A 4-Part Series from Tess Gayhart on Recovery, Repair, and the Truth About Healing

Tess has been part of The Gut Cø community for years — you might recognise her from our Instagram. She’s a long-time customer, a thoughtful voice in the wellness space, and someone we’ve come to know and admire.
 
Recently, she came to us with something deeply personal: a desire to share her recovery journey in full — not just the before and after, but the hard, honest middle.

If you’ve ever struggled with your body, food, or your gut — this is for you. This is the final part.

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How do I round this out? How do I close a series that was never meant to instruct, only to tell the truth as I’ve experienced it?

I’ve written about what it’s like to live with an eating disorder as a shadow as I believe it is not something that vanishes, but something that shifts position depending on the light. I’ve written about the gut–brain connection, not as a trend or a wellness catchphrase, but as a lived negotiation: the constant interpretation of signals I was once taught to override. I’ve even tried, at times, to think about how I might dissuade others from walking this path, though experience has taught me how futile that can be. People always do what they are compelled to do. Desire has never been logical.

Culture has spent years circling the idea of body positivity—stretching it, flattening it, branding it—until it became both unavoidable and oddly hollow. Now we’ve pivoted again, at least here in the United States, toward pharmaceutical silence. The dominating presence of GLP-1 drugs is everywhere, each ad promising relief from “food noise,” as though hunger were a flaw, and appetite not a language but a problem to be solved.

The marketing of these drugs is careful. It doesn’t say thinness outright. It says health. It says relief. It implies that weight gain is not only undesirable, but pathological—something to be corrected before it interferes with self-control. The message is subtle enough to sound benevolent and that’s what makes it feel so dangerous. At least, from my perspective. From where I sit, it’s that same “food noise,” that continues to present itself as the part of disorder I’d give anything to eliminate today… and by no means would I be encouraged or directed to taking such drugs to cure it. And just for clarity, I have no desire to.

There are many aspects of my condition that I live with now, peacefully. I am more comfortable knowing that I may never have a reliable sense of how my body and face look, either to myself or to others. I know that when my stomach is unsettled, when there is that familiar rock in my gut, my thoughts will become tighter and more obsessive. I understand the pattern well enough not to panic.

I’m also aware that the routine I’ve built, which is healthy and unproblematic, is something dubbed “controlled.” And that’s fair. I’m not here to suggest I’ve arrived at some perfected state, or that I don’t carry a certain advantage given my history or, more likely, my genetics. 

Nor do I believe I hold a moral or medical position strong enough to tell someone else what they should or shouldn’t do with their body. That has never been my interest. My argument is not against individuals, or consumers, or people seeking relief. My argument is not even against the existence of these drugs as they can be incredible tools for people who really need them.

It’s the marketing. It’s the way we talk about them, and more importantly, how they position us against a natural instinct that, until recently, was never seen as a negative.
We talk openly now about how social media and constant online engagement have contributed to rising depression and anxiety. How endless comparison, imagined intimacy, and the hollow validation of a like have left us feeling more inadequate, not less. We accept that overconsumption in this context has consequences.

And yet, when it comes to food, hunger, appetite, and appearance, we refuse to apply the same logic. We live in a culture that documents what we eat in a day, that photographs meals as proof of virtue or restraint, that jokes casually about “his and her meals” or “girl dinners.” Eating disorder or not, no one escapes this saturation. Food noise isn’t just internal anymore, it’s everywhere.

And still, we insist the problem is the signal itself. The cue from the body asking for something.

No wonder nothing feels enjoyable anymore.

I don’t fault anyone who wants peace from the constant pressure of consumption. I understand that desire intimately. But I’m wary of any solution that asks us to disappear a part of ourselves in order to feel acceptable again. I’ve lived that life. I know its weight.

Recovery, if it has taught me anything, has taught me this: the work is not silencing. It’s listening. It’s learning to relate differently to sensation rather than treating it as an error.

Years ago, after another relapse, I had an accidental encounter with a cooking show that changed the course of my recovery. What struck me wasn’t technique or nutrition—it was pleasure. I saw someone eating not to manage herself, not to optimize or correct, but simply to enjoy. For the first time, food wasn’t framed as the source of my unhappiness. It was a conduit for memory, relationship, and a whole practice toward connection.

That relationship has never been easy to build, especially now, against all the noise. But it’s the only one that ever loosened food’s grip on my life.

So when I met my editor at a café bookstore earlier this month to discuss the release of my book—both of us holding the proof in our hands, flipping through pages shaped by more than a decade of reflection—she asked me, simply: What do you hope this inspires? A healthy body? A healthy diet?

To my own surprise, I answered without hesitation:
Healthy conversations.

That is a commitment Pernille—and every member of her team at The Gut Cø—has made as well.

So maybe this is how I close it. Not with advice. Not with answers. But with a refusal. Our goal is not quiet. Health does not come from suppression, nor from forgetting what our bodies have already taught us. It comes from something deeper—something felt first in the gut, and only later understood by the heart.

Thank you to Pernille and Misty, and every member of this community who has made space for these words. Being able to sit with discomfort—to see it not as a failure of discipline, but as evidence of being alive inside a communicating body—has been the most meaningful recovery I know.

You can purchase Tess' book Memories of Chocolate Cake here