Health at Every Size (HAES) in Eating Disorder Recovery
Accepting changes your body will likely undergo is arguably one of the hardest parts of eating disorder recovery. As your body heals, there is the possibility of your body’s size, shape and weight changing. If you already struggle with body image, changes in your body can be incredibly challenging, however, learning to make peace with your body is necessary if you want to go on to live a fuller, happier life.
You must let go of the desire to control your body and keep it at a specific weight no matter the cost in order to break away from your eating disorder behaviors.
This process of learning to accept your body and trusting your body’s wisdom when your eating disorder is no longer in the picture will be much easier if you assimilate the Health at Every Size (HAES) principles.
HAES rejects the body mass index (BMI) as a measure of health and the idea that weight is a choice. HAES-informed clinicians understand that health is a multi-faceted issue and that weight is not a determining factor for the health of their clients. Healthcare professionals who use a HAES approach do not push weight loss on their patients. Individuals and organizations that support the movement advocate against weight bias and discrimination in healthcare.
What are the HAES principles?
1. Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing or pathologizing of specific weights.
2. Health Enhancement: Support health policies that improve and equalize access to information and services, and personal practices that improve human well-being, including attention to individual physical, economic, social, spiritual, emotional, and other needs.
3. Respectful Care: Acknowledge our biases, and work to end weight discrimination, weight stigma, and weight bias. Provide information and services from an understanding that socio-economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and other identities impact weight stigma, and support environments that address these inequities.
4. Eating for Well-being: Promote flexible, individualized eating based on hunger, satiety, nutritional needs, and pleasure, rather than any externally regulated eating plan focused on weight control.
5. Life-Enhancing Movement: Support physical activities that allow people of all sizes, abilities, and interests to engage in enjoyable movement, to the degree that they choose.
In your eating disorder recovery, it is important that everyone on your treatment team—from your primary care provider to your dietitian—is HAES-informed. That means they will prescribe joyful movement rather than workouts and create meal plans aimed at giving you the nutrients your body needs rather than ones designed to help you lose weight.
Believing in Health At Every Size as an individual means understanding that your purpose is not to lose weight or be a certain weight in order to have value in this world. It means prioritizing your well-being. For example, you might choose to exercise because it feels good or to improve your mental health rather than with the intention of changing the size or shape of your body.
If you don’t believe in Health At Every Size, you’ll only accept your body on the condition that it looks a certain way, and you will always be striving to fit into a very narrow definition of health. You might get trapped in quasi-recovery, where you are only able to avoid eating disorder behaviors as long as your weight remains exactly where you want it.
At Kindful Body we believe full recovery is 100% possible for everyone, but not without a HAES approach.
If you are a California resident, you can work with a HAES-infomed therapist or dietitian from our team via secure video. Contact us to schedule a free 15-minute consultation to start your eating disorder treatment process.