💛 April 2025 Q&A with Julia: Your Questions, Answered with Love, Science, and Real Talk

Hello my lovely Circle members 💛

This post is something really special.

Recently, I opened up a space inside the Circle for you to share your most pressing questions about recovery—the thoughts you can’t shake, the patterns you’re stuck in, and the fears that feel too big to name. And what came through? Pure courage. Your questions were vulnerable, honest, and powerful.

So I sat down to respond to you—not with fluffy reassurance, but with real, grounded guidance. In this Q&A session, I’m sharing the answers I gave in a recent video. These are questions so many people in recovery are thinking but haven’t put into words yet. So even if your name wasn’t on one of them, I know something in here is going to speak to you.

If it does—hold onto it. Let it land in your body. And if a part of you still feels unsure, scared or stuck, that’s okay too. You’re safe here. You’re already doing the work. And I’m so proud of you for being here.

Let’s walk through what came up.

✨ 1. “Why am I still so hungry—and why do I feel so guilty after eating?”

If you've lived with anorexia or restriction for a long time, it's completely normal to feel like your hunger is bottomless once you finally start listening to your body. This isn’t a sign of failure—it’s a biological response.

Your body is trying to repair, trust, and recover from a long famine. Hunger cues are upregulated, fullness cues are downregulated, and your digestive system is still playing catch-up.

And the guilt? That’s not truth—it’s conditioning. You’ve been trained to associate eating with danger. But that belief can be rewired.

🟡 Key takeaway: Your hunger is not the problem—it’s the solution. Guilt is old programming. You are doing recovery, not failing it.

✨ 2. “Is this recovery advice really meant for me? I’m in a larger body.”

Yes. One thousand times yes. Recovery is not size-exclusive. You can be malnourished and in need of healing in any body size. Restriction, deprivation, and trauma affect your body whether you're underweight, average, or in a plus-size body.

Weight gain during refeeding is not wrong—it’s your body restoring what it needs to feel safe again. And if the world told you that only thin people are "sick enough" to recover, that’s not the truth. That’s weight stigma.

🟡 Key takeaway: You are not too big for recovery. You are exactly right for recovery, right now, just as you are.

✨ 3. “I want to recover—but eating feels unsafe. How do I make it feel okay?”

This is so common. Recovery asks you to give up your main coping mechanism—restriction. And yes, restriction numbs. It soothes anxiety, creates a false sense of control, and becomes a safety blanket. But the truth is: that safety is an illusion.

Learning to eat again means learning to feel again. But we can build safety step by step—through grounding, co-regulation, ritual, and self-talk that reminds your nervous system: I am not in danger anymore.

🟡 Key takeaway: You don’t need to feel fearless to eat. You just need to feel safe enough to take the first bite.

✨ 4. “Now that I’m eating again, I’m suddenly feeling everything—and it’s overwhelming.”

Yes. And it’s also a good sign. Restriction doesn’t just suppress appetite—it suppresses emotion. So when you start nourishing yourself, your emotional systems switch back on.

That’s why recovery feels chaotic at first—your brain is reconnecting, your body is reawakening, your hormones are recalibrating. It’s not you falling apart. It’s you coming back online.

🟡 Key takeaway: Feeling everything is not regression. It’s rebirth. This is what healing looks like in motion.

Final Words: You’re Not Doing This Alone

Every single question in this session speaks to the reality of recovery—the messy, beautiful, confusing, hopeful, exhausting process of learning how to live again.

And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart: you’re not alone. You don’t need to do it perfectly. You don’t need to figure it all out right now. You just need to keep showing up—and you are.

Inside the Circle, you’ve got everything you need: 🌀 The Feelings Navigator to help you understand and move through emotion
📄 The Help Sheets for bite-sized, focused support
📚 The Courses and Workshops to dive deeper into key recovery themes
💬 The Community Chat Rooms to be held by people who truly get it

And I’ll be here too—answering more of your questions, cheering you on, walking this path with you.

With so much love,
Julia x