Open access. The field of eating disorders has notable problems of definition. For this year’s Editorial we were stimulated to focus on this because it is both the year of pre-release of the 11th Edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) [1] and PH was invited to present a paper on recovery in eating disorders. In doing so it became clear that there is little consensus for definitions for recovery [2] or more broadly other important clinical phases of anorexia nervosa. In particular, definitions of severe and/or enduring illness are elusive and the concept of ‘severe and enduring’ is frequently misunderstood in terms of its conceptualisation [3, 4]. Such lack of definitional clarity is a problem for researchers, but even more so for clinicians who become confused, and most importantly for those living with the eating disorder.