12 tips for writing about eating disorders with nuance and care

How better language, questions, and framing can strengthen eating disorder coverage.

In my late teens and early twenties, while struggling with disordered eating, I was desperate to find stories about other people like me. I had been in and out of treatment for several years as a young teenager, and though I called myself “fully recovered,” I was still very much struggling.

I would get lost in Google searches late at night, trying to find stories about other people who were grappling with the ups and downs of recovery. I consumed news from a wide range of sources and knew where to turn for quality journalism. But I couldn’t find in-depth stories about recovery from eating disorders.

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News and feature stories were few and far between, and the ones I found didn’t match my lived experience. They described people who had struggled with eating disorders and were now fully recovered. The stories had beginnings and ends, but they were missing middles — the setbacks and small victories that lie between the origins of a disorder and one’s recovery from it.

Recovery was often confined to one or two sentences marked by triumphant words: overcame, achieved, conquered. I saw my false narrative reflected in these stories, the one where I pretended to be “all better.” But I didn’t see my actual narrative, and that lack of a mirrored image left me feeling deeply misunderstood. I began to think that eating-disorder recovery was an untold — or at best half-told — story.

As a journalist and journalism professor, I’ve long wanted to change that. I’m opening up more space for narratives about the middle place of eating disorder recovery in my memoir, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, and in the related talks I give.

With National Eating Disorder Awareness Week coming up from Feb. 23-March 1, we’re going to start to see more coverage of eating disorders than usual. It’s a good chance to raise awareness around best practices for covering eating disorders — with the goal of sharing knowledge and helping a wider range of people feel seen, understood, and less ashamed.

Here are a dozen related tips:

1. Acknowledge the complexities of eating disorders — and the diverse array of people affected by them.

They aren’t simply a “white teenage girl issue” — a long-held stereotype that has proven to be problematic for BIPOC seeking treatment. People of all different sizes, races, ethnicities, genders, ages, and socioeconomic statuses can and do struggle with eating disorders. A growing body of research is challenging long-held stereotypes — including one study that found Black girls are 50 percent more likely than white girls to exhibit bulimic behaviors, and another showing that Asian American college students report much higher incidences of restricting and purging compared to their white peers. Transgender college students, meanwhile, are four times more likely to report disordered eating habits compared to cisgender students. We need more stories that show us the faces and stories behind these statistics.

2. Approach interviews with sensitivity by letting sources know they have a say over how much, and what, they share.

When interviewing people for my book, I always prefaced the conversation by saying, “If I ask you any questions that you don’t feel comfortable answering, please let me know, and I’ll respect that.” This messaging runs contrary to what I was taught as a journalist, but it felt like the right approach to me as an author. I wasn’t asking the types of tough questions that come with interviewing a public official or exposing a wrongdoing; I was asking tough questions about some of the darkest and most painful parts of people’s illnesses, and I wanted them to know they could press pause if it got to be too much. I found that people really appreciated this approach, and I can’t recall any sources saying they didn’t want to answer a question.

3. Avoid sensational images and cliched stock photos (e.g. of scales and measuring tapes).

While working on my book, I set up several Google alerts to help me track eating disorder coverage. I still have these alerts set up and sometimes cringe when I see the images that accompany them. They often show sources looking ill and gaunt. Stock images of emaciated bodies, scales, and measuring tapes aren’t any better; they send the message that everyone with an eating disorder has a certain “look” — or that individuals have to look ill in order to warrant attention. Eating disorders affect people of all different body shapes and sizes. In fact, one study surveyed over 3,000 adolescents with eating disorders and found that only 6 percent of them were underweight.

4. Use person-first language, and watch out for “warrior words.”

Instead of saying a person is “anorexic,” or “bulimic,” consider saying the person has anorexia or bulimia. It’s common for people with eating disorders to believe that they’re defined by their disorder, or that their disorder is an integral part of their identity. By identifying people as “anorexic” or “bulimic,” journalists can unknowingly exacerbate this harmful line of thinking. There are differing viewpoints on this, especially depending on the type of illness being discussed, but I’ve found person-first language to be the best approach for eating disorder narratives. I also try to avoid what I call “warrior words” — like battled, fought, conquered, triumphed, and overcame. They lack originality and oversimplify the challenges of sickness and recovery. We can and should challenge ourselves to go deeper and write better.

5. Honor sources’ preferred descriptions of their recovery journey.

It’s important to honor the language that people use to describe their journeys, however far along they may be. When doing interviews for my book, I always asked: How would you like me to describe where you’re at in your journey? Some people told me they were “still sick,” “struggling,” or “working toward recovery.” Others, who were in a better place, referred to themselves as “fully recovered,” “recovered,” or “in remission.” Some (like me) preferred “in recovery” or “in the middle place,” both of which suggest an ongoingness. In each case, I defaulted to the words that my sources preferred. Doing so enabled me to more accurately capture their stories, while showing the variety of ways that recovery can play out. When we expand our vocabulary for describing sickness and recovery, we can more openly talk about both.

6. Be judicious when using details and descriptions.

Many details in eating disorder narratives can be potentially triggering. Triggers are subjective and vary from person to person, so it can be hard to avoid them completely. But writers should be wary of including details that could make a story feel like a guidebook for how to engage in eating disorder behaviors. There’s no need, for instance, to include details about how much people weigh, or how many calories they eat in a day. These types of details perpetuate the misconception that eating disorders are all about losing weight and tracking numbers. They’re about so much more than that.

7. Consider asking: Can you tell me about a time you slipped in your recovery?

A well-intentioned clinician once told me I shouldn’t title my book SLIP because the word has a “negative connotation.” I understood what she meant, but I kindly explained: “Well, that’s precisely the point! I want to help reduce the shame and stigma around this word.” Slips are a natural part of the recovery process, and yet there is still a lot of stigma around admitting that you’ve slipped — especially if you’ve been in recovery but recently relapsed, or if you seem better but never really recovered in the first place. Asking people to share a time when they slipped is a way of acknowledging the imperfections of recovery. They may not want to share, in which case you can respect their boundaries (or revisit the question in subsequent interviews, once more trust has been established). But they may appreciate the question and welcome the opportunity to talk about slips. You won’t know if you don’t ask. By shedding light on slips, journalists can tell more accurate and complete stories — ones that explore the messy middles that are so often missing from eating disorder narratives.

8. Consider asking: What’s one word you would use to describe your eating disorder, and one word you would use to describe your recovery?

I surveyed 724 people for my book and asked each respondent to share one word describing their disorder and one word describing their recovery (if applicable). I was so struck by their responses, which informed my thinking and writing. Some described their eating disorder as persistent, toxic, depressing, all-consuming, pervasive, relentless, lethal, never-ending, and monstrous. Others described recovery as arduous, gradual, complicated, fraught, unacknowledged, transformational, foundational, fragile, and freeing. Eating disorders are so often shrouded in silence and secrecy. The more we can create opportunities to help people put words to their experiences, the better our collective understanding of eating disorders will be.

9. Follow up with the question: How would you define your own recovery?

In the eating disorder field, there seem to be as many definitions of recovery as there are studies about it. The field still hasn’t arrived at a consensus definition, which leads a lot of people to be confused about what “full recovery” means and whether it’s attainable. Of the hundreds of people I surveyed and interviewed for SLIP, each person had a slightly different definition of recovery. I acknowledged this reality in the book and included various definitions, with hopes that they would show how recovery differs from person to person. I also interviewed clinicians and researchers to see how they define recovery so that I could better understand how the field’s definitions align (or in some cases misalign) with people’s lived experiences.

10. Don’t assume that people are “fully recovered” just because they’re no longer acutely sick.

When I was acutely sick with anorexia nervosa in my early teens, my body looked unwell. Once I gained weight in treatment, some acquaintances told me they were happy that I had made a “full recovery,” not realizing that I was still struggling. Just because I looked “healthy” didn’t mean that I was recovered. I remember feeling deeply misunderstood at the time. Eating disorders are about so much more than food and weight, and recovery is about so much more than the number on a scale or the reflection in a mirror. As storytellers, we need to recognize this and not make assumptions that someone is recovered simply because of how they look, how they carry themselves, or where they’re at in life. Being a parent, for instance, isn’t necessarily a sign of recovery.

11. Recognize that recovery doesn’t always stem from a turning point.

Over the years, many people have asked me: “What was the turning point that helped you get better?” I wish I could say that I took some magical right turn and left my disorder behind once and for all. But the truth is, there wasn’t a major turning point. My recovery took shape slowly, through a series of slow crawls that turned into small steps. I’ve been in recovery for almost 25 years, and although I’ve made incredible progress, I still sometimes stumble. As a society, we like to identify aha moments and breakthroughs, but in reality, life’s advances are usually the result of many tiny pivots rather than major turning points.

12. When writing about eating disorder recovery, consider asking: Are there ever times when you still feel vulnerable in your recovery? If so, what does that vulnerability look like, and how do you navigate it?

While conducting interviews for my book, I asked these questions for two reasons: 1.) I wanted to learn from my sources’ responses, and 2.) I wanted to acknowledge that even people who are far along in recovery may still live with their disorder’s imprints. They may be tempted to fall back into old behaviors during stressful stretches, for instance, or they may still grapple with distorted thoughts that take up more mental space than they’d like. Acknowledging these vulnerabilities makes recovery narratives more relatable and representative. And it helps us achieve a noble goal in journalism: making people realize they’re not alone. This, in my mind, is one of the greatest measures of a story well told.

There’s a lot of knowledge among those of you who follow this newsletter. What else would you add? Share your thoughts, and help me expand upon these tips, in the comments section.

It’s been a tough week in journalism. Several editors and reporters whom I know and greatly admire were let go this week from The Washington Post, which laid off 30% of its staff. If you know any journalists, consider reaching out to them and thanking them for the work they do; they will appreciate it, especially at this moment in time when the news — within the journalism industry and in the world at large — has been especially difficult to cover and consume.