistent, repeated action over time. This means not adjusting your food intake or your activity levels based on how you feel about your body. The connection between body image and behaviour has to be broken.

The goal is for your body to become neutral. It just is. It does not define you. It doesn’t dictate your worth, your value, or how deserving you are of joy and connection.

Our bodies will change many times - through illness, aging, pregnancy, stress, and other transitions. Clinging to control will only shrink your world. Body acceptance and neutrality give you the tools to face life’s inevitable changes. This skill you develop in recovery will set you up to live a full life where you are able to be present and focus on the things that really matter to you.

In order to reach this place you just need the courage to stick with recovery long enough for your brain, and your life, to catch up. It is a crucial, necessary part of this process but one that has so many lasting positive impacts.