“If we haven’t been loved well, recognized, understood, we arrange ourselves to fit the shape of our situations. We lower our expectations. We stop asking for what we need.” 
– Geneen Roth

If you feel like you can’t eat “normally”, you’re not alone. It’s estimated that 45% of American women are dieting at any given time, which makes it easy to overlook the tens of thousands of women who cannot feed themselves at all, or who binge compulsively.  We live in a culture that has been numbed by the glamorous images in magazines and the jokes on late night talk shows that mock the ups and downs of celebrities' weight gains and losses. An eating disorder is not glamorous or funny. It sucks the joy out of life.  It’s painful. It’s lonely. It’s crippling. Sometimes, it’s fatal.

I’ve worked with yo-yo dieters, bulimics, anorectics, binge eaters, people who chew their food, but spit it out, compulsive exercisers, laxative abusers, plastic surgery addicts and everything in between. Each story is different, but the themes are usually the same. In the end, it’s not really about the food, the fat or the numbers on the scale. It’s about something hidden on the inside. 

Recommended Reading:

Full Lives:  Women Who Have Freed Themselves from Food & Weight Obsession.  Lindsey Hall
Hunger Pains:  The Modern Woman’s Tragic Quest for Thinness.  Mary Pipher
Women Who Hurt Themselves.  Dusty Miller
Body Wars.  Margo Maine
When Food Is Love.  Geneen Roth
Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide for Large Women.  Pat Lyons & Debby Burgard