Fly To Freedom: Healing from an eating disorder

About Fly To Freedom: Healing from an eating disorder

Welcome to Fly to Freedom, the podcast dedicated to uncovering the truth about anorexia recovery. Having lived with anorexia for 40 years, I know firsthand the struggles, fears, and misconceptions that come with it. If you'd like to know my story, the best place to start is episode 126. This podcast isn’t just about my story—it’s about understanding the illness, challenging harmful beliefs, and finding real, lasting freedom. With expert guests and deep conversations, we explore the psychology of anorexia, the roadblocks to recovery, and the hope that healing is possible.

Publisher

Julia Trehane

Category

health & fitness

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

22 Mar 2023

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

167 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   The Fear Beneath the Fear: Why You Don’t Need to Feel Ready for Eating Disorder Recovery

   The Fear Beneath the Fear: Why You Don’t Need to Feel Ready for Eating Disorder Recovery Fear can make eating disorder recovery feel impossible. There may be fear of weight gain, eating more, feeling full, resting, stopping compulsive exercise or allowing your body to change. But what if the biggest thing keeping you stuck is not the feared experience itself, but the belief that you will be unable to cope with how it makes you feel? In this episode of Fly to Freedom – The Anorexia Recovery Podcast, I explore the fear beneath the fear and why waiting to feel ready can delay anorexia recovery. For decades, I believed that controlling food, exercise and my body was keeping me safe. Restriction, movement, body checking and rules gave me temporary relief from anxiety. Yet every time I used an eating disorder behaviour to reduce fear, my brain learned that the behaviour had protected me from danger. It never had the opportunity to discover what might happen if I did not obey the fear. That is why eating disorder behaviours can remain so compelling, even when you understand that they are keeping you trapped. Eating less, compensating after food, exercising or seeking reassurance may make anxiety fall in the moment, but that relief teaches the brain to ask for the same behaviour again next time. Recovery begins to change when you create a gap between the fear and the response. That could mean eating the food without compensating, resting without making up for it later, allowing fullness to pass, or noticing a change in your body without checking or trying to undo it. The goal is not to become fearless before you recover. It is to build evidence that you can experience fear, guilt, uncertainty and discomfort without abandoning yourself. In this episode, I explore: Why fear of weight gain is often only the beginning of the story What may sit beneath the fear of eating more or gaining weight Why avoidance strengthens eating disorder behaviours The difference between feeling ready and being willing Why confidence usually follows recovery actions How restriction, body checking and compulsive exercise provide temporary relief Why difficult emotions do not mean a recovery action is wrong How repetition builds self-trust and nervous system safety Why recovery progress is better measured by what you do than by how comfortable you feel How to face a difficult body image day without turning against yourself The eating disorder will show you the immediate cost of moving forwards, but it rarely shows you the cost of staying where you are. Another year of avoiding restaurants, needing calorie information, exercising through exhaustion or waiting for your body to feel acceptable carries a cost too. Eating disorder recovery is rarely a choice between fear and no fear. Often, it is a choice between the fear that keeps you trapped and the fear that may eventually set you free. You can feel frightened and still nourish yourself. You can feel guilty and still rest. You can dislike a photograph and still go out for dinner. You can experience body image distress and continue caring for yourself. You do not have to know exactly how recovery will feel. Little by little, you can learn that whatever feelings arise, you will remain on your own side. That is how self-trust grows, and that is where freedom begins. For compassionate support with anorexia recovery, fear of weight gain, compulsive exercise, body image or letting go of eating disorder rules, visit: https://www.juliatrehane.com (https://www.juliatrehane.com) The Eating Disorder Recovery Circle offers practical recovery resources, courses, workshops, community support, monthly Meetups and a monthly coaching call with me. https://www.edrecoverycircle.com/join (https://www.edrecoverycircle.com/join) Eating disorder recovery supportJoin the Eating Disorder Recovery Circle

2. 

   15 Sept 2026

   The Woman I Never Imagined I Could Become: Julia’s Recovery Q&A

   The Woman I Never Imagined I Could Become: Julia’s Recovery Q&A This episode of Fly to Freedom – The Anorexia Recovery Podcast is a little different. Instead of answering questions about the struggles you may be facing in recovery, I’m answering your questions about me: the woman I was, how I recovered after living with anorexia for forty years, and what my life looks and feels like now. I share why eating more, resting and restoring my weight were essential foundations of recovery, but were not enough to give me complete freedom. Although my body was healing, I still carried the beliefs that had fuelled the eating disorder for decades: that I was not good enough, that love had to be earned and that my worth depended upon staying small, being productive and keeping everybody else happy. Full recovery required me to look beneath the food, exercise and body obsession. It meant replacing judgement with curiosity, separating facts from the painful stories I had attached to them, and gradually building a relationship with myself based on compassion rather than punishment. In this episode, I explore: How I moved from forty years of anorexia to complete freedom Why weight restoration was essential but was not the end of my recovery How I knew I was fully recovered Why my experience led me to become an eating disorder recovery coach How and why I created the Eating Disorder Recovery Circle Why I stopped exercise completely and how I eventually returned to movement The difference between choosing to exercise and feeling compelled to exercise How I respond to diet culture and difficult body-image days What recovery has changed within my marriage, family and everyday life How recovery helped me remain present through grief, fear and Dave’s stroke Why authenticity, simplicity and self-confidence have been some of recovery’s greatest gifts How I became the woman I could never have imagined becoming Recovery has not made life perfect or removed sadness, fear, insecurity and loss. It has given me the ability to experience all of life without abandoning myself or returning to restriction, compulsive exercise and control. I can have a difficult day in my body and continue treating her with care. I can feel grief without needing to numb it, experience fear without imagining every possible disaster and make mistakes without believing they say something terrible about me. I can ask for help, express an opinion, create boundaries and allow myself to be fully present with the people I love. When I began anorexia recovery, I thought I was fighting for freedom from food rules, exercise and body obsession. I did not realise I was finding my way home to myself. If you are somewhere in the difficult, uncertain middle of eating disorder recovery, the life ahead may be much bigger than you can currently imagine. The person you are today cannot yet know everything the version of you who keeps going will discover. If you want to live a life of freedom from an eating disorder, I can help you. You can learn more about working with me and the recovery support available at juliatrehane.com (https://juliatrehane.com/).

3. 

   1 Sept 2026

   What Does Eating Disorder Recovery Really Feel Like? Six Women Tell the Truth - No scripts. No polished recovery stories. Just an honest conversation.

   What does eating disorder recovery actually feel like when you're the person trying to live it? Not the theory. Not the neat list of recovery steps. Not the version told from the other side once everything has fallen into place. This week on Fly to Freedom – The Anorexia Recovery Podcast, I wanted to do something completely different. I invited six women from within my recovery community to come together and answer questions about eating disorder recovery. Nobody was specially selected, nobody was given the questions beforehand and nobody was asked to tell a particular kind of recovery story. We actually started chatting before I'd officially begun recording, and the conversation was so open and valuable that I decided to leave that in too. These women are different ages, from different backgrounds and at very different stages of recovery. Some have lived with anorexia and eating disorders for decades. Some have tried NHS or private treatment. Some know an enormous amount about eating disorders and yet still struggle to translate that knowledge into action. We talk about feeling not sick enough to deserve support, and the way the eating disorder continually moves the goalposts. We talk about knowing exactly what you need to do and still finding it incredibly difficult to do it. As one woman puts it, recovery can be simple, but not easy. We talk about the shame of struggling as a teacher, therapist, professional, mother or middle-aged woman, and why eating disorders do not discriminate by age, intelligence, profession or life experience. We also talk honestly about recovery communities. What happens if you're having an awful day? Do you need to be positive before you speak? What if you worry about triggering someone or bringing everyone else down? And what happens when somebody challenges something you have believed for years? Then the conversation moves into self-compassion and something I particularly love: discovering who you actually are underneath the eating disorder. One woman discovers that perhaps she doesn't love being constantly busy and productive after all. She likes a slower life, pottering and building Lego. And then there is "holiday Sue". Sue describes a freer, happier version of herself who appeared on holiday – someone who ate what she wanted, worried less about what other people thought and simply enjoyed life. She's beginning to realise that holiday Sue may actually be the real Sue. Perhaps one of the most moving moments comes from a woman who once believed gaining weight would be worse than almost anything she could imagine. Today, she would rather live in a higher-weight body and keep the peace and freedom she has discovered than ever return to the life she had before. She once thought she might be the special unicorn – the person for whom full recovery simply wasn't possible. The unicorn doesn't exist. These aren't six women with everything figured out. There are doubts, fears, frustration, laughter and plenty of swearing. That's precisely why this conversation matters. Sometimes eating disorder recovery is questioning something you've believed for decades. Sometimes it is allowing somebody else to believe in you before you can quite believe in yourself. And sometimes it is discovering that the thoughts and feelings you believed made you different are being experienced by somebody else too. No scripts. No polished recovery stories. Just six women talking openly about what eating disorder recovery really feels like. Julia Trehane: https://juliatrehane.com (https://juliatrehane.com) The Eating Disorder Recovery Circle: https://edrecoverycircle.com (https://edrecoverycircle.com)

Who has been a guest on Fly To Freedom: Healing from an eating disorder

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Dr Cristina Castagnini
• Sarah Rzemieniak
• Julia Trehane
• Lucy Aphramor
• Jennifer Cox

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

11,850

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.7 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

79 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 81 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

98

Social presence

0

YouTube

76

Engagement

82

Contact Fly To Freedom: Healing from an eating disorder

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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