Why Can’t I Let Go of My Eating Disorder? What’s Holding Recovery Back

Many people struggling with eating disorder recovery ask the same painful question: “Why can’t I let go of my eating disorder, even when I know it’s harming me?” Fear of recovery, grief, and the feeling that all the time, energy and sacrifice invested must mean something can quietly keep people stuck. In this post, I explore why letting go can feel so hard, and what can help when you feel trapped in the space between wanting recovery and being unable to move towards it.

Why Letting Go of an Eating Disorder Feels So Hard

Imagine you are one third of the way through painting your favourite room in the house, the room where you spend most of your time, when you suddenly realise that you don’t like the paint colour. It doesn’t look at all like it did in the shop. Where the paint sample looked bright and breezy, it now looks dull and lifeless on your walls. You are left feeling flat and disappointed. The spark of excitement you felt when you started painting has dwindled. You feel uncertain, and yet you notice a strong, compelling drive to continue painting.

You tell yourself it will look better when you’ve finished this wall, then you can really get a true and fair sense of it. Maybe in the morning light it will look better. After all, you went to the trouble of scrolling for hours for paint inspiration, drove to three different paint shops, had your colour sample professionally matched and mixed, spent a small fortune, and then used a full weekend prepping and priming your walls. So really, you can’t stop now, or at least that’s how it feels.

So you continue, diligently finishing one wall and then another, waiting to see whether you might suddenly change your mind, when really, you already know that you won’t. You hope in vain that you can recoup your time, effort and energy and discover it was all worth it. Alas, this paint does not deliver what was on the tin.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy and Eating Disorder Recovery

This is known as the sunk cost fallacy - a psychological phenomenon that affects people all over the world, every day, in countless ways. It occurs when our current choices are influenced by our previous investments of time, money or effort, even when continuing causes more harm than benefit.

Other examples might include someone who is deeply unhappy in their job but cannot take the step to quit to get a new job due to all the effort they have put in to building their relationship with their boss, or their team. Someone who is unhappy in a relationship but has already been with the person for 5 years, so surely, they can’t end it now, otherwise, will that mean the last 5 years have been a waste of time? Or, you have got yourself ready, travelled to the cinema, bought your ticket, and settled down in your seat, waited patiently for the adverts and trailers to be over, and eagerly sat through the start of the movie, only to find yourself bored, and restless. The movie is terrible. But you have already paid for the ticket, and made all the effort of getting there, so you feel you really “should” sit and watch the whole thing.

The difficulty in all these situations, is that the time, effort, money, and energy invested already, are already lost. They are not coming back. They will not magically reappear if we continue to wait patiently or continue to invest more time, more effort or more energy. This movie is not going to get better the longer you sit there, and even worse, you will have wasted more time when you could have cut your losses and chosen to do something different instead.  As human beings, we are often powerfully motivated by strong emotional connections to things we have already lost, such as our time, more so even than to things we might stand to gain in the future if we let go and do something different.

“If I Recover, It Will All Have Been for Nothing”

Throughout my career supporting people with eating disorder recovery, I’ve had many versions of the same conversation. People ask how they can possibly let go of their eating disorder and fully invest in recovery when they have already sacrificed so much, their time, their energy, their relationships, their health, because then “it will all have been for nothing.”

Some people believe that if they can just reach a certain milestone, a particular weight, body shape, or moment of external validation, then it will all have been worth it, and then they will feel ready to recover. Others say, “I’ll just know when.”

The problem is that these beliefs keep people stuck, continuing to invest more and more into the eating disorder while waiting for a payoff that never arrives. This is a common experience for people who feel ambivalent about recovery or afraid of what recovery might mean.

False Promises and the Fear of Recovery

As human beings, we have a deep need to make sense of our suffering. We want pain to mean something. We want adversity to lead somewhere worthwhile. And so we wait, and wait.

Eating disorders often make powerful promises: If you follow the rules, then you will finally be 'good enough'. Then you will feel accepted. Then you will feel safe, in control, or worthy. The list of promises is endless. Much like a gambler anxiously waiting for a big win, those on the precipice of eating disorder recovery anxiously wait.

The painful truth is that no big payoff is coming. There is no reward for staying unwell for longer. Any benefits come at great cost. There are better ways to get your needs met, than through an eating disorder - always.

Was My Eating Disorder Pointless?

Moving towards recovery does not mean your eating disorder was pointless or for nothing. In all likelihood your eating disorder came into your life at a time where the demands on you, the stresses and strains of life, outweighed your resources, your support or capabilities, and you did the absolute best you could at the time to manage with what you had.

Perhaps it helped you to feel more in control whilst everything felt uncertain and frightening. Perhaps it helped you to feel good about yourself when you had been really struggling with your self-esteem. Perhaps it helped those around you to see how much you were struggling when you didn’t know how to ask for help. Perhaps it gave a way to shut-off from a painful experience, or intolerable thoughts and feelings.

However, like many coping mechanisms, this one is likely fast going past its sell-by-date and is starting to have more negative consequences than positives, and perhaps some of what you were promised is becoming apparent to be a false promise.

Grief and Loss in Eating Disorder Recovery

So, what do you do if you find yourself in this situation?

One of the things, I find myself talking about in therapy when this comes up, is about grief. Grief is normal and typical response whenever we lose something that was of value to us, and it is absolutely applicable here.

Research often describes stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, sadness or depression, and acceptance, often followed by meaning‑making and hope. These stages don’t happen neatly or in order, and grief is rarely a straight line. But understanding that these experiences are normal can help people make sense of why recovery feels so emotionally complex.

It can be helpful to gently check in with yourself and notice where you are in these stages, knowing that this may change frequently.

What Helps When You Feel Stuck in Recovery

If you recognise yourself in this, some of the following ideas may help:

• Allow space for grief. Let yourself feel the emotions connected to moving forward without the eating disorder. This could include creating art, listening to mood appropriate music, watching movies that match the emotions you are feeling, talking to others about how you are feeling, or writing in a diary.

• Practice Radical Acceptance. This is a skill of working to accept that everything simply is the way that it is, one way of doing this is simply to say to yourself “Everything is as it is” - this is particularly helpful if you are finding yourself stuck in bargaining.

• Replace “BUT” with “AND.” Instead of “I want to recover, BUT I will miss my eating disorder,” you can try “I want to recover, AND I will miss my eating disorder.” The second part does not negate the first part, both can be true, and both are important to acknowledge.

• Identify what you feel you will be losing by recovering. Then spend some time brainstorming how you might be able to better meet those needs in the future. For example, “I will miss the eating disorder helping me to feel better about myself”, a possible helpful solution could be “I will find a book, or seek support in working to improve my self-esteem”. It might be helpful to have some support from someone you trust to help you complete this exercise and support you in thinking of alternatives.

• Write a goodbye letter. Some people find it meaningful to write a letter to their eating disorder, thanking it for all the things it helped with in the past, and acknowledging their reasons for needing to move forward.

• Clarify your values. Imagine yourself at age 80 looking back on your life. What would you hope to have lived for? What might you regret not having done?

• Imagine a recovered future. Picture yourself five years into recovery. Write a letter to a friend describing how you spend your time, what you enjoy, and what matters to you now.

Letting go of an eating disorder is rarely about a lack of motivation. More often, it is about fear, grief, and the understandable human need for our suffering to have meant something. With compassion, support and time, people can move forward, not because the past was wasted, but because their future deserves care.