All In Recovery Didn’t Work For Me (An Autistic Perspective)

Are you considering "all in recovery" for your eating disorder? As someone who is both autistic and recovered from anorexia, I've experienced firsthand why this popular approach to eating disorder recovery isn't always the answer – especially for neurodivergent individuals. While many praise all in recovery as a path to freedom from eating disorders, my journey revealed important insights about why this method can actually reinforce the black-and-white thinking patterns common in both autism and anorexia. In this post, I'll share my experience with all in recovery, explain why it may not be the best approach for autistic individuals, and offer alternative perspectives on achieving true freedom from eating disorders.

What is All In Recovery? It Was Never Intended For Eating Disorders…

Before diving in, let's make sure we’re on the same page when it comes to defining all in recovery. If you’ve listened to the Liv Label Free Podcast or read any of my books, you know I love unpacking definitions because they give us clarity, which ultimately drives action. And come to think of it, this idea of clarity driving action is actually very relevant to today’s topic – because the false clarity of an “all in” approach can actually keep us stuck in quasi recovery!

Because there’s obviously no dictionary definition of the term “all in recovery,” we can’t refer to objective facts when unpacking the topic. We can, however, dive into the origins of the term. From my understanding and research, “all in” is an approach coined by Nicola Rinaldi, co-author of the book No Period, Now What? I have read the book and believe it can act as a very helpful guide for people recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea. However, if you are in recovery from an eating disorder and tend to be very numbers-focused, I believe the book can be harmful with its mention of certain calorie amounts. I mean, I had to eat at least quadruple the amount of “minimum calories” mentioned in that book to get my period back!

Nicola Rinaldi uses the term “all in” to describe a method of recovering your menstrual cycle through increasing your food intake and reducing your stress, including exercise. Due to the strong overlap of hypothalamic amenorrhea, eating disorders, and disordered eating, along with certain influencers documenting their all in journeys, the term has gained popularity within the eating disorder community. But I’m sure this is no new information to you, as it seems every “recovery account” on social media nowadays is announcing they are going “all in”!

So what exactly does it mean to go “all in” when you are in recovery from an eating disorder? Well, because the approach wasn’t initially intended for eating disorder treatment, and was intended to heal a common symptom of disordered eating (a missing period) the all in approach is subject to subjectiveness. What do I mean by this? Everyone will have their own interpretation of the all in approach, which means that individual manifestations of going “all in” will be entirely different from person to person.

Why All In Recovery Can Fail: The Black and White Thinking Trap

This subjectivity brings us to the first issue with the “all in” approach: it’s black or white. Eating disorder brains are already super black and white, and the term “all in” implies you’re either all in or you’re not (duh). The reality of eating disorder recovery is that it isn’t linear. In fact, it will be very messy! On top of that, the process is different for each individual. So, if you have a setback while being “all in” (while believing “all in” is the only way to fully recover) you’re perpetuating the black-and-white thinking. In turn, this can result in the belief that you’ve “failed” at recovery, which brings you right back to square one as you return to your disordered eating ways.

As I mention in my post on Black and White Thinking in Autism and Anorexia, autistic individuals are more prone to black and white thinking than neurotypical people. This is also why autistic people are much more likely to develop eating disorders. That being said, the majority of people that face the decision of going “all in” will be autistic. Reflecting on my own eating disorder recovery while being undiagnosed autistic, I now understand why all in recovery did not work for me.

The Autism-Anorexia Connection: Why Traditional Recovery Methods May Not Work

When I was stuck in quasi recovery and pondering the possibility of going all in, the approach was actively being glamorized by individuals online. These individuals claimed that going all in had “saved them from their eating disorder.” In fact, part of why the concept of all in was so appealing to me was because of its extreme approach. By choosing to go all in, I wouldn’t have any other option than to eat whatever and whenever I wanted. By choosing to go all in, I wouldn’t have any other option than to rest. By choosing to go all in, the only option was fighting my eating disorder every second of every day; which meant getting rid of the ED would be inevitable, right?

Wrong.

Becoming hyperfocused on recovery and making sure I was doing it “perfectly” was actually the very thing that prevented me from the true point of recovery: being recoverED, past tense!

Where your attention goes, energy flows. This phenomenon is exactly what causes eating disorder behaviors to become so entrenched. As I write in my post How to Stop Feeling Guilty in Eating Disorder Recovery: as long as you keep giving the ED thoughts attention, you keep giving them energy (the irony!) to influence your behaviors. If your eating disorder tells you to restrict and you act on this thought by restricting, you're fueling that very thought to keep returning. You're giving your brain the notion that this is the "right" course of action, therefore signaling to your brain that eating is "wrong." Notice the black and white thinking here? If you truly want to be free from the eating disorder thoughts – whether they be about restriction, exercise, or comparison – you must stop engaging with them.

The Purpose of All In Recovery Defeats the Purpose of Living (Label Free)

You may be thinking: Isn’t opposite action the whole purpose of going all in? Isn’t fighting the ED the key to neurally rewiring your brain to have different thoughts? Yes, of course it is! But let’s take it a step further – a step that is beyond the label of “all in recovery.” Why do you want to neurally rewire your brain and have different thoughts? And now you’re probably thinking, “Oh, well that’s obvious! So I can recover from my eating disorder!” But again, why do you want to recover from your eating disorder? What does a recovered life actually look like for you? I seriously just want you to take a moment to think about this. Who would you be at your core if you were truly free?

The following reasons may be coming up for you: more energy, the ability to eat at restaurants, the ability to go on vacation, and all the other beautiful things that can finally exist when you are no longer living at the mercy of anorexia. When I was in recovery from my eating disorder, I even made a “reasons to recover” list with many such opportunities. But here’s a hard truth: no amount of external reasons is going to be strong enough to change you internally. In the end, being enslaved to circumstances outside of you is the very opposite of true freedom.

The Recovery Trap: Why Wanting to Recover Keeps You Stuck

I’m currently reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and I want to share a powerfully relevant quote from the book: “The ego wants to want more than it wants to have.” I had to re-read that sentence multiple times, because it’s a lot to process! What’s being said: the ego (or your identity of self) wants to want so that it can never be satisfied. But why wouldn’t you want to be satisfied? Because to accept the present moment as it is, to accept your body as it is, to accept yourself as you are without labels and without the mask of an eating disorder, would mean that you are okay as you are and you are allowed to take off that mask.

This “being okay,” accompanies the very thing that the eating disorder (and later on, recovery) shields you from: a sense of emptiness and a lack of purpose. Because the ego wants to avoid emptiness at all costs, your mind tricks you into thinking that salvation can be found in external circumstances. After you achieve this, have that, or if you have a particular experience, then you will be satisfied. In terms of recovery, this may be achieving a certain weight, size, or, you guessed it, choosing to go "all in"! But again, it’s all a trick of the mind. Because once you *finally* achieve the weight, size, or whatever other experience the ego seeks, your happiness will not last for more than a moment, and you will still be left wanting and chasing the next illusion. Just as your eating disorder is never satisfied after one ED behavior, your ego will never remain satisfied after one accomplishment or decision.

I propose that the state of being “in recovery” – whether this be eating disorder recovery, quasi recovery, all in recovery, Minnie Maud, or whatever label you use to describe your state of being – is the next illusion after an eating disorder. When I first decided to go “all in,” I was excited. I was so sick and tired of anorexia, and no longer wanted to identify as someone with an eating disorder. So, I chose recovery from my eating disorder. Quickly, this became my new identity: someone in recovery from an eating disorder.

Are You Stuck in the Eating Disorder Recovery Identity?

Bringing all this identity stuff back to the phrase “where your attention goes, energy flows,” what do you think will happen when you identify as someone in recovery from an eating disorder? You will continue to identify as someone in recovery from an eating disorder. And isn’t your goal to identify as yourself? To identify as someone who is free? Which brings me to another incredible quote from the book:

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago...a depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. And the greatest miracle is the experiencing of your essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images. For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I... from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified with.

When I read this passage, I was astounded at how beautifully it encapsulates the epitome of Liv Label Free :)

Looking back now, it wasn’t going all in that made me excited. It was everything that fell under the label of all in: eating whatever and whenever I wanted, resting, living without the rules my eating disorder had confined me to for so long. As I identified with this label of being “all in,” I believed I could eat whatever and whenever I wanted, listen to my body and its movement preferences, and I could live without rules and restriction. But just like identifying as someone “in recovery” kept me stuck in recovery, these characteristics I thought were entangled with the label “all in,” weren’t part of that label at all. Those characteristics are all habits of someone who identifies as free. And when you’re free, you don’t need a label, because you have nothing to prove.

Beyond All In: Sustainable Eating Disorder Recovery

The entire “recovery community” is filled with people who identify with certain labels. You have the vegans, the gym junkies, the foodies – hell, I know how convincing it is to believe that adhering to a certain label will save you from your eating disorder! (If you want to learn more about my journey with anorexia as an autistic girl, grab a copy of my book Rainbow Girl.) The danger of such labels – especially as they are portrayed on social media, which is a recipe for comparison – is that they are simply that: labels. If someone’s definition of “recovered” is founded on something external, what do you think will happen when you remove that label? Just like a house will collapse if you remove the ground underneath it, your state of being “recovered” will collapse if you remove whatever circumstance you built it on. The only thing you ever have, always, is yourself. So if you look everywhere except for within, how do you ever expect to find yourself?

This was the very realization that prompted me to become Liv Label Free. After going through countless labels – both inflicted upon me by others and myself – I learned that nothing outside of me was going to save me. Only I could save me. And that realization is scary! Because it meant I had to stop acting like a victim and take responsibility for my life. You know that saying, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will?” I believe the more accurate phrase is, “If you don’t prioritize your life, a label will.”

Each and every label I adopted – vegetarianism, veganism, following the “whole foods plant based” diet, trying to be like certain fitness influencers, then trying the “all in” approach – were all desperate attempts to create the false freedom online personalities were portraying. Why do I say false? Because if anyone is basing their happiness on labels, they are not truly free. Every label I ever adopted made me feel the opposite of what I believed I would feel when I had turned to them in the first place. They took away my freedom. And this is because the ego wants to want more than it wants to have! It’s also why new things feel so amazing until they’re not new anymore – because then you want the next new thing!

The same goes for eating disorder recovery. Starting recovery is exciting because it’s a new adventure after your eating disorder. But then recovery becomes exhausting, and you feel like you’re stuck in what people have labeled as “quasi recovery.” Then, you’re sick and tired of being in quasi recovery and you announce: “I’m going all in!” But what’s next? I’d think it would be actually living your life. So why put yourself through the misery of any restrictive identity if you can choose to live NOW?

Stop Choosing Recovery and Start Choosing Discovery

One of my Eating Disorder Recovery Coaching Clients and I were talking about how beneficial it would be to replace the word “recovery.” Why? Because focusing on recovery keeps you stuck in it, which is just as bad as being stuck in an eating disorder (if not worse). We came up with the word “discovery.” Unlike “recovery” that is limiting and subjective, discovery opens you up to infinite possibilities. Unlike recovery, which most people fear to even start out of fear they’ll “fail” at it, you simply cannot fail at discovery. You either have a win, or a learning moment. There’s never any losing or failing because it’s all part of discovering who you are – without labels.

To bring this post full circle to what I said earlier about clarity driving action: the main reason people believe “all in” will save them is because it’s so clear cut. Just like an eating disorder’s rules don’t have any space for flexibility, neither does all in. It’s another form of black-and-white thinking, another form of attaching your identity to something outside of yourself, another label that restricts you from living life to the fullest – a life in which you are so free that you don’t need a label.

Do you want to embark on a discovery journey and create your unique version of freedom from an eating disorder? Schedule a consultation call for 1-1 coaching here!