Reclaiming Want: From Restriction to Reaching Out in Eating Disorder Recovery

The Rules We Learned About Wanting

Growing up, what were the rules you learned about wanting?
What was acceptable to want? What was off-limits? Did you secretly reach for things when no one was looking?

The feeling of wanting — whether hunger, longing, craving, or desire — is one of the most human experiences we have. Yet many of us learned early that wanting itself was wrong. Diet culture deepens this wound, teaching us that what we crave is shameful, indulgent, or a sign of weakness. We were told that to be “good” we must override our bodies and suppress our needs.

This collective shaming of desire doesn’t just shape our relationship with food; it seeps into how we relate to love, belonging, and authenticity. For so many, worthiness became tied to not needing at all.

The Developmental Movement of Reach

From the moment we are born, the body knows how to reach. Reaching is a developmental movement pattern that connects us to the world: extending our hand, our eyes, our voice, our whole being toward nourishment, safety, and love.

When wanting is shamed, our capacity to reach gets stunted. We collapse inward instead of expanding outward. We cut ourselves off from connection physically and emotionally.

Reclaiming our ability to reach is central to recovery. It’s about remembering that wanting is natural, that reaching connects us to life and our inherent curiosity and inspiration, and that the act of extending outward is what allows us to form relationships.

From Restriction to Receiving

Recovery is not about denying desire. It is about moving from restriction to receiving, from protection to connection, from bracing to embracing. This is the journey of softening shame and expanding our capacity to receive.

This transformation is gradual. Like a clenched fist that slowly opens into a palm, the body learns to hold more of life with receptivity and trust.

Plant medicines and psychedelics often mirror this process. In heightened states of sensitivity, the body feels sensation, memory, and emotion more acutely. The challenge and the invitation are to stay open, to allow, to practice embracing the fullness of life rather than contracting away. When held safely, these experiences can teach us resilience, emotional regulation, and the embodied trust that supports lasting change.

Reclaiming Want

To reclaim want is to reclaim life.

Recovery asks us to honour wanting as natural, to relearn reaching as safe, and to remember that receiving does not make us weak — it makes us whole.

The more we can practice reaching out towards the soul nourishment that is already here (for us reaching out to us!), the easier it becomes to reach for the food that we truly want (rather than what diet culture stipulates). 

When we reach for what want, and we sense how we are supported in this act of sincere reaching, this leads to a sense of greater trust, satisfaction, and fulfillment. 

In receiving what is coming towards us without shame or needing to hide or pretend, we open up our capacity to give.

Receiving and giving is an act of extending out into the world and out into relationship. Our reach can be reciprocal and can nourish the whole. 

Cultivate the clarity on what you want. You are deserving of what you want. 

Reach out.
To food that truly nourishes you.
To the hands that want to hold you.
To your own inner voice reminding you that you are deserving of what you want.

This is not about playing small. It is about letting in the fullness of life, one reach at a time.

If you are curious to explore a somatic-based approach to eating disorder recovery, you are welcome to reach out to me. I offer one-on-one and group-based ED recovery support, held by embodiment principles, Polyvagal Theory, and developmental movements. You can schedule a free 30-min call to discuss ways of working together.