A former recovery coaching client called Sarah kindly put together a list of the recovery-related podcasts and channels she’d found most helpful during her recovery. I don’t naturally gravitate towards audiovisual material, so much of it was new to me. Her list was so useful that I asked her whether she’d be happy for me to share it on my website, and she generously said yes.
So here it is, with all the obvious caveats about this being one individual’s subjective selection. Sarah and I hope that it will help you find your way more quickly to things that are useful to you.
These are all podcasts unless otherwise mentioned. I haven’t put links as it depends where you’re listening to them, but any YouTube accounts I have linked.
Top recommendations
Real Health Radio
This is my number one life-changing podcast. I’ve been listening to it for years, long before I had any serious thoughts about recovery and I honestly think it played a part in why I didn’t give up all hope and kept at least a hypothetical idea that maybe some kind of recovery might be possible some day. Chris has so much compassion, knowledge and experience of helping people with eating disorders that really shines through whether he’s interviewing someone or doing a solo episode. Every so often he does interviews with past clients which give a really good idea of what working with someone through recovery is like.
I also love his episodes on the Minnesota Starvation study which I’ve never heard explained in so much detail anywhere else, I always used to hate any reference to that because it was tainted by it having been rammed down our throats constantly in treatment with a side of guilt tripping about all the terrible things you are doing to yourself by not eating, but he explained it so well and there were so many things that I had never appreciated about it before such as the fact that the point of the study was to study re-feeding not starvation.
Recently he’s started a new format of episode which is more practical and coaching based and just him talking through how he approaches specific topics/themes with clients, whereas his old solo episodes are meticulously researched and planned and more theoretical. It’s also good to follow along with the podcast to hear about some of his other resources, for example last autumn, he did a free series of webinars on Resilience in Recovery, I think there were 3 or 4, 1 hr 30 long, which were so helpful and amazing to get that kind of content for free (it was aimed at getting people to follow up by signing up to a paid program, but still very useful as a standalone resource).
Megsy Recovery
Rewired: Eating Disorder Recovery Podcast (co-hosted with Safia, a recovery coach)
Megsy comes second on the most life-changing ranking! Firstly because I listened to the podcast episode on challenging fear foods on a menu day when I was absolutely planning on not having macaroni cheese at lunch time, and somehow listening to that talked me round so I did, which was a pretty big breakthrough at the time and massive house of cards effect because macaroni cheese was by some distance the ‘worst’ of any ready meal, so by getting that in so early, it meant that every other ready meal was instantly also a possibility. That episode was also where we got the idea of the recovery grid from (a spreadsheet I used to track progress with fear foods) which has been so helpful not only practically in keeping me on track with different foods but also keeping me motivated in general because if I’m feeling down, there are still times when I’ll just open up the recovery grid and just look at the colours changing over time as a reminder of how much has changed with hard work.
The other really life-changing aspect comes from her YouTube channel, because those videos became my go to meal support, and they got me through so much. She shares so much that her psychologist helped her with, that it’s almost like you’re getting professional advice, but through the lens of personal experience in how it’s actually been helpful in practice. The length of the videos coincidentally turned out to be good for them to act as a makeshift Mandometer in keeping me on track with timings once I started working on that! [See Emily’s blog post on the Mando method and her Frontiers in Psychology article for more on speed of eating and why it matters.]
Recovery Talk
This is hosted by a recovery coach, Amalie Lee, she mostly does solo episodes with the occasional guest interview scattered in. She’s one of the few people I’ve come across who just gets it when it comes to dealing with EDs, and she has such a lovely chatty way of expressing herself. She’s particularly good when it comes to talking about extreme hunger, so I would definitely recommend any of her episodes relating to that.
Meg and Anne-Claire Show
AC’s IG: path_to_recovered
The Recovery Collective (RRC): online recovery community (membership only)
Meg McCabe & Anne-Claire Jedrzejczak (AC) are both CCI (Carolyn Costin Institute) certified recovery coaches. Their YouTube show is great, the way they play off each other is so lovely. I follow AC on IG (Meg also has an IG account and a podcast called The Full and Thriving Podcast), her posts are great at calling out ED thoughts, helping to reframe them. She does a weekly set of journaling prompts each Saturday, and I quite often choose one (or am inspired by one) of these to tag onto my weekly review as the ‘difficult question’. [You can read more here on the how and why of weekly reviews in recovery and beyond.] Most Tuesdays she does an IG live called Cook and Chat, where you can submit questions the day before and she’ll answer them while preparing her lunch/dinner. I’ve found this super helpful when there’s been something I’m stuck with or just needing help to think through, her style is very much to ask questions back, which is great for where I’m at.
Because I was getting so much out of AC’s content and also I guess I was feeling a bit alone in recoverya few months ago, I joined the Recovery Collective. I was debating how helpful this would be at the time, seeing as one of my goals was to focus more on life outside of ED and recovery, but I knew they did also have beyond recovery content and with early bird and an introductory offer, it worked out reasonably priced enough to be worth trying even if I then decided it wasn’t for me. And truly, it’s been such a good decision. There are quite a few other members at a very late stage of recovery and several who would now say they are recovered, and it’s just been so good to connect with others at a similar stage. And also being able to relate to people earlier on and remember when I was going through that, and what helped me and to be able to encourage them with that and that things can change, has been so helpful in avoiding the rose tinted nostalgia that otherwise I know can easily creep into my thinking.
There are regular online sessions each month: group coaching with Meg (topics such as goal setting, gentle nutrition, dealing with emotions), Mindfulness with AC, Journaling and Meditation, Guest Workshop (with people like Carolyn Costin, Reagan Chastain, Mia Findlay, Dr Gaudiani), Dietician Topics with Talia Cecchele (ask any questions to a dietician), Coping Skills (doing some activity together such as building lego, making friendship bracelets, introducing your pets), Peer Mentoring (general support sessions where you can talk about anything led by one of the peer mentors, who are all people later on in recovery who get training to lead these sessions, and also help people integrate into the community), and Beyond Recovery (led by a former peer mentor, topics such as career, relationships, self-expression). Also a FB group where anyone can post about their wins, struggles etc. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be a member for, but at the moment, I’m really appreciating the connection, everyone is so accepting and welcoming and it’s so good to be able to talk about things with other people who don’t need so much of a background explanation of why I might be thinking or feeling the way I am.
Other notable mentions
Unrestrict-ED with Emily and Han
The content of this podcast is excellent. There’s a very strong ethos of eating with abundance and thoroughly rooting up even the smallest ED behaviours. The episodes are shorter than any other podcasts on this list so good for people who prefer short form, focused content. Semi-related to this is a very cute IG account called meerchatter, which was co-founded by Han, it’s cartoons of meerkats with recovery encouragements and meal/snack suggestions, which is just such a fun way of getting the message across!
Can I Have Another Snack Please?
Don’t Salt my Game
I’ve put these together as they’re both hosted by Laura Thomas (author of Just Eat It), she just rebranded and changed the name as well as the focus, but I’ve carried on following mainly because I just like her and the way she approached things with a mix of personal experience and well researched evidence. Her original podcast was very much intuitive eating based with a bit of ED recovery content but more disordered eating. And now having had a baby, she’s pivoted more into body image and child feeding through an intuitive eating and social justice lens. So while it is food and body related, it’s not a recovery podcast. I subscribe to her Substack newsletter as well, and I think I prefer her written content, and there is good discussion in the comments section with other subscribers. I find it really helpful to hear about body image from a non-ED perspective, and realise that pretty much everyone struggles with this at some point but they don’t all deal with it by the extreme method of an ED! And although I’m not a parent and likely never will be, the child feeding content has also been surprisingly helpful and interesting both in terms of reflecting back on my own childhood and how things I experienced then relating to food maybe weren’t the most helpful and did play into later life. There are also parallels with learning to feed yourself in recovery as an adult and feeding a child and helping them build a good relationship with food when faced with all the diet culture messaging etc.
Maintenance Phase
I absolutely love this show. There’s a lot of laughter between the co-hosts but the shows are very well-researched so there are a lot of deeeep dives into things that you really never thought you would want to know about but turn out to be fascinating, like the origin of the term snake oil (which was one of my most enjoyed episodes). I guess the premise of the show is de-bunking diet culture, but it’s kind of broadened into general health and wellness trends rather than sticking to weight, body, food type stuff. There are particularly helpful episodes on calories, and also BMI.
Dieticians Unplugged
This is right up there with my favourites and I was really gutted when they decided to take an indefinite break which looks like it will be permanent. It’s similar to Maintenance Phase both in its humour/banter between the hosts, and its anti-diet HAES perspective. Although the hosts of this are both dieticians in larger bodies who have had some kind of ED in the past, and there’s a bit less research focus and more nutrition/IE. The target audience probably is more people in larger bodies, but there’s a lot that anyone can take from it.
Let us eat cake
I first came across this on Instagram during Covid when they hosted a daily snack support session (not that I ever used it for that purpose at the time, I just liked the chat!) and I think this still continues but just once a week now (@eatcakepod). I haven’t listened to the IG live for a long time now but when I did, it was quite a nice little community as you would recognise the handles of the other regular watchers and there would be a bit of chat in the comments. The hosts are two dieticians working on an ED ward in Canada treating both inpatients and outpatients and there’s also an occupational therapist who sometimes comes on. I really like their sense of humour and they manage to keep it light-hearted while still being informative. The episodes are topic based so it’s easy to dip into whatever is relevant, and they’re based on listener questions so it’s very relatable. There were a couple of seasons where they had guests on each week but a lot of them are solo (duo?) episodes as well.
The appetite
This is a really helpful podcast, it’s hosted by 4 practitioners from a treatment centre in Seattle—a psychologist, family therapist, dietician and therapist—and it’s really useful to see the different perspectives of different types of roles that you might come across in an multidisciplinary treatment model. I think this was where I first learned about dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT). They’ve got some good episodes on self-inquiry. Also they have experience of treating athletes, and I think they have a very balanced view on exercise in recovery so would particularly recommend the episodes relating to that. There haven’t been any new episodes for a couple of years now but there is a decent back catalogue.
Go love yourself
This is more of a body positivity podcast although they do talk a bit about disordered eating. One of the hosts is Laura Adlington who reached the final of Bake Off a few years ago, and it’s co-hosted with a friend of hers, so listening to it, you do almost feel like you’re part of their friendship group. It’s great for laughs, trying to accept your body, swimming against diet culture, dealing with low self-esteem and just general life mental health issues. It is more aimed at people in larger bodies but they are so relatable and inclusive that anyone who gets on with their sense of humour will get something from it, it’s sometimes a bit rude for me but I like them enough to overlook it!
Recovery YouTube/TikTok accounts
There were 3 people in particular that I watched on YouTube and honestly I’m still undecided as to how helpful this content was for me to follow. Overall I think it was more helpful than triggering. But I also know that some of my interest was just in the food aspect and watching people eating. I did have some kind of parameters as to what I would let myself watch because most of the recovery accounts are just ED accounts not recovering at all. My criteria were:
- The host(s) must be either at a similar stage to me or ahead of me in recovery
- They must be making progress both in terms of weight and increasing adequacy, variety etc of foods
- Their words being consistent with their actions and results (at least as far as it’s possible to tell from what they choose to share), so it didn’t feel that there were behaviours going on in the background that weren’t being talked about
None of the people who posted the recovery videos I found most helpful do so anymore because they were all ahead of me in recovery and would now describe themselves as fully recovered and wanting to engage in life outside of ED & recovery. I still follow one of them on IG, where she now posts about more general mental health and particularly anxiety and PTSD, and she’s been very inspirational particularly in terms of my own fears over travelling because at the beginning of last year, she couldn’t even walk to the end of her road by herself, and by the summer she had travelled on a plane. And also it’s reassuring to see the reality that life after recovering from an ED doesn’t mean that everything is just easy and there are still a lot of challenges to face (or in some ways even more because the ED is used to shield you from them).
TikTok is even more of a minefield, and in general, I wouldn’t recommend it, unless it’s a platform where you’re already watching unhelpful content and it would be easier to switch to more helpful content rather than just stop. In that case, one account that I would tentatively recommend is Meg Ronnie (meg ronnie @_thewellnessdiaries)—she does some quite illuminating videos of conversations between her and her ED in her head, which are very relatable and hearing it said out loud does make you realise how ridiculous some things sound compared to just accepting them when they pop up in your head.
This turned into rather more of a project than I thought, but going into this detail has actually been helpful for me in picking through what is just recovery content and not that relevant anymore and what is content that I may only have come into contact with because of ED or recovery but actually has wider application and is still interesting to me. Also it made me realise that a lot of my favourites are co-hosted shows and a lot of what I like about them in the relationship between the hosts and how they make you feel part of something and that’s been helpful knowledge to have when looking for new podcasts.
My current new favourite is called Overdue, and it’s hosted by two guys, each week one of them reads a book that they’ve been wanting to but haven’t got around to yet and then explains it to the other one, it’s a really eclectic mix of books ranging from Kafka’s Metamorphosis to the Da Vinci Code, and while I like the concept and topic (they’re American and their perspective on English literature classics is fascinating as they miss a lot of the background information that we would just take for granted, e.g. about places, and it’s made me think differently about what I might be missing in books from other cultures), it’s really their friendship that keeps me drawn in.
At any point in your recovery, if you’ve been watching or listening to a substantial amount of recovery-related content over recent months or years, it might be helpful for you to do something a little like Sarah did: a mini audit of what you’ve been following, what purposes it has served for you, how relevant it is now, and what you want to prioritize or sideline in the months ahead.
If you do this and feel you’d like to share any of your current or former favourites, do get in touch!