You can want both. The difficulty has always been what happens when weight loss becomes the goal — because recovery generally means eating enough, reliably, without rules, and pursuing weight loss usually means the opposite.
That tension is real, and it's why you'll often be told you have to choose. But the picture has changed in the last few years, and most of the advice out there hasn't caught up.
Why recovery and weight loss have traditionally pulled against each other
Restriction is the engine of binge eating.
Not the only cause, and not true for everyone — but reliably enough that it's the first thing most eating disorder therapists look at. You eat less than you need. Your body responds. Eventually something gives, usually in the evening, usually with the foods you'd ruled out. Then comes the shame, then comes the resolve to be stricter tomorrow, and the whole thing starts again.
Recovery generally means interrupting that: eating enough, at regular intervals, without a list of banned foods. Which is more or less the opposite of every weight loss method most people have tried.
So the advice became: choose recovery first. Deal with the eating, and let your weight do whatever it does.
That advice is sound, and for many people it's the only thing that has ever worked. It also asks something enormous of someone who has spent thirty years being told her body is a problem.
What restriction actually does
It's worth being specific, because "restriction" sounds like something dramatic and often isn't.
- Skipping breakfast because you're busy
- Having a coffee instead of lunch
- Eating "well" until six o'clock
- Deciding certain foods can't be in the house
- Planning to start again on Monday
None of that looks like a diet. All of it is restriction, and any of it can set up an evening you didn't see coming. Most people I work with are restricting far more than they realise, and are baffled by why the evenings keep going wrong.
What's changed: GLP-1 medication
Here's where the old rule stops fitting neatly.
A woman on a GLP-1 medication may well be losing weight without the restriction that historically drove the bingeing. Her appetite is reduced pharmacologically rather than by willpower. She isn't white-knuckling past hunger — for many people the hunger simply isn't there in the same way.
That's a genuinely different situation to the one the traditional advice was written for. It doesn't mean the underlying patterns have gone anywhere. But it does mean that "you can't pursue weight loss and recover" is a rule written for a world that has partly changed.
Which leaves a lot of women in a confusing position: losing weight, still bingeing, and being told by one side of the internet that they've abandoned recovery and by the other that they should just be pleased.
The thing to keep an eye on
There's a finding worth knowing about.
A 2026 systematic review in eClinicalMedicine, pooling twenty-five randomised controlled trials, found that GLP-1 medications reduced binge eating and emotional eating — and increased dietary restraint.
In other words, people on the medication were restricting more.
For most people that may be unremarkable. For someone whose binge eating has always been driven by restriction, it's the thing to watch. Reduced appetite makes it very easy to under-eat without noticing, and the consequences of that don't always show up straight away.
The authors were careful — the studies carried a high risk of bias and better research is needed. But it's a reasonable thing to have on your radar.
So where does that leave you?
Roughly here:
Wanting to lose weight doesn't disqualify you from working on your eating. Plenty of the women I work with want both, and pretending otherwise just means they don't mention it.
Making weight loss the goal of the therapy is a different matter. If the measure of success is the number, then every strategy gets judged against it, and restriction wins that argument every time. That's how the cycle rebuilds itself.
The two can sit alongside each other. Your prescriber and your dietitian can look after the physical side. Therapy looks at why the eating happens, what it's doing for you, and what you've come to believe it says about you.
I won't make you promises about your weight. Nobody honestly can.
If this is where you are
I work with women whose relationship with food has been the one thing they could never crack — in midlife, often recognising ADHD traits, sometimes taking or coming off a weight-loss medication.
I'm not anti-medication and I'm not anti-weight-loss. There are no meal plans here, no weigh-ins, and no diagnosis needed to start.
See the ways to work together, or book a free 30-minute call. Nothing is decided on the call.
Claire Feldman is an eating disorder therapist and the founder of Eatology, working online across the UK and Ireland. She is registered with the BACP (membership number 00727765) with specialist training in ADHD and binge eating, CBT, bariatric counselling and obesity practice. This article is general information and not medical or dietetic advice.
Frequently asked questions
Can you lose weight while recovering from binge eating?
It's possible, and it's complicated. The difficulty is that most weight loss methods rely on restriction, and restriction is usually what drives binge eating. Weight can change during recovery — the issue is what happens when losing it becomes the target.
Does wanting to lose weight mean I'm not really in recovery?
No. Wanting to be smaller after decades in a culture that rewards it is an entirely reasonable thing to want. What matters is whether that want is running the show.
Is it different if I'm taking a GLP-1?
In some ways, yes. Weight loss on medication often doesn't involve the restriction that historically drove bingeing. The patterns underneath don't disappear, and research has found dietary restraint rising on these medications — which is worth watching if restriction has always been your trigger.
Should I stop trying to lose weight?
That's your decision and not one a therapist should make for you. What I'd say is that if every previous attempt has ended in a binge, it may be worth understanding why before the next one.
Will a therapist judge me for wanting to lose weight?
Some might. I won't. A significant number of the women I work with want both weight loss and a better relationship with food, and it's more useful to talk about that openly than to have it sitting unmentioned in the room.
