The "not sick enough" thought is the eating disorder talking — and it moves the goalposts every single time.
"I'm not sick enough. My eating disorder isn't valid. I'm not valid." I get it — I felt like that when I was struggling at a healthy weight, and I also felt like that when I was struggling at a less than healthy weight. It really didn't have anything to do with my weight, or my diagnosis, or what anyone else might have thought. It was all in my head. And that's exactly where the eating disorder lives.
It doesn't help that professionals too often associate weight with health, reinforcing a certain image. When I gained weight, it was automatically assumed I was doing better; when I lost weight, I was obviously not doing well. But that wasn't the full story. I've been at my deepest depths at my lowest weight, and I've struggled just as hard at a weight not far removed from where I've settled now. It's not a linear relationship at all.
Less than six per cent of people with eating disorders are underweight. That does not mean the other 94 per cent aren't struggling, or that their struggles are any less valid. And the whole presence or absence of a diagnosis is just another way of measuring the wrong thing. Slapping a label onto someone one day doesn't mean the day before they were fine, or that without the label their pain doesn't count. Mental health is internal. It cannot be judged from the outside.
If you lose more weight, it'll ask for more. If you become more unwell, it'll still say it's not enough. That's because the goal was never health to begin with. All the eating disorder wants to do is keep you trapped, and every day you delay recovery, you give in to that. Healthy people generally don't spend hours thinking about whether they're sick enough to deserve recovery. That thought alone tells you a lot about what's going on.
Recovery is not a reward for being ill enough. It's not something you have to earn, and it's not something that takes away from anyone else. A life without the eating disorder is something you inherently deserve. Imagine needing to crash your car harder before being allowed to wear a seatbelt to protect your safety. That would be absurd — and so is the idea that you need to become sicker to justify healing. You don't need permission. You don't need to prove anything.
It's the thought that your struggles aren't valid enough to deserve recovery — that you're not underweight enough, not restricting enough, not "bad enough". It's one of the eating disorder's most effective tricks. The goal was never health; the goal is to keep you trapped. Healthy people generally don't spend hours thinking about whether they're sick enough to deserve help.
No. Less than six per cent of people with eating disorders are underweight, and that doesn't mean the other 94 per cent aren't struggling or that their struggles are less valid. Eating disorders do not have a look. You can be at a perfectly healthy weight, or above it, and still be suffering deeply. Mental health is internal and cannot be judged from the outside.
Remind yourself that your weight, your diagnosis or lack of one, and how "compliant" you are do not validate or invalidate your struggles. All of that is external. What goes on inside your head is internal, and it's what matters. Notice when the "not sick enough" thought appears — that voice isn't you talking, it's the eating disorder.
Yes. The presence or absence of a diagnosis changes nothing about your experience. Slapping a label onto someone one day doesn't mean the day before they were fine. Recovery is not a reward for being ill enough, and it's not something you have to earn — it's something you inherently deserve. You don't need permission to heal.