6 Eating Disorder Rules (That Saved My Life) | Ep. 415

In this episode, Kimberley Quinlan shares the six powerful rules that guided her eating disorder recovery and continue to help her clients find freedom and healing.

What to Expect in This Episode:

• The most important rule for building consistency with meals and snacks.
• How to silence the eating disorder voice without following its demands.
• Why removing diet culture and fatphobia can be a game-changer for recovery.
• The surprising realization that your body knows exactly when to eat, rest, or move.
• A simple rule that helps prevent relapse by keeping you accountable.
• How eating disorder behaviors can morph into other compulsive habits—and what to do about it.

Six Essential Recovery Rules That Helped Me Heal from an Eating Disorder

Hi, I’m Kimberley Quinlan. I’m an anxiety expert and therapist, but I’m also someone who has recovered from an eating disorder—almost 15 years ago! Recently, someone on social media asked me, “What strategies helped you recover?” After reflecting, I realized there were six key rules that were life-changing for me.

These rules helped me at the start of recovery and continue to be my anchors for relapse prevention. While everyone’s recovery is different, these concepts are universal and adaptable. I hope you find them helpful, but please consult with a professional to tailor them to your needs.

Let’s dive in!

Rule 1: No Missing Meals or Snacks

The most important rule: never skip meals or snacks. This was fundamental to my recovery. I worked with a nutritionist to create a plan that included three meals and three snacks a day.

For me, it was about redefining what a real meal looked like. At my lowest, I’d call two quarters of pita bread a “meal”—but that’s not nourishment. True recovery meant adding back essential nutrients like proteins, fats, and foods I’d previously avoided (like avocados, nuts, and dairy).

• Tip: Renegotiate what a balanced meal is. Seek professional support to figure out what works for your body.

Rule 2: Let the Eating Disorder Talk, But Don’t Follow Its Rules

In recovery, my eating disorder voice was loud—a total drama queen. 🎭 The key? I allowed it to “speak,” but I refused to follow its directions.

Here’s what I reminded myself:

• Following the eating disorder makes it stronger.
• Turning my back on it makes me stronger.

I stayed committed to eating, even when it was uncomfortable. Recovery requires accepting that the voice might show up but not acting on it.

Rule 3: Practice Self-Compassion and Body Appreciation

This rule was a game-changer. I had to unlearn the idea that my worth was tied to my body size or fitness level. My recovery mantra became:

✨ “I am lovable in any body.”

I realized that:

• I deserve kindness, ease, and a life free from mental torment.
• My body doesn’t define me; I get to choose what kind of life I want to live.

Takeaway: You don’t have to meet other people’s expectations of what your body “should” look like. Show up as your full self—whatever body you’re in.

Rule 4: Remove Diet Culture and Fatphobic Influences

Diet culture thrives everywhere—magazines, social media, the fitness industry. I had to actively remove it from my life. This meant:

• Avoiding conversations and content promoting thinness as the ultimate goal.
• Saying goodbye to environments that perpetuated these harmful messages—even if it meant leaving a career I worked hard for.

I quit being a personal trainer because I knew recovery wouldn’t happen while I was surrounded by mirrors and diet talk.

Reflection: You might need to set firm boundaries with friends, family, and social media to protect your recovery.

Rule 5: Listen to Your Body Again

This rule was revolutionary: my body already knows what it needs. I just had to learn to listen.

For years, I ignored hunger cues, pushed through soreness, and used exercise as punishment. In recovery, I re-learned how to:

• Recognize hunger and fullness.
• Allow myself to feel satiated without guilt.
• Honor my energy levels—sometimes I needed rest or gentle movement like yoga.

Reminder: Your body is a guide, not an enemy. Listening to it builds trust and peace.

Rule 6: Seek Support If You Struggle for Three Days

I made a deal with myself:
“If I’ve struggled for three days in a row, I must seek support.”

This rule saved me, especially during vulnerable times—like after illness or stressful periods when my eating disorder voice would try to sneak back in.

Whether it’s a therapist, a partner, or a trusted friend, speaking up about struggles is essential. Recovery is not about being perfect—it’s about showing up for yourself even when you stumble.

Bonus Tip: Watch for the Eating Disorder Morphing into Other Behaviors

Even after years of recovery, I noticed my eating disorder behaviors tried to morph into workaholism—using overwork as a coping mechanism for anxiety and stress.

This is common. Eating disorders often overlap with:

• OCD and compulsive behaviors.
• Addictions or other coping mechanisms.

Stay aware and check in with yourself: “Am I replacing one unhealthy behavior with another?”

Your Turn: Create Your Own Recovery Rules

Recovery requires a compassionate commitment. What works for me might look different for you—and that’s okay!

Take a moment:

• Write down recovery “rules” or commitments that feel achievable for you.
• Adapt and tweak them with kindness as you go.

Remember: Be gentle with yourself. These aren’t punishments—they’re gifts to help you live a freer, fuller life.

I hope these six rules resonate with you. They’ve been my anchors through recovery and beyond. If you’re struggling, know that you’re not alone—seek support, show up with kindness, and trust that healing is possible. 💛

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Transcription: 6 Eating Disorder Rules (That Saved My Life)

Today I’m sharing the six eating disorder rules that saved my life. My name is Kimberley Quinlan, I’m an anxiety expert, but I’m also someone who has recovered from an eating disorder. It’s been almost 15 years, I cannot believe it. And just the other day, someone on social media asked, what were the specific strategies I used to get into recovery?

And when I thought about it, there were these six. Rules that I had to follow and then there are rules that helped me at the beginning of treatment But also helped me with relapse prevention So I’m going to share them here with you and I hope that you find them helpful What I do want to say first though is if you have Everybody is different.

These were the rules that helped me. It’s really important that you seek professional mental health care so that you can find specific rules that will help you also. However, that being the case, these are concepts that I speak with my clients with all the time. I think they’re pretty universal. So you may need to tweak them a little, but they’re still going to be so important for your eating disorder recovery.

So let’s get started into it. Number one  was no missing meals or snacks.  That was, if anything, that is going to be the most important rule that was set for me and the rules that I set with my patients when we’re having, they’re struggling with any kind of eating disorder. Of course, it’s always helpful if you go see a nutritionist or a dietitian so we can find exactly what’s helpful for you, but no missing meals.

For me, when I had an eating disorder. It was also a matter of really renegotiating what a meal was. In many years of my eating disorder, a meal, in my mind, was two quarters of a piece of pita bread. That is not a meal. That’s not even a snack, but in my mind, that’s what I had called a meal. And so when we talk about no missing meals or snacks, what that involves is what is a healthy portion meal for your weight and height.

For me, it meant adding more protein. adding fat because I had eliminated every source of fat out of my diet that I could. Butter, any kind of meats, any kind of cheese, milk, dairy, eggs, um, even healthy vegetables and fruits like avocado and nuts and legumes. I had cut all of those out because I had such an aversion and such an avoidance to fat.

So as I started this recovery, I did see a nutritionist. They did set me up with this three meals and three snacks, and we had to really, again, Renegotiate, there was some butting heads, I’m not going to lie, but some renegotiation of what an actual meal qualifies as and what a snack qualifies as as well.

Now rule number two is I’m going to allow the eating disorder to have its say.  The trick here is, I don’t follow its directions. So what I mean by that is, as I started eating these meals and these snacks, my eating disorder got very loud. It had a lot to say, and it was frightening and catastrophic.  It was a total drama queen, if I’m going to be completely honest with you.

But I had to practice not trying to stop the eating disorder. I had to instead practice letting the voice be there, but not following its instructions. And a big part of that was me being very aligned with the goal. The goal was, I was eating even though it was very hard and very uncomfortable and a lot of the time I didn’t want to.

I was eating because I was getting so sick of suffering with this eating disorder and I knew that if I was listening to it, I was growing it. I was making it stronger and I had to turn My back on the eating disorder and lean into me and my life and what’s healthy for me. And so it meant that I had to let that eating disorder scream and yell at me and throw a big tantrum and be a complete drama queen about it and do nothing at all.

Now the third part, the third rule, in fact, I wouldn’t even say this was a rule. I didn’t even know it was at the time. It was more of an intention was to start to be. Kinder to myself, to have compassion and body appreciation for me as a human being, instead of seeing myself based on a checklist of how thin I am and how fit I am, I had to renegotiate that I was a good person, no matter what body I was in, that I was lovable.

No matter what body shape or how fit I was, that, um, I deserved to live a happy, easy life with ease. I don’t mean easy as if everything was easy, but have a life that had ease and some support and some kindness and relief and, and just not a screaming brain.  I deserved a new way of living, but I didn’t deserve to live this way anymore.

And a lot of that was, again, unintentional. But thankfully I had an eating disorder specialist who married that into the treatment and kind of was a little bit of a, you know, Um, a mentor of Kimberly, you get to appreciate your body. You get to choose what kind of body you’re in. Uh, you, you get to show up to a party or a family event in whatever body you want.

You don’t have to show up in the body that a family member wants you to have. You get to, you get to be the fullness of you  disregarding what your body looks like. It’s neat. Your body doesn’t define you and this was like, I couldn’t believe these ideas these what you’re telling me I could be lovable in anybody what my brain like you’re telling me that You know people telling me my body is Needs to be a different way that they’re actually not the the facts.

That’s not the facts that they’re not the rulemakers that I can rebel against that. Like,  you would think that this was basic. But in my mind, the idea of rebelling against that. Oh, my gosh, this was blowing me away. And so  this, this practice of, of restructuring those beliefs, And moving them to a more kind and respectful,  uh, thought process was so important, particularly for that relapse prevention as well, right?

Now, number four is I had to, and I still have to remove all diet culture. And all fatphobic social media from my life.  If, thankfully, social media wasn’t a big part of the world back then, um, it, I think it makes it a much harder for folks these days who have social media. Um, I had to really be intentional about as I went to the mall, or I looked through a magazine to be able to pinpoint like, Ah, diet culture was trying to sell me on being thin here.

Ah, that person is trying to influence me to be in this body. I worked as a personal trainer. It was, there was a lot of pressure that you, you were, you were expected to be in a certain body size. Um, and I remember there being a, a personal trainer that came in that wasn’t this like,  you know, quote, unquote, right personal trainer body.

And this also blew me away. And this was like, Ooh, she’s,  she’s breaking the rules  and  I’m going to have to. have more of her in my life, then  these really diet culture fat phobic, um, have to be thin people in my life. Now this decision, this rule, ended up being the thing that made me decide that I couldn’t be a personal trainer anymore.

I realized that for my recovery,  I actually had to quit that career. And it was my career. I went to my whole bachelor degrees in exercise science and kinesiology and nutrition. I had to quit that career. I made a lot of money. Um, I was working in Los Angeles. I was, you know, training very, very successful people.

Um, and I came to this realization that I’m not going to recover if I am in this environment. Now, there are some people who can be in that environment and can recover, but I knew for me. Mm mm. I was not going to recover while there were, um, there was talk of diet all the time. There was talk of bodies all the time.

I was literally 360 degrees surrounded in mirrors, um, and gym equipment. I knew. I was not going to recover. And so that is when I made the decision to become a therapist and thankfully I did because I love this job so much, but it was a rule where I had to say with myself, I cannot be around people, friends, family who are going to insist that and push this diet culture onto me or this thin culture onto me, I’m going to have to make some really, really big, firm rules around that.

And I’m so grateful that I did. I still do this to the day. If there’s a lot of talk around diet, I have to really go internal and go, Okay, this is not, that’s for them, it’s not for me. That’s for them, it’s not for me. That’s for them, it’s not for me. Because there are people who can go on a diet and they don’t get an eating disorder.

I maybe will be that person one day, but for right now,  I choose not to be. I, I choose this body and I choose this mental health over anything. Um, and that’s sort of a gen, a gentle, but general rule I set for myself. Now, rule number five is to listen to my body again. Boom. My mind blew at this idea.  What I’d learned during my eating disorder recovery is that my body.

It has its own little thermometer that will tell you when you’re hungry and tell you when you’re full. I had no idea that this was actually a thing or I had forgotten it. As a kid, I would have listened to my body, but as I came up into my adult life, I forgot that my body knows when to tell me to stop.

And so what I had to learn to do is to listen to my body, listen to when it was hungry. And if it was hungry. I needed to eat beforehand. If I was hungry, I would use that as a cue that I was on the right track and I should keep restricting.  If I was sore, I used that as evidence that I was burning more calories than I was eating and I would exercise more.

I would push beyond that and I would use these cues in the wrong way. I had to learn to listen to my fullness cues. I had to learn to allow myself to feel. full and satiated and then not put myself into a mental  self punishment, you know, period because I allowed myself to be nourished.  That was a huge big step that I had to take and was so important.

Now, I also had to learn to listen to my body. And what it needed. So sometimes I’m pretty high energy. Sometimes my body needs to move, especially when I’m anxious. And so when I would feel anxious, I would go and run and cycle and swim and do weights and push beyond what my body was able to do. So what I had to learn to do is there were still days where I worked out.

But there were other days where I had to listen to my body. My body is sore. My body feels icky or lethargic and I had to allow myself to take walks, do yoga, allow myself to stretch. These were all important pieces of listening to my body. Now another piece of this was during the time that I had an eating disorder, I had severe irritable bowel syndrome.

severe, painful, irritable bowel, it would impact my ability to function. And so I also had to listen to my body and identify when I had irritable bowel, it’s probably that emotionally I was feeling either anxious or stressed. Usually when I was anxious or stressed, Instead of listening to my body and observing and inquiring what’s going on, I would get on the treadmill. 

So I had to stop doing that and go, okay. You’re feeling anxious. What’s going on?  What do you need?  What is the trigger? How can we troubleshoot this in a healthy way instead of you restricting and doing more compulsive exercise? This was key.  Now number six, And this is going to be so important, but may differ for you was I had the rule that I had, this was a big sort of like catch all the problems rule, is I made a deal with myself that if I have not carried through these rules for three days,  I had to seek some support, meaning if I was going back to restricting, but if I was restricting on the third day, I needed to seek support.

Now there would be days where I would restrict more. Right. And I would catch it and I would try and get back on track. There were days where it would happen two days in a row and I would catch it and get back on track. But I made a deal that if I went to day three, I had to admit it to somebody, whether that be a therapist, my husband. 

P.S. They’re kind of the only people who knew about it at the time. Um, I would sometimes mention it to a friend of mine who was actually a client of mine who had an eating disorder as well. And she was coming to me as a trainer. Um, But poor her, I mean, she was trying to recover from an eating disorder, yet I was so sick in my own eating disorder at the time, so I probably was not a good, um, person for her to be checking in with, um, but I made a deal that I had to speak to them about it.

Now here is an example of that. And this is where these rules save me in my long term recovery. There have been multiple periods during my life where I got a stomach flu. Now, as you all know, when you get a stomach flu, you throw up a lot. There are days where you cannot eat. Because you can’t eat. No matter how much you try to you throw it back up again.

Now they eat my eating disorder loved this it would be like, oh Great. We’ve got her. We’ve got her with this like logical reason that she can’t eat and so it would try to anytime I had a stomach flu or  an upset stomach for some reason, or I was traveling and I couldn’t really eat my normal routine, it would grab a hold of that and go, oh, let’s keep this.

And I would often fall victim to the eating disorder, and I would go, though, start to go back to old restrictive behaviors. So these rules allowed me to say, okay, if, let’s say, after you’ve been sick and you’re on day three, you still need to tell somebody. Right? You have to, you can’t let the eating disorder convince you that this is a good thing, because it will.

It will convince you that you need to restrict. And so that was a huge piece. I will say for a lot of my patients, be very careful about when you have some kind of flu, illness, it will glop on during those periods. Now it will also jump in during the first of the year when all of the diet culture comes in.

It will also grab you during the holidays when everyone’s talking about all the food they’re eating and so forth. And my job was to put my head down and stay on my rules. No matter what, the rules are there 365 days a year and we’re going to follow them. Now, was I perfect at these?  Absolutely not. This took some time.

It took some falling on my face. It actually took times where I would go periods without seeing my therapist because I didn’t want to tell them that I was struggling.  I would kind of share it, but I wouldn’t. Or the eating disorder tricked me several times into saying, this is good, you’ve got it now.

We’ve got, we’ve got this. You, you found that, you know, you’re doing well. Let’s stop the therapy. It’s very expensive. Let’s see if we can do it on our own.  And some periods I did do it on my own, and there were others where I had to raise my hand and go back to therapy and say, like, I’m falling off the track, or I had to go back to them and discuss some of the stresses that were happening in my life so I could find new skills, so that I wouldn’t use eating disordered behaviors to manage, um, all of the stress and the struggles and the roadblocks that I was having in my life.

So this is a huge, huge piece. Now, one thing that I will say  is, um,  my, while I have recovered from my eating disorder for almost 15 years, maybe more, I should really document that, I have found that eating disorder behaviors have played out in other ways. Number one being. workaholism. So I am very aware of my ability to fall into workaholism to cope with anxiety and stress.

So instead of going into eating disordered behaviors,  instead of using healthy skills, I often would go into just using work as my coping skill, which is better. healthier for my body, but not healthier for my brain and not healthier for my relationships. So another sort of bonus tip I’ll give you here when it comes to eating disorder recovery for the long term is catch how the eating disorder can morph into other  compulsive behaviors.

or addictive behaviors. This, there is a huge overlap between eating disorders and OCD. There is a huge overlap between eating disorders and substances. And it is key that you catch that when it shows up.  Um, and it does take a little bit of like, awareness to catch that. Um, so that is my six rules that have saved my life.

I hope that they have been helpful for you. Now, again, there are going to be so many different ways this can play out depending on your, uh, lifestyle, your abilities, right? Some of us have disabilities, chronic illnesses, feeding conditions, you know, physical conditions that may Change some of these rules for you.

We want to be respectful of all of that. We want to make a plan that’s right for you. So maybe what I would give you as homework is sit down and write rules that work for you. Sit down and write the commitments that you’re making to yourself.  It’s okay if you need to adopt them and adapt them, um, a little differently as you go, but try to find some rules that work for you.

Again, we’re not going to do them mean. We’re not going to do them critically or, you know, in a mean way. We’re going to be gentle, but it does require a compassionate commitment. Um, and I’m a big advocate for compassionate commitment when it comes to mental health.  All right. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

I hope that has been helpful, and I’ll talk to you next week.