Religion and Eating Disorders: How Religious Practices Can Help or Hurt Your Recovery
Written by CCTC Staff Writer
If you’ve landed on this post, you are most likely someone who is already religious, or someone who believes religion may be a way to fuel eating disorder recovery. Widespread studies and shared personal experiences in religious communities show that there are positive and negative ways in which religion can affect your recovery.
Keep on reading if you’re interested in:
How to draw strength from religion in recovery
Religious ideas and practice that can help you in times of struggle
When religious ideals and practices can be triggering
How to handle these triggers
What to do to maintain your faith and your recovery
Pretty much all religious authorities and texts will tell you that saving a life, including your own, overrides everything else. Remember this as you read this post, and as you progress in eating disorder recovery.
How Religion and Spirituality Can be a Strength in Recovery
The Body as Sacred Object
In many religions, the body is seen as a divine creation by a higher power.
Individuals who hold this belief report higher levels of body satisfaction and positive feelings towards the body than people who do not hold this same belief. This is true even when exposed to mainstream ideals of what a person “should” look like.
The Self as Part of Something Greater
Some religious and spiritual people hold the belief that we are all a part of something larger than ourselves, something that we can’t fully comprehend.
In recovery, a person who believes this will often give up the imagined control of having an eating disorder and place their faith in the idea that they have a place in the world, that someone or something is looking out for them, and that they are not alone.
The Strength of a Community
One of the most positive things that comes with devout faith is that there is usually a built-in, welcoming community of people who share the same beliefs and practice the same rituals.
Whether you’re a religious or spiritual person moving to a new place, going off to college, or simply finding yourself after a time where religion and/or spirituality wasn’t a big part of your life, you can usually find a religious community.
A strong knit community can be a great source of strength in recovery, especially when you consider how isolating an eating disorder can be.
Related: These are the pros and cons of family based treatment in 2021.
Strength and Guidance from Religious Voices and Texts
There are a wealth of religious and spiritual texts, songs, and traditions that those in eating disorder recovery can lean into when they need to. Whether you’re looking for inspiration to keep going, a voice of reason when things get hard, or just a source of comfort in recovery, you may find what you need in those materials.
For example, this woman in recovery from an eating disorder often turns to Bible passages to give her strength. You may find your own strength in religious words and songs that resonate with you.
You might also find comfort in confiding in a religious authority in your community.
How Religious Ideals and Practices Can Be Triggering (and What to Do About It)
Restrictive Food Rules for Religious Purposes
In many religions, there are restrictions on what is deemed “good” or “bad”, “allowed” or “forbidden.” Whether you practice Jainism or Judaism, you will find food rules.
For someone with an eating disorder, it can be hard to tell whether following religious food rules ends and where following an eating disorder begins. As an example, Kimberly Robins shared her story about following Jewish dietary law in recovery.
She discussed how observing kashrut (Jewish dietary law) was both an important aspect of religious life and an easy tool to exploit. It allowed her to keep a restrictive diet and avoid food at events if she suspected that they were not kosher (kosher foods are foods that are allowed according to kashrut.)
Another Jewish woman, Leah Bat Shana, also described the difficulties of living a Jewish life with an eating disorder. Among the many difficulties, she talked about needing to scour nutrition labels to determine whether a food was kosher or not. The experience was triggering to her, as she could see the amount of calories on every package she looked at.
Related: Here are 15 subtle food rules that may indicate you or someone you love has an eating disorder.
Religious Holidays Surrounded by Food
Leah also discussed how Jewish culture is surrounded by food, from the preparation of food to the celebration of holidays through large, often overwhelming meals.
These kinds of food-centric events left her anxious and guilty, especially whenever she ended up binge eating during festive meals. She, along with many other religious people who struggle with eating disorders, would end up ruminating on the types and quantities of food eaten.
This can lead a person like Leah to feeling like a fraud for worrying more about meals than about the religious aspects that come with meals. That kind of distress typically fuels anxious thoughts and eating disorder behaviors.
Fasting and Eating Disorders
Many religions incorporate fasting during holy times. For example, followers of Islam do not eat or drink anything from sunup to sunset during the month of Ramadan. After the sunset, they break fast with a feast known as “iftar.”
Long periods of fasting, some even spanning 15 hours or more, followed by a feast, can trigger a person’s eating disorder. This practice can lead to a cycle of binging and restricting, even after Ramadan, or cause someone to lose hunger cues and restrict food after the holy month.
Related: You are not weak. This is how to break free from the binge-restrict cycle.
Emotional Consequences of Religion Being External, Not Internal
Studies show that individuals who do not have an internal connection with their religion — that cultural religious norms are forced upon them by their parents or other community members — report higher levels of disordered eating.
There are several reasons for this. Individuals who do not have their own strong, personal connection to their religion might:
Feel like a failure for not having the connection that people around them seem to
Experience a lack of control in their lives, which can cause someone to create disordered eating and exercise habits to gain control in other ways
Attempt to be “perfect” to compensate for a lack of inner spirituality, which leads to the kind of perfectionistic tendencies that contribute to restrictive, ritualistic eating disorder behaviors
These same studies show that individuals with a strong intrinsic, or natural, relationship with their higher powers display lower levels of distress and disordered eating patterns.
Fear of Judgment
For many people within religious communities, there is a fear of judgment when they don’t take part in certain religious practices. For example, this person in eating disorder recovery expressed a sense of fear and shame around the idea of not fasting during Ramadan due to mental illness.
There are exceptions in many religions when it comes to upholding food rules and rituals, ones that mostly revolve around sickness and preserving life. But it’s hard for many sufferers in religious communities, as mental illness is often so stigmatized that it’s not seen as a “real illness.”
Integrating Religion and Spirituality into Eating Disorder Treatment
There are a few critical ways that religion must be taken into account in eating disorder treatment:
Educating treatment providers on different religious beliefs and practices
Differentiating between religious rules and eating disorder rules
Making sure the food patients are served in treatment aligns with their religious practices
Preparing for sticking to both religious and dietary needs at home
Making religious services and, to an extent, religious holidays available to patients
Encouraging patients to lean into their faith if it will bring them light and hope
Encouraging patients to rely on their community for support at home
It's also important to understand that if there are religious holidays or practices that may trigger your eating disorder, it's okay to excuse yourself from them.
Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses, and you cannot fully connect to your higher power if you remain stuck in an illness.
Most religions, such as Islam, excuse people with illnesses from taking part in activities like fasting, anyway. Accept that you have an illness that you need to fully recover from before participating in any activity that could potentially make your illness worse.
Or, consider other ways to participate in holidays that don’t necessarily involve food. For example, instead of fasting on Yom Kippur, many people choose to attend the kinds of services that allow for eating and do not focus on withholding food to repent for wrongdoing.
In the end, your religion and spirituality should fuel your recovery, not prolong your struggle.
Make your religious beliefs and practices work for you. Form your own independent connection to your higher power, and draw strength from it if it will fuel your recovery.
And if a certain religious rule or practice does not suit your recovery, but is very important to you, it’s okay to hold off on or modify that rule or practice until you’re further along in your recovery.
If you or a loved one is suffering from an eating disorder, don’t panic. Take the first step today and talk to someone about recovery or learn more about the holistic, flexible eating disorder recovery programs we offer.