An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia


Emma Woolf - 2012
    At the age of 32, after ten years of hiding from the truth, Emma Woolf finally decided it was time to face the biggest challenge of her life. Addicted to hunger, exercise and control, she was juggling a full-blown eating disorder with a successful career, functioning on an apple a day. Having met the man of her dreams (and wanting a future and a baby together), she embarked on the hardest struggle of all: to beat anorexia. It was time to start eating again, to regain her fertility and her curves, to throw out the size-zero clothes and face her food fears. And as if that wasn't enough pressure, Emma also took the decision to write about her progress in a weekly column for The Times. Honest, hard-hitting and yet romantic, An Apple a Day is a manifesto for the modern generation to stop starving and start living; a compelling and life affirming true story of love and recovery.

Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia


Stephanie Covington Armstrong - 2009
    She grew up poor and hungry in the inner city. Foster care, sexual abuse, and overwhelming insecurity defined her early years. But the biggest difference is her race: Stephanie is black. In this moving first-person narrative, Armstrong describes her struggle as a black woman with a disorder consistently portrayed as a white woman’s problem. Trying to escape her selfhatred and her food obsession by never slowing down, Stephanie becomes trapped in a downward spiral. Finally, she can no longer deny that she will die if she doesn’t get help, overcome her shame, and conquer her addiction to using food as a weapon against herself. For more information about the book and eating disorders, visit www.notallblackgirls.com

Thin


Lauren Greenfield - 2006
    Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women who are suffering from various afflictions. We meet 15-year-old Brittany, who is convinced that being thin is the only way to gain acceptance among her peers; Alisa, a divorced mother of two whose hatred of her body is manifested in her relentless compulsion to purge; Shelly, who has been battling anorexia for six years and has had a feeding tube surgically implanted in her stomach; as well as many others. Alongside these personal stories are essays on the sociology and science of eating disorders by renowned researchers Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Dr. David Herzog, and Dr. Michael Strober. These intimate photographs, frank voices, and thoughtful discussions combine to make Thin not only the first book of its kind but also a portrait of profound understanding.

The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health


Karen R. Koenig - 2007
    This unique workbook takes on the seven emotions that plague problem eaters — guilt, shame, helplessness, anxiety, disappointment, confusion, and loneliness — and shows readers how to embrace and learn from their feelings. Written with honesty and humor, the book explains how to identify and label a specific emotion, the function of that emotion, and why the emotion drives food and eating problems. Each chapter has two sets of exercises: experiential exercises that relate to emotions and eating, and questionnaires that provoke thinking about and understanding feelings and their purpose. Supplemental pages help readers identify emotions and chart emotional development. The final part of the workbook focuses on strategies for disconnecting feeling from food, discovering emotional triggers, and using one’s feelings to get what one wants out of life.

The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves


Stephen Grosz - 2012
    These beautifully rendered tales illuminate the fundamental pathways of life from birth to death.A woman finds herself daydreaming as she returns home from a business trip; a young man loses his wallet. We learn, too, from more extreme examples: the patient who points an unloaded gun at a police officer, the compulsive liar who convinces his wife he's dying of cancer. The stories invite compassionate understanding, suggesting answers to the questions that compel and disturb us most about love and loss, parents and children, work and change. The resulting journey will spark new ideas about who we are and why we do what we do.

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works


Evelyn Tribole - 1995
    But the problem is not you, it's that dieting, with its emphasis on rules and regulations, has stopped you from listening to your body. Written by two prominent nutritionists, "Intuitive Eating" focuses on nurturing your body rather than starving it, encourages natural weight loss, and helps you find the weight you were meant to be. Learn: *How to reject diet mentality forever*How our three Eating Personalities define our eating difficulties*How to feel your feelings without using food*How to honor hunger and feel fullness*How to follow the ten principles of Intuitive Eating, step-by-step*How to achieve a new and safe relationship with food and, ultimately, your body With much more compassionate, thoughtful advice on satisfying, healthy living, this newly revised edition also includes a chapter on how the Intuitive Eating philosophy can be a safe and effective model on the path to recovery from an eating disorder.

Bodies


Susie Orbach - 2009
    Here Susie Orbach explains the origins of this condition, and examines its implications for all of us. Challenging the Freudian view that bodily disorders originate and progress in the mind, Orbach argues that we should look at self-mutilation, obesity, anorexia, and plastic surgery on their own terms, through a reading of the body itself. Incorporating the latest research from neuropsychology, as well as case studies from her own practice, she traces many of these fixations back to the relationship between mothers and babies, to anxieties that are transferred unconsciously, at a very deep level, between the two. Orbach reveals how vulnerable our bodies are, how susceptible to every kind of negative stimulus--from a nursing infant sensing a mother's discomfort to a grown man or woman feeling inadequate because of a model on a billboard. That vulnerability makes the stakes right now tremendously high.In the past several decades, a globalized media has overwhelmed us with images of an idealized, westernized body, and conditioned us to see any exception to that ideal as a problem. The body has become an object, a site of production and commerce in and of itself. Instead of our bodies making things, we now make our bodies. Susie Orbach reveals the true dimensions of the crisis, and points the way toward healing and acceptance.

Breaking Free from Emotional Eating


Geneen Roth - 1984
    Geneen Roth, whose Feeding the Hungry Heart and When FoodIs Love have brought understanding and acceptance to tens of thousands ofreaders over the last two decades, here outlines her proven program forresolving the conflicts at the root of overeating. Using simple techniquesdeveloped in her highly successful seminars, she offers reassuring,practical advice.

Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight


Linda Bacon - 2014
    That much is true—but the epidemic is NOT obesity. The real crisis lies in the toxic stigma placed on certain bodies and the impact of living with inequality—not the numbers on a scale. In a mad dash to shrink our bodies, many of us get so caught up in searching for the perfect diet, exercise program, or surgical technique that we lose sight of our original goal: improved health and well-being. Popular methods for weight loss don’t get us there and lead many people to feel like failures when they can’t match unattainable body standards. It’s time for a cease-fire in the war against obesity.Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor’s Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health. They also help make sense of how poverty and oppression—such as racism, homophobia, and classism—affect life opportunity, self-worth, and even influence metabolism.Body insecurity is rampant, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s time to overcome our culture’s shame and distress about weight, to get real about inequalities and health, and to show every body respect.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Techniques for Retraining Your Brain


Jason M. Satterfield - 2015
    CBT illuminates the links between thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical health and uses those connections to develop concrete plans for self-improvement. Built on a solid foundation of neurological and behavioral research, CBT is an approach almost anyone can use for promoting greater mental health and improving quality of life. In 24 engaging half-hour lectures, you'll build a robust and effective self-improvement toolkit with the expert guidance of Professor Satterfield of the University of California, San Francisco. You will explore CBT's roots in Socratic and stoic philosophy, build a toolkit of CBT techniques, and hear about the latest research about its outcomes. Additionally this intriguing and practical course allows you to take on the role of medical student, physician, psychologist, and patient. Throughout the course you'll explore issues that cause people to seek out therapy. In some cases you'll get to hear Dr. Satterfield working with a patient, and in others you'll be delving into research to find what causes issues and how CBT helps to resolve them. Everyone has something about their life that they would like to improve. With the tools in CBT and the desire to make your situation better, you can create lasting change in your life.

The Secret Language of Eating Disorders: How You Can Understand and Work to Cure Anorexia and Bulimia


Peggy Claude-Pierre - 1997
    In this extremely constructive book, she offers incredible insights into the mind of the sufferer and the myths of eating disorders."      --Keith J. Karren, Ph.D., Department Chair, Health Sciences, Brigham Young University"Peggy Claude-Pierre is a warrior--ferocious and relentless--whose work has rescued a decade of sufferers."                        --Edward Feller, M.D., F.A.C.P., Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Brown University School of Medicine"Peggy Claude-Pierre has created a paradigm shift in the way we view and treat anorexia. Peggy has shifted the focus of care from that of controlling the symptoms of disordered eating to healing the negativity that would otherwise plague the individual for the rest of his or her life. I have developed the utmost respect for her, for I realize that she has translated the secret language of anorexia. Now it is up to us to use the knowledge she has revealed." --Daniel J. Smith, M.D."Peggy Claude-Pierre's work begins where attachment to the limiting obstacles of theory end. She has brought back from the dead many young lives the world deemed hopeless. . . . There are many who possess the title of 'doctor' who have never come close to her incredible example of the selfless healer." --Craig T. Pratt, M.D., Chief, Division of Addiction Medicine, Grant-Riverside Methodist Hospital

When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress


Gabor Maté - 2003
    With great compassion and erudition, Gabor Maté demystifies medical science and, as he did in Scattered Minds, invites us all to be our own health advocates.

Skin Game


Caroline Kettlewell - 1999
    Skin Game employs clear language and candid reflection to grant general readers as well as students an uncensored profile of a complex and unsettling disorder. "[This] mesmeric memoir examines the obsession with cutting that is believed to afflict somewhere around two million Americans, nearly all of them female," Francine Prose noted in Elle. "[Kettlewell's] language soars and its intensity deepens whenever she is recalling the lost joys and the thrilling sensation of sharp steel against her tender skin."

You're Not Crazy And You're Not Alone


Stacey Robbins - 2013
     Stacey explores the common areas that women with Hashi's struggle: like perfectionism and self-rejection -- and common past experiences -- like abuse or injury. Stacey inspires women to look at their lives, and Hashimoto's differently, and to use this diagnosis as an opportunity for inner healing, greater happiness, and loving themselves.

Eating With Your Anorexic: A Mother's Memoir


Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh - 2004
    New foreword, updates, and reflections by the author on a decade of advocacy in the eating disorder world.