Eating problems, including anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, can have a devastating impact on sufferers as well as their friends and family. This self-help guide is written by a consultant psychotherapist with extensive experience of treating eating disorders and will help you identify an eating disorder and develop a toolkit of strategies to help you take steps towards overcoming the disorder. It also includes a chapter offering useful guidance for family members. This updated second edition will help you: * Understand how eating disorders develop and what keeps them going * Find the motivation to change * Change how you eat * Challenge negative thinking The Introduction to Coping series offers valuable guidance for those seeking help for emotional or psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. Each book gives useful background information and suggests techniques to change unhelpful patterns of behaviour and thinking using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques. CBT is recommended internationally to treat a wide range of emotional, psychological and physical conditions including eating disorders.

This trusted bestseller provides all the information needed to understand binge eating and bring it under control, whether you are working with a therapist or on your own. Clear, step-by-step guidelines show you how to: *Overcome the urge to binge. *Gain control over what and when you eat. *Break free of strict dieting and other habits that may contribute to binges. *Establish stable, healthy eating patterns. *Improve your body image and reduce the risk of relapse. This fully updated second edition incorporates important advances in the understanding and treatment of eating disorders. It features expanded coverage of body image issues and enhanced strategies for achieving--and maintaining--a transformed relationship with food and your body. Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) Self-Help Book of Merit. Included in the UK National Health Service Bibliotherapy Program.

""I didn't decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier . . ." "

Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work--first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying.

In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn't enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.

Even as she rose to fame as a cast member of the hit television shows "Ally McBeal "and "Arrested Development, "Portia alternately starved herself and binged, all the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner. With the storytelling skills of a great novelist and the eye for detail of a poet, Portia makes transparent as never before the behaviors and emotions of someone living with an eating disorder.

From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love with and eventually marrying Ellen DeGeneres, and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women's health issues.

In this remarkable and beautifully written work, Portia shines a bright light on a dark subject. A crucial book for all those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves or their bodies, "Unbearable Lightness "is a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.