My dad loves food–it has been his love language to prepare and serve our family food ever since I was born. He has always encouraged my sister and I to try new foods, to enjoy meals with the family, and to embrace food from different cultures.

So when I started a raw food diet, my dad didn’t know how to respond. And when my mom told him I was struggling with an eating disorder over a year later, he was at a loss.

My dad’s love language for his daughter seemed to be crumbling.

My dad prevailed through it all. Our relationship is strong, if not stronger after I overcame my eating disorder (and stopping the raw food diet).

But the eating disorder still stumps my dad. He doesn’t “get it.” He tries, I’ll give you that. I had a long conversation with him about it last summer, which didn’t get us much anywhere. But it was a good effort on his part and a great way for me to practice being more open with him about it.

Eating disorders are tricky to understand if you haven’t experienced one yourself. Before I even had an eating disorder, I thought that anyone struggling with this was going the “easy” way out to lose weight by purging, or that they were just being silly for not eating enough (I hate to even write any of that).

Why can’t they just eat healthy food and exercise? I thought.

My dad always encouraged our family to eat heartily growing up. He applauded us when we ate slowly and enjoyed our food, had us sit together as a family for dinner each night, and never said “no” to going out to eat. He made it something of a contest between my sister and I to see who would try the “new” food at the tabled first. Whoever did, received praise. He also encouraged us to help him cook dinner, prepare dishes like pasta with tomato and cheese sauce, angel-hair noodles with chicken, broccoli, and carrots, or grilled chicken legs with vegetables and biscuits.

“Is this a good food or bad food?” my sister and I would ask our parents.

“Anything is bad if you eat too much of it,” my parents would say. “Everything in moderation.”

“Everything in moderation”—my dad’s life motto. Even as I dove into my fruit diet later in my eating disorder experience, my dad continued to preach moderation. “Cafeteria-style,” he calls it—a little bit of this and a little bit of that to enjoy life. This, I feel, has made him a healthy man. His healthy mindset and love for food keeps him healthier than anyone with the “purest” diet. This, I believe, shows the importance of having a healthy mentality with food that I never understood or believed in until now.

It has been difficult to help my dad to understand what I’ve gone through, but our relationship is better with my openness. More than anything, I appreciate his support and listening ear.