How to Support a Loved One with Anorexia
I’ve been thinking for a while about what I could contribute to this section of Digital Weft, and it wasn’t until a friend asked me a question about eating disorders earlier today that I realised this should be my starting point. I’m a firm believer in talking openly about eating disorders and ensuring they are not treated as a taboo topic. Reducing stigma can help to create space for conversation.
To offer insight on why this topic is important to me: My diagnoses include Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, though my experience likely aligns more closely with EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), as I cycled between the two repeatedly. I’ve been in recovery for two years, after nearly a decade of living with active eating disorders.
From my own experience, I know that support can look different depending on the person, their journey and even the moment. What feels supportive one day may feel suffocating the next.
This post is aimed at friends, partners and relatives supporting an adult loved one with anorexia, but I plan to write a separate post for parents of children, as that’s more complex.
Before We Begin...
Before we begin, I need you to prioritise your own wellbeing because of how emotionally demanding this path can be.
Supporting someone with an eating disorder is never easy, and it’s normal to feel lost, hopeless or defeated. It can be a long journey, and it’s only ever going to be sustainable if you have a solid support system in place for yourself.
Here are a few practical ways to care for yourself as you support a loved one with anorexia:
Know Your Limits: Try to recognise what you can realistically offer, both emotionally and practically. You cannot fix everything, and being aware of your limits will help to keep you both above water.
Build Your Support Network: Don’t try to do this alone. Make sure that you have someone you can offload to, and don’t be afraid of reaching out to a charity or medical professionals for advice.
Set Boundaries: Even when supporting a loved one with anorexia, it’s important to set boundaries on what you can and can’t do. For example, you may have to restrict the time in which you offer support or restrict your willingness to engage in certain topics.
Stay Informed, Take Time: Learning about eating disorders can help you to support someone suffering from one, but this isn’t an area with a one-size-fits-all solution you’ll find at the end of your research.
1. Encourage them to seek professional help.
Even if you have experience or knowledge about eating disorders, you can’t replace professional support. Eating disorders are complex, affecting both the mind and body, and recovery often requires a robust team of professionals. Doctors, therapists and dietitians usually work together to create a plan tailored to the individual.
Taking that first step towards professional help can feel incredibly daunting. For many, it comes only after they’ve acknowledged that they’re struggling, which is often a huge challenge in itself and one I would implore you not to judge them for. Speaking from personal experience, with anorexia I felt like I was in control until I began trying to recover. That can be a really hard process to fight through internally before you’re ready to seek medical support.
The process of then getting there, making calls, attending appointments and opening up can be overwhelming. Try not to force your loved one’s hand. Pushing too hard can lead to resistance and shame, which could risk making recovery harder.
Encouraging someone to seek professional treatment doesn’t mean forcing them into it. It can be as simple as researching options, offering to accompany them to appointments or just being present to talk when you want to. Often, your calm, non-judgemental support, showing that you believe they deserve help, can make the idea of reaching out feel safer.
Remember, professional help and support aren’t mutually exclusive. They work together. Your encouragement, patience and presence can help to create a foundation, while professionals provide the tools, guidance and structure needed for recovery.
2. Let them know you're happy to listen.
This might sound simple, but the best support I ever received came from people simply offering their presence, even when I wasn’t ready to recover. Just knowing that someone was willing to listen and/or keep you company, without judgment or pressure, made an enormous difference. For someone with anorexia, being heard can feel validating in a way advice and instructions can’t match.
Listening doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers. It means being patient, staying calm and allowing someone to express their thoughts and feelings freely. Sometimes, what they want most is for someone to acknowledge their struggle without trying to fix it. Even small gestures, like checking in, can be incredibly powerful.
From personal experience, when people genuinely listened, it gave me space to reflect on my own behaviours and fears without feeling pressured. This created a space where I could be honest about what I was experiencing. These conversations, although sometimes uncomfortable and difficult, can give you insight into triggers, anxieties about recovery or even small victories.
3. Keep things free of assumptions.
It can be really easy to make assumptions about why someone suffers from anorexia, but I would strongly urge you to remember this may come from a place of bias. It’s about us, not the individual. If you genuinely want to understand someone’s experience, ask them, but always respect their decision if they choose not to answer.
Sadly, assumptions are common. I’ve had medical professionals assume I must hate my body, when in reality I was trying to regain some sense of control after experiencing a single act of sexual violence. I couldn’t control anything, and I controlled food. What made it worse in some cases is that I didn’t hesitate to point out these mistakes as I got older, which led to uncomfortable exchanges. These experiences taught me that assumptions, no matter how well-intentioned, can be harmful.
It’s also important to remember that anorexia doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some, it can be linked to trauma or control, but for others, factors like neurodiversity, sensory sensitivities or body dysphoria can play a significant role. Children and adolescents, for instance, often have little control over their lives, and food intake can become the one thing that feels within their power.
Understanding that a person’s relationship with food and their body can be shaped by so many intersecting experiences helps us move away from simplistic explanations and toward empathy.
If someone isn’t ready to share their reasons, or if you don’t know them well enough to ask, pause and consider whether the why is necessary and why you want to know. Understanding the reason behind someone’s anorexia won’t automatically provide a solution or a path forward.
4. Don't compliment their appearance.
When I was in recovery, people began complimenting my appearance, which often fed into the same biases that underlie assumptions. Compliments can unintentionally become a reason to continue disordered behaviours. For example, someone with anorexia might internalise your compliment as proof that they should keep going.
Similarly, negative comments about someone’s body should be kept to yourself. If you feel compelled to make them, you’re not the right person to be supporting someone with anorexia at that moment and it’s important to recognise that.
5. Celebrate the small wins.
Recovery often feels like it’s all about the end goal, full recovery. But it takes time to get there, and there are wins along the way.
In my early recovery attempts, I judged myself harshly for not being further along or at the finish line. I didn’t celebrate throwing the scale away, getting rid of calorie counting applications, not weighing myself every day, going a day without exercising excessively or eating without counting calories.
Part of what has kept me in this longer recovery is allowing myself to actually recognise those moments as wins. When I ate bread for the first time in years, my nutritionist gave me a hug. These wins matter, and celebrating them can make a huge difference.
6. Encourage baby steps.
Just as you should celebrate small wins, you should also encourage baby steps. The path to recovery is challenging, but breaking it into small, achievable tasks can make it more manageable.
Baby steps might include deleting calorie counting applications, avoiding body check posts online, unfollowing toxic social media circles or limiting certain exercises. These steps may seem minor, but they can play a massive role in maintaining recovery and making the process feel achievable.
Body Checking: The repeated checking of one’s own body in terms of size, shape or appearance. There’s a lot of pro-ana (the promotion of behaviours related to Anorexia Nervosa) content online, and social media body checks are rife.
7. Snack together.
Fear foods are foods that take longer to reintroduce and can be deeply intimidating. It took me a long time to tell my nutritionist about my fear of certain foods because I knew I couldn’t throw them up. That fear sat quietly in the background for months, shaping what I ate and how I ate, until I felt safe enough to admit it.
I hope that hug after I ate bread makes more sense now.
For anyone supporting someone with anorexia, know that fear foods aren’t about what someone likes or dislikes. They can hold huge emotional weight, often connected to shame, loss of control or guilt. Going slowly and introducing one food at a time is key. Pressure to eat everything at once can lead to setbacks, whereas small, gradual steps can make the process more manageable.
One of my closest friends, who is lovingly editing this article, was forced into treatment as a child and given food she didn’t choose. Her plates were weighed, and they made sure she wasn’t hiding food. When she did? She was punished. Actions like that around food can have devastating consequences, and there are still areas in which that’s what clinical support looks like. If the relationship built isn’t positive, it isn’t sustainable.
If you’re sharing a meal with your loved one, try asking what feels safe for them, and if they choose to leave something on the plate, pretend you don’t even notice it. Progress might not always look the way you expect it to, but in that scenario their willingness to be there will often be a win.
8. Leave negativity at the door.
This is one of the most important boundaries to keep in mind when supporting a loved one with anorexia.
Do not talk about calories. Do not label foods as unhealthy. Do not talk about your own diet. Do not talk about portion sizes.
Even casual remarks like, “I shouldn’t have eaten that,” or, “I need to work this off later,” can have an unexpectedly harmful impact. We live in a society where disordered eating is often more common than we realise, and your capacity to eat should not be an earned exchange.
When you’re around someone with anorexia, try to be conscious of the language used about food and bodies. Neutral language helps to make eating feel less emotionally charged. If you find it difficult to avoid these topics, that’s okay, it just means you might need to be mindful to steer conversations away from them.
The key is to protect the person you’re supporting from unnecessary triggers, even if they seem small to you. It may seem overwhelming to remember all of the sensitive and triggering areas for a loved one with anorexia, but it’s possible to learn.
In summary, don’t talk about bodies and discuss food in neutral terms (avoid talk of calories, judging food choices, and portion sizes). Maybe ask the person what they need you to avoid talking about – create a dialogue that helps your loved one to feel safe to mention the things that upset them without judgement or shame.
9. Don't try to be a saviour.
Over the years, I’ve met people who unintentionally tried to take on the role of saviour. Their intentions were good, but it felt like interference, and it made my journey about them instead of me. Anorexia is not something you can fix for someone else. It can be incredibly hard to accept that, especially when you love them and want to help.
You can offer support, but you cannot force recovery. You can hold space, but you cannot carry it for them. Sometimes, the most meaningful thing you can do is to step back slightly and allow them to take responsibility for their own recovery. This space gives them a chance to reclaim autonomy and agency, two things anorexia sometimes strips away.
Being a supportive presence doesn’t mean being constantly involved. It means being consistent and patient, even when progress feels painfully slow.
10. Normalise feelings about recovery.
Recovery is rarely neat or linear. There will be moments of progress and moments of fear, guilt or resistance. Setbacks do not mean failure. They’re often part of the process, especially when the eating disorder has been someone’s coping mechanism for years. Over the almost decade of active eating disorders, I tried to recover about a dozen times.
When you validate the feelings of someone with anorexia, rather than dismissing them or trying to immediately fix them, you help them understand that their emotions are valid. Saying something as simple as, “It makes sense that this feels hard,” can be enough.
Acknowledging that recovery is difficult doesn’t encourage someone to stay stuck, it encourages them to see they’re not weak for struggling.
11. Be mindful of other aspects of health.
Anorexia is sometimes present on its own, but more often than that it comes alongside the likes of anxiety, depression, trauma or other mental health conditions. Even things such as ADHD, Autism and OCD increase the risk of suffering from an eating disorder. Sometimes, the eating disorder becomes a way of coping with what’s beneath.
Recognising this can help you to respond with empathy rather than frustration. If you notice signs of anxiety, panic or withdrawal, try to remind yourself that they might not be about food at all. Supporting someone’s broader mental health, by encouraging therapy, helping them rest, or simply allowing emotional space, can be just as valuable as supporting their eating.
Recovery isn’t just about eating again. It’s about rebuilding a sense of safety and self-worth.
Encourage your loved one to be kind to themselves at every opportunity. They are likely in a state of constant emotional pain and turmoil, feeling unworthy of nice things and experiences. Taking them to do something they enjoy, making kind gestures and demonstrating thoughtful acts of service will all build their self-worth and inform their recovery.
It’s worth noting that someone suffering from an eating disorder may not love the things they once did. The spaces they found safe may no longer feel safe, and if that’s the case it’s best not to push them back into the past. For me, this meant avoiding writing in cafes for a good few years, and for my friend it meant the cinema she loved visiting became a distressing space. Sometimes these things are hard to predict.
12. Watch for warning signs.
Even when you’re not directly responsible for someone’s treatment, it’s important to be aware of signs that professional help may be urgently needed. With Anorexia Nervosa, these signs can include rapid weight loss, fainting, extreme fatigue, suicidal thoughts, severe restriction or purging.
If you’re worried, try to approach the conversation gently, with concern not judgement. “I’ve noticed you seem more tired lately and I’m really worried about you.” If you ever believe your loved one’s life is at risk, it’s the right step to reach out for emergency help, even if that feels like you’re breaching their confidence.
Final Thoughts
Supporting a loved one with anorexia can be emotionally exhausting and, at times, heartbreaking. Your role isn’t to fix the disorder or to make recovery happen faster, it’s to stand beside them. To listen to them, to reassure them and to try to keep hope up.
Celebrate the small wins, respect their boundaries, listen without judgment, be mindful of triggering topics and encourage professional support. More importantly, remember to look after yourself too.
If you or a loved one are suffering from an eating disorder, please consider reaching out to Beat UK if you’re in the United Kingdom. If you have global sources for similar charities, please share them in the comments below.
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Kimberley Ann Ashby
Kimberley is currently working on her first short film, a psychological thriller that explores how trauma can transform space. When not writing, she's usually found watching movies, playing records or partaking in whatever new hobby is soon to join the hobby graveyard.
Kimberley Ann Ashby
Kimberley is currently working on her first short film, a psychological thriller that explores how trauma can transform space. When not writing, she's usually found watching movies, playing records or partaking in whatever new hobby is soon to join the hobby graveyard.
