Book picks similar to
Starved by Michael Somers
ya
eating-disorders
mental-illness
bulimia
The Time in Between: A Memoir of Hunger and Hope
Nancy Tucker - 2014
She thought, and thought, and then, though she didn’t know why, she wrote: ‘I want to be thin.’Over the next twelve years, she developed anorexia nervosa, was hospitalised, and finally swung the other way towards bulimia nervosa. She left school, rejoined school; went in and out of therapy; ebbed in and out of life. From the bleak reality of a body breaking down to the electric mental highs of starvation, hers has been a life held in thrall by food.Told with remarkable insight, dark humour and acute intelligence, The Time in Between is a profound, important window into the workings of an unquiet mind – a Wasted for the 21st century.
Ana: A Memoir of Anorexia Nervosa
Syanne Centeno - 2018
If I was starving, then that meant that I did not have to face reality. I did not have to think. When you’re starving, you cannot think. Every day feels like an out-of-body experience, and everything sounds like you are swimming underwater. When you have Anorexia Nervosa, you aren’t living… you are merely existing. You become a walking corpse of the person you once were. Your life becomes about finding ways to satisfy your disorder and nothing else really matters. You know that there is a chance that you won’t wake up the next morning, but keeping the Anorexia alive is more important than keeping yourself alive. You convince yourself that as long as you are hungry that somehow everything is okay. This was my life for 10 ½ years. My name is Syanne Centeno and I found Anorexia as an eight-year-old little girl. You could say that I accidentally stumbled upon this illness, or maybe IT actually found ME. I didn’t know what Anorexia was, and had never heard of it. I actually didn’t hear the term “Anorexia Nervosa” until I was 14, but had unknowingly been engaging in eating disorder behavior for years prior. Anorexia is such a complex, perplexing disorder. Trying to explain why I developed this as a child is nearly impossible. The only thing I can do is write down my experience and take you on a journey in my shoes in hopes that this will help someone somewhere understand the realities of living with an eating disorder." This is the account of Syanne's journey with severe Anorexia Nervosa (which she named "Ana"), a deadly psychiatric illness that haunts thousands of young girls and women each year. Throughout her honest, gut-wrenching tale she relives the horror of battling "Ana" for over a decade starting at the age of just eight-years-old, and how it nearly took her life. Along with Anorexia Nervosa, Syanne speaks of the other mental illness's she struggled with such as Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, and self- mutilation. Without holding back, Syanne highlights the realities of living with an eating disorder, and what it took for her to overcome it.
Skinny: She was starving to fit in...
Laura L. Smith - 2008
The one thing Melissa doesn't have is a perfect body. But there are ways to fix that. Strict dieting and throwing up can't be all bad, can they? Melissa soon finds the consequences are devastating, but turning back isn't so easy. Will she hear God's voice before it's too late?
The Art of Starving
Sam J. Miller - 2017
But Matt won’t give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp—and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he’s going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away.Matt’s hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have . . . powers. The ability to see things he shouldn’t be able to see. The knack of tuning in to thoughts right out of people’s heads. Maybe even the authority to bend time and space. So what is lunch, really, compared to the secrets of the universe?Matt decides to infiltrate Tariq’s life, then use his powers to uncover what happened to Maya. All he needs to do is keep the hunger and longing at bay. No problem. But Matt doesn’t realize there are many kinds of hunger… and he isn’t in control of all of them.A darkly funny, moving story of body image, addiction, friendship, and love, Sam J. Miller’s debut novel will resonate with any reader who’s ever craved the power that comes with self-acceptance.
How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia
Kelsey Osgood - 2013
When she was hospitalized for anorexia at fifteen, she found herself in an existential wormhole: how can one suffer from something one has actively sought out? Through her own decade-long battle with anorexia, which included three lengthy hospitalizations, Osgood harrowingly describes the haunting and competitive world of inpatient facilities populated with other adolescents, some as young as ten years old.With attuned storytelling and unflinching introspection, Kelsey Osgood unpacks the modern myths of anorexia, examining the cult-like underbelly of eating disorders in the young, as she chronicles her own rehabilitation. How to Disappear Completely is a brave, candid and emotionally wrenching memoir that explores the physical, internal, and social ramifications of eating disorders and subverts many of the popularly held notions of the illness and, most hopefully, the path to recovery.
Paperweight
Meg Haston - 2015
In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she’s worked so hard to avoid. Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. But what no one knows is that Stevie doesn't plan to stay that long. There are only twenty-seven days until the anniversary of her brother Josh’s death—the death she caused. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she too will end her life.
Skinny
Donna Cooner - 2012
Freak. Elephant. Pitiful. These are the words of Skinny, the vicious voice that lives inside fifteen-year-old Ever Davies’s head. Skinny tells Ever all the dark thoughts her classmates have about her. Ever knows she weighs over three hundred pounds, knows she’ll probably never be loved, and Skinny makes sure she never forgets it. But there is another voice: Ever’s singing voice, which is beautiful but has been silenced by Skinny. Partly in the hopes of trying out for the school musical—and partly to try and save her own life—Ever decides to undergo a risky surgery that may help her lose weight and start over.With the support of her best friend, Ever begins the uphill battle toward change. But demons, she finds, are not so easy to shake, not even as she sheds pounds. Because Skinny is still around. And Ever will have to confront that voice before she can truly find her own.
The Hunger
Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch - 1999
The shimmering Euphrates River beckons her, but, as she soon discovers, there are many things worse than imperfection.
Life Inside the "Thin" Cage: A Personal Look into the Hidden World of the Chronic Dieter
Constance Rhodes - 2003
Daily they endure destructive self-talk such as “I can’t eat that or I’ll get fat” or “If I could just lose a few more pounds everything would be better.” Chronic dieters may be any shape or size but they have one thing in common: They are often left to suffer alone with an undiagnosed “sub-clinical” eating disorder. Such sub-clinical disorders include eating habits that are unusual, even unhealthy, but do not fit the technical classifications of anorexia or bulimia. Addressing the many dimension of “chronic dieting,” Life Inside the “Thin” Cage offers a wake-up call and practical steps to those who need healing. Readers will find personal stories, insights into their secret patterns and habits, reassurance that they are not alone, checklists, self-tests, and, best of all, a new road to emotional, physical, mental and spiritual freedom.
Life in the Fat Lane
Cherie Bennett - 1998
Beauty pageant winner, homecoming queen--Lara has the world at her feet. Until she gets fat.Despite a strict diet and workout schedule, Lara is soon a nameless, faceless, 200-pound-plus teenage blimp. She's desperate to get her to-die-for body back--and to find an explanation for her rapid weight gain.When she's diagnosed with a mysterious metabolic disorder that has no known cure, Lara fears she'll spend the rest of her life trapped in a fat suit. Who will stand by her? Her image-conscious family? Her shallow friends? Her handsome boyfriend? Or will she be left alone in the land of the fat girls?
All of Me
Maureen Stewart - 1996
As Rebecca tries to remain in control while doing anything to lose weight, her life becomes an elaborate lie involving starving, taking laxatives, hiding food, vomiting and nearly killing herself.
Jane in Bloom
Deborah Lytton - 2009
No one ever pays attention to boring, plain Jane. But when Jane?s twelfth birthday marks the beginning of Lizzie?s fi nal descent into a fatal eating disorder, Jane discovers that the only thing harder than living in her big sister?s shadow is living without her. In the wake of tragedy, Jane learns to look through her camera lens and frame life differently, embracing her broken family and understanding that every girl has her season to blossom. Spare and vulnerable prose marks this beautiful debut that is at once heartbreaking and uplifting.
Dying to Be Thin
Nikki Grahame - 2009
Since leaving the Big Brother house, she had forged a successful career for herself in presenting and writing. Yet Nikki isn’t just another reality television contestant and her life story is not like any other you will ever read. From the age of eight until she was 19, Nikki battled anorexia nervosa—but few cases have been quite as extreme as hers. What she has been through while suffering from this illness will surprise and shock readers. At just seven years old, Nikki began feeling that she was overweight. A remark about her being fat from a fellow pupil at a gymnastics class, along with insecurity brought about by her parents’ separation and her beloved grandfather’s death, were the catalysts for Nikki’s long-term eating disorder. Aged just eight and weighing just under three stone, she was diagnosed as anorexic. For the next eight years, Nikki was in and out of seven institutions, during which time she attempted suicide twice and had to be sedated up to four times a day so that she could be force-fed. At one point, she was sedated for 14 days while doctors sewed a tube into her stomach, through which she was fed in order to get her weight out of the critical range. Nikki admits that she knew every anorexic’s trick in the book: from breaking into hospital kitchens to water down full-fat milk, altering her diet sheet and switching name tags on food to ensure that she received smaller amounts, to even stuffing a door-stop down her trousers before a weigh-in. The extremes that she went to in order to avoid eating and find ways to exercise excessively shocked doctors who have worked in the field for years. As Nikki says, "I’ve always wanted to be the best at everything I do, so I had to be the best anorexic—and I was." This is the heart-rending and powerful story of a girl who lost her childhood but was brave enough to finally admit that she wanted to live again. With searing honesty, Nikki recounts her long and painful road to recovery, how she has had to come to terms with the long-term ramifications of her illness, how she coped with being in the Big Brother house and how she uses her new-found fame to promote awareness of eating disorders and to help those who are suffering from similar problems. This compelling book tells the story of an incredible journey.
On the Spectrum
Jennifer Gold - 2017
Now, at sixteen, she has an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. After a social media disaster, she decides to escape for the summer to Paris to stay with her estranged dad and her six-year-old brother, Alastair, who is on the autism spectrum. Charged with his care, Clara and Alastair set out to explore the city. Paris teaches Clara about first love and gives her a new love of food. And Alastair teaches Clara about patience, trust and the beauty of loving without judgment.
Beautiful Monster
Kate McCaffrey - 2010
Set in Perth, Western Australia, this gripping novel demonstrates how Tessa clings to anorexia and to her sinister, imaginary friend, Ned—her greatest support and her staunchest ally who is privy to her deepest secrets—in an attempt to deal with the loss of her brother and the resulting change in her parents.