It has been over a year since I wrote my first article on this topic, and I am still somewhat inextricably linked to the MinnieMaud method of recovery, however much I try to disentangle myself from it. I thought I would talk about this topic again because my views have continued to change as I grow and develop as a person, and also learn new things in the recovery community. Being in remission has given me the motivation to celebrate my own recovery and give opinions and advice based upon my own journey, but it has also given me the ability to recognise that we all take different paths to get to a full recovery. Even the concept of “full recovery” in itself is individual for each person, and the goals we wish to reach can be quite different. Some people in recovery are not able to yet reach for a full recovery. Others take different routes to reach the same destination. What people define as “remission” or “full recovery” varies, and that’s okay. We are all allowed space to determine what it is that we believe, and what we want for ourselves. We are allowed space to express what we want for others, but we have to respect what people want for themselves over our own views of what would be best for them. The only decisions we can really make are for ourselves.

As I have progressed and developed in my remission, my advice has been less “Gwyneth Olwyn” (creator of MinnieMaud) and more personalised to my own individual views and experiences. In a nutshell, my views on MinnieMaud are that it is an invaluable recovery method for many people during the early to middle stages of recovery and can help inform the rest of the recovery process whilst you learn to navigate your own path leading into remission. Eventually you will find your own version of remission and start living your recovered life in the way that works for you. MinnieMaud can still be useful then, but your recovery/remission will now be tailored to you as an individual. I think that the black and white approach to information and advice is apt for the unwell; for the people who need firm, unflinching boundaries between them and their eating disorder (and boy, did that help me when I needed it). It gives permission to do the things that society forbids – things that profoundly help so many people in their recoveries (e.g. freedom around food, encouraging the idea that all food is good food, resting and repairing, breaking unhealthy relationships with exercise by total cessation of activity, eating enough, always responding to any hunger however much that means eating, accepting your body at any weight, shape, or size etc). It outright rejects any and all unhealthy societal views in order to promote a healthy relationship with food, exercise, and the body. Is Gwyneth Olwyn the only person to encourage all these viewpoints? No, not by a long shot. There are a huge amount of people in the recovery community, body positivity community, and health at every size community (all of which overlap quite frequently) that share and promote these views and give advice accordingly. However, Gwyneth Olwyn is, as far as I know, the only person who has taken these viewpoints and created a structured, research-informed recovery method for those with restrictive eating disorders. The fundamental difference that people see is that Olwyn has created a set of guidelines, and given these views a name; made them into a method of recovery. She has solidified a huge amount of people’s views into “rules for recovery”. Now this irks some people because they don’t like the black and white; they don’t like the “you need to/must do this in order to recover”, and I entirely understand that. As I spend more time in remission and grow and develop as a person and as a member of the ED recovery community, I have become aware that this way of thinking and dishing out advice becomes problematic especially as people come out of the initial stages of recovery and start to make their own way towards remission. People start coming out of the very necessary and standardised initial parts of recovery and start to develop personal goals and targets and outcomes and values and opinions and moral standpoints and….and and and. I could go on. I think that to reach remission there are fundamental aspects of recovery that need to happen – but again, these are my own individual views on what remission is – and those are:

1. Regaining normalised and reliable hunger cues in order to eat intuitively and respond to the body’s request for energy, always.
2.  Being able to eat any and all food without anxiety, fear, or guilt (seeing food as food, seeing it as nourishment, enjoyment, and just another part of life rather than immediately worrying about weight gain, compensation, exercise, or seeing certain foods as “bad” or “unhealthy” etc).
3. Being able to eat when not hungry (for example, in social situations) without anxiety, fear, or guilt.
4. Being able to eat without compensation.
5. Building a healthy relationship with exercise (moving the body primarily for enjoyment not for burning calories or altering the body).
6. Managing or resolving underlying issues that contributed to the cause of the eating disorder.
7. Working towards body acceptance and acknowledging that your body’s natural weight is outside of your control and to obsessively focus on controlling it is to be disordered.
8. Being able to manage stressful situations without lapsing,  and using healthy coping mechanisms in response to stress and anxiety or being able to pull yourself out of a lapse very quickly because you are perceptive about your behavioural reactions and then use healthy coping mechanisms.

Outside of that are a wealth of details within recovery that are different for every single person. For example, whilst I feel assured in giving out the advice that someone in recovery should not make drastic decisions around their diet (such as becoming vegan or vegetarian), when that person is in remission, I am unable to say whether that person would become triggered into relapse by making that choice. I have a fully recovered friend who has become vegan. I myself am now a pescatarian. But I have also known people who have made changes to their diet and spiralled back down into illness as the elimination of certain foods opened the door for the eating disorder to slip in through. For some people it triggers those restrictive thoughts, and for others, opens up new doors to try new foods. Since I have had to become gluten free for medical reasons, I have tried and discovered a wealth of new wonderful foods (although I do mourn my loss in the bread department), and find joy in doing so. Others might find this a slippery slope into restriction without the right mindset and support. Another example might be yoga. Yoga might help one person relax and fight anxiety, whereas for someone else it might be another form of burning calories or subscribing to an obsession with “health”. There are a million examples of things that affect different people in different ways in recovery, and I do think that MinnieMaud forgets this. Its rigid blanket statements and black and white style are appropriate for most people in the initial stages of recovery, and even for some further on, but are not so relevant to those moving towards their own individual destinations, and for those in remission itself.

I reference the site so frequently because many people that I talk to are in the initial stages of recovery, and I think that everyone, whatever stage they are at in their journey, could benefit from the views expressed there in regards to body positivity, health at every size, freedom around food, and a no bullshit approach to exercise. I think MinnieMaud is fantastic, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that it is flawed. Because the MinnieMaud site (Your Eatopia) informed so much of my recovery and started me off on my journey towards discovering body positivity and health at every size, I wrote a lot about it, and at first when my blog turned into an advice blog, I was regurgitating everything Olwyn said. Because of that, I have struggled to separate myself from it in the eyes of my audience. I have attempted to distance myself as being seen as a “minion of MinnieMaud” and be viewed instead as a standalone person who references MinnieMaud and its recommendations, but is not solely about MinnieMaud. Like The Fuck It Diet, I want MinnieMaud to just be another site that I reference – albeit it is the site I reference the most as it is so concise and informative and is the one site aimed so specifically at restrictive eating disorders and the recovery process. Hopefully one day, the association between myself and MinnieMaud won’t be so strong, and I will be able to promote the MinnieMaud method alongside my own indvidual views and that of many other people.

I advocate freedom around food, health at every size, the rejection of diet culture, moving your body in a mentally and physically healthy way in remission, body acceptance and positivity, self love, eating what you want when you want, personal growth and development, resolutions or management of toxic situations, relationships, internal beliefs, and/or experiences with the help of professional support, and building and living a full, rich life outside of your eating disorder. Does MinnieMaud advocate this too? Yes. But it is only one website amongst many that does so. Olwyn is one person amongst millions holding these beliefs. I am advocating all of them, not just MinnieMaud. I am advocating all of the incredible women and men fighting for these views to be the norm; for diet culture to be destroyed; for people of all weights, shapes, and sizes to be accepted as equally beautiful and equally potentially healthy; for a recovery from restrictive eating disorders not informed by our unhealthy, toxic societal views on food and exercise and weight. I advocate Caroline of The Fuck It Diet, Amelielee of LetsRecover, Bodyposipanda, Nourishandeat, and Goofy_ginger of Instagram, Harriet Brown of Brave Girl Eating, Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat, Kate of FYourED, Michelle of The Fat Nutritionist, Sandy of Junk Food Science, Tetyana and Andrea of Science of Eating Disorders, Summer Innanen of Rebelle Radio, Rachel W. Cole of her website of that name, and those who run Big Fat Science. I also advocate Gwyneth Olwyn of Your Eatopia, and I agree with the method of recovery that she promotes, as I also agree with the way of eating that Caroline and Rachel W. Cole promote. They are slightly different, as are my own views, but we all agree on some basic fundamentals.

I am not here to say that MinnieMaud in and of itself is the only way to recover, but I do think that its basic principles are needed for a full recovery: basic principles that are supported in many other places, not just Your Eatopia. Am I here to say that MinnieMaud is the only method of recovery that works? No, but it does work. It may not work for everyone, but as recovery methods go, its success rate looks pretty good when you look at the multitude of anecdotal evidence. There is no one recovery method that works for everyone. Success rates for any treatment for eating disorders are mediocre at best, so let’s not slam a recovery method that so many people (including myself) have used successfully to help them in their journey, whether that is using it fully or taking bits from it that inform their own personal path to becoming well.

This will be the last time focusing solely on MinnieMaud, because I am not a spokesperson for that method of recovery. I am someone who used MinnieMaud to help my recovery. I am someone who agrees with its main principles, and I am someone who refers to it and uses information from it in order to try and help other people.

MinnieMaud is, in my opinion, a good way to recover. It is not the only way to recover. However, I believe that its underlying principles are needed for a full recovery. Those underlying principles are not exclusive to MinnieMaud. They are not the entirety of MinnieMaud. They are basic principles that underlie the method and are shared by many other people. MinnieMaud was built on top of those principles, and the nitty gritty details of MinnieMaud are not things that I think are always necessary to recovery – I think that is individual. I think that is as clear as I can make it.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me through the contact section above, or leave a comment on this article.