The Broken Brain · Popped Collar Productions

The Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery with Mallary Tenore Tarpley

·45 min·4 clips

Mallary developed anorexia at 12 after her mother died, using control over her body to cope with loss.

This episode features an interview with Mallary Tenore Tarpley, author of "Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery," discussing the nuanced realities of recovery. Host Dwight engages Tarpley, who draws from her personal history with anorexia nervosa that began after her mother's death from cancer. Tarpley explains her book aims to fill a gap by exploring the "middle place," a liminal space between acute sickness and full recovery not often represented in literature. She critiques the field's historical push for a binary "full recovery" and mentions stigmatizing terms like "quasi recovery." Tarpley notes that while treatment has improved, many centers still lack honest conversations about slips and relapses. She highlights that medical doctors often receive zero to two hours of training on eating disorders, impacting diagnosis for the estimated 30 million Americans affected. The conversation covers how stereotypes focusing on "skinny, white, affluent girls" lead to overlooked cases among men, people of color, and transgender individuals. Tarpley shares how societal messages, like 1990s "fat camp" ads in *Seventeen* magazine, contributed to her early understanding of body image. She discusses the harm of weight-based compliments, which can reinforce disordered behaviors. The interview explores the role of control, with Tarpley describing her eating disorder as a misguided attempt to gain stability after her mother's loss. She connects her mother's medical diagnosis of "anorexia" due to illness to her own later development of anorexia nervosa. Interesting insights include the shift in treatment from calorie-counting to discussing food types and "fear foods." Tarpley cites research showing that achieving a body's historical weight percentile, not just a minimum, better sustains recovery. She introduces the concept of "restorative narratives," which focus on messy, ongoing recovery rather than simple triumph. The episode also touches on harm reduction models, comparing their more established use in addiction treatment to emerging applications in eating disorder care. The tone is educational and conversational, blending personal storytelling with broader societal analysis. It maintains a supportive and informative style while tackling complex, sometimes triggering subject matter. Listeners interested in mental health narratives, recovery frameworks, and critiques of medical and cultural systems would appreciate this episode. Those seeking a strictly clinical overview or who find discussions of eating disorders personally triggering might choose to skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded eating-disorder conversation about the people medicine still overlooks.

By the time this conversation is done, the subject feels bigger than a single diagnosis. It keeps returning to who gets missed: men and boys, people of color, and the ways medical training can still leave doctors leaning on old assumptions instead of actual care.

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Why you'd press play

You want a careful look at eating disorders and who gets missed.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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