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.

Full recovery from an eating disorder is possible. Despite what you may have been led to believe, most people with anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder are able to completely restore their health and well-being. But how does this happen?
Author Aimee Liu has woven together dozens of first-person accounts of recovery to create a break-through roadmap for healing from an eating disorder. "Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives" answers key questions including: How does healing begin? What does it feel like? What supports and accelerates it? Will I ever be free of worry about a relapse?
Throughout the book are informative sidebars written by leading professionals in the field, addressing essential topics such as finding the right therapist, the use of medications, exploring complementary treatments, and how family members can help.
Learn more at the author's website: www.aimeeliu.net.

""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.

Purge is a beautifully crafted memoir that has a Girl, Interrupted feel. In this raw and engaging account of her months in rehab, Nicole Johns documents her stay in a residential treatment facility for eating disorders. Her prose is lucid and vivid, as she seamlessly switches verb tenses and moves through time. She unearths several important themes: body image and sexuality, sexual assault and relationships, and the struggle to piece together one's path in life. While other books about eating disorders and treatment may sugarcoat the harsh realities of living with and recovering from an eating disorder, Purge does not hold back. The author presents an honest, detailed account of her experience with treatment, avoiding the cliched happily-ever-after ending while still offering hope to those who struggle with eating disorders, as well as anyone who has watched a loved one fight to recover from an eating disorder. Purge sends a message: though the road may be rough, ultimately there is hope.

"Women who read this book will be inspired to throw away their diets and scales and pick up on the nurturing, caring voice presented in these pages." --Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter, authors of "Overcoming Overeating."
Carol Emery Normandi and Laurelee Roark founded the nonprofit organization Beyond Hunger, Inc. because they had each struggled for years with eating disorders--and discovered that most of the programs available couldn't provide true, permanent recovery. To achieve that, they found they had to address the physical, emotional, and spiritual wounds that lay at the core of their unhealthy eating behavior--to go beyond the hunger of their physical bodies and meet the hunger that resided in their very souls. The techniques used in the Beyond Hunger workshops have helped many women change their minds about food and weight--and change their lives in the process. This compassionate, supportive book shows how it can be done--and offers to help women put an end to the rollercoaster of dieting and bingeing once and for all.
* Includes a foreword by the authors of the bestseller Overcoming Overeating
* "Normandi and Roark are like patient coaches detaching women from their obsessions with food, deprogramming societal and family messages about acceptable weight, offering tools and excercises to transform destructive behaviors into opportunities for self-reflection."--San Jose Mercury News
"It's Not About Food is an important part of the growing movement to return women's bodies to their rightful owners." --Naomi Wolf, author of "The Beauty Myth"

Approximately 3 percent of all females suffer from anorexia and up to 4 percent suffer from bulimia in their lifetimes. Whether you're a newly diagnosed patient with an eating disorder, or are a friend or relative of someone suffering from an eating disorder, this book offers help. The only text available to provide both the doctor's and patient's views, 100 Questions & Answers About Eating Disorders gives you authoritative, practical answers to your questions. Written by an expert on the subject, with