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If you’re a parent, keeping up with the latest slang your child uses can sometimes feel like learning another language. And when it comes to social media, that language can change quickly.

Some terms kids and teens use online may seem harmless (and may be completely unfamiliar to parents) but can sometimes signal exposure to content focused on weight, appearance, dieting, or exercise, including content that promotes disordered eating or negative body image. This doesn’t mean that using a particular word automatically means your child has an eating disorder. Rather, understanding the language can help parents know what their child may be encountering online and open the door to supportive conversations.

Episode description:

When a well-known person’s body is suddenly all anyone can talk about, the pull to pile on—or to compare yourself against them—can be strong.

Jillian’s general guidance is simple: we’re typically better off not commenting on other people’s bodies at all. But the real exception is genuine concern for someone in your life, and she models the I-framed language that can help keep a comment from tipping into judgment. She also gets practical for the adults listening, including how to have conversations with kids about what they’re seeing online, why what you say about your own body in front of them matters, and how to talk about comparison itself, which rarely leaves anyone feeling better.

**Content warning: This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation and a suicide attempt. Please use your discretion when listening and speak with your support system as needed. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by texting or calling 988. LGBTQ+ young people can also reach The Trevor Project 24/7 by calling 1-866-488-7386, texting START to 678-678, or chatting online. 

Episode description:

Danny Wakefield joins Peace Meal to share his story of recovery from an eating disorder—a “full circle moment,” he calls it, as an alum of The Emily Program. Danny didn’t recognize the earliest signs of their eating disorder until they entered care and traced its roots back to body comparisons with their twin sister that started at age three.

Getting into treatment as an adult wasn’t simple. Seeking any kind of medical care as a transgender person comes with its own barriers. For Danny, that included the internalized belief that eating disorder treatment wasn’t for someone like him. Body-size bias among providers also meant their illness wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been. It took a mental health crisis and a message sent in desperation before Danny found their way to The Emily Program.

Danny and Jillian talk through what came next: an extended stay in residential treatment, the levels of care that followed, and a recovery that became “so much bigger than just food.” Danny closes with a message for anyone who doesn’t believe recovery is possible: it starts with “a tiny moment of willingness,” and hope borrowed from someone else until you can hold it yourself.

Episode description:

An estimated 16% of the world’s population lives with a disability. Yet people with disabilities are woefully underrepresented in eating disorder research. As a result, disability often goes underaddressed in eating disorder treatment, and eating disorders often go unrecognized in people with disabilities. 

In this episode, Dr. Jillian Lampert examines that gap and what it costs the people caught in it—and what it looks like when care starts with curiosity and listening instead of assumptions.

If you’ve been wondering whether you have an eating disorder, chances are you’ve also been talking yourself out of the question. It’s not that serious. Other people have it much worse.

Living in a culture that constantly moralizes food and normalizes disordered eating and exercise patterns can make it incredibly difficult to accurately evaluate your own relationship with food, exercise, and your body.

Eating disorders are serious, life-altering mental health conditions that thrive in silence and isolation. However, with specialized support, lasting recovery is entirely possible.

If you think you might have an eating disorder, here are three reasons to reach out now.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Alleigh Colleran is a Seattle-based writer and mother of one, currently pregnant with her second. This essay draws from her lived experience with eating disorder recovery, pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood.

For most of my life, food has felt loaded. It has never been just food. Even when I tried to convince myself otherwise, there was always something more attached to it: control, shame, discipline, temptation, comfort, punishment. I spent nearly two decades moving in and out of the grips of bulimia and anorexia. Some years, the eating disorder whispered. Other years, it took over completely. But whether it was loud or quiet, it was always there, shaping the way I moved through the world.

When I was deeply consumed by it, my inner life narrowed into negotiation. What had I eaten? What had I earned? What would I allow myself next? What did I need to undo? Hunger felt suspicious. Fullness felt dangerous. And pleasure, simple, unguarded enjoyment, felt perhaps most scary of all.

For years, I thought that when I was ready to let it go, I simply would. I thought I was choosing it. I thought the control still belonged to me.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, Rawnaq Albathigi joins us to share her experience with an eating disorder, and how it’s shaped the perspective she’s bringing to the field as an emerging dietitian.

Drawing on a recovery journey she describes as anything but linear, Rawnaq makes the case for a more individualized understanding of healing from an eating disorder, and for treatment that’s far more accessible than it currently is, especially for people whose culture and faith fall outside the Western framework much of it is built around.

What if the help you need for an eating disorder isn’t nearby? And what if the help that is nearby isn’t enough?

Leaving home for treatment can feel like a lot to ask. You may be weighing whether the travel is worth it, whether you could just work with your regular therapist or family doctor, or whether it’s even worth trying again after a program that didn’t really understand eating disorders already let you down.

Eating disorders are complex, multifactorial illnesses, and healing from one takes specialized, multidisciplinary expertise that isn’t available everywhere. That’s worth understanding before you rule anything out—including the option of going a little farther for care that actually fits what you’re facing.