Appetite for Life: Inspiring Stories of Recovery from Anorexia, Bulimia, and Compulsive Overeating

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin.

We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. Until she meets Owen Armstrong. Tall, dark, and music-obsessed, Owen is a reformed bad boy with a commitment to truth-telling.

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the skinniest. But what comes after size zero and size double-zero? Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance—but the very act might kill her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

I look in the mirror. How could it not? Her mom is obsessed with the idea that thin equals beautiful, thin equals successful, thin equals the way to get what you want. Carmen knows that as far as her mom is concerned, there is only one option: When her mother sweeps her off to live in the city, Carmen finds that her old world is disappearing.

As her life spirals out of control Carmen begins to take charge of the only thing she can—what she eats. If she were thin, very thin, could it all be different? When Jessica was thirteen years old, she met the Monkey. The Monkey lived inside her: The only way to be safe, to be good, to be acceptable and above all, to escape from the cold, looming threat of approaching adulthood. Jessica listened to the Monkey, and it consumed her. A diary records a year in the life of Judi Leibowitz as she dreams of becoming the thinnest girl in the eighth grade and struggles to control her unending battle with calories, food, pounds, and bulimia.

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Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. 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. Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she, too, will end her life.

After the death of her father, Laurel is haunted by a legacy of family secrets, hidden shame, and shattered glass. Immersing herself in the heady rhythms of a city that is like something wild, caged, and pacing, Laurel tries to lose herself. But when she runs away from the past, she discovers a passion so powerful, it brings her roundabout and face-to-face with the demons she wants to avoid. These trees fall unexpectedly during a storm. A dropped extracurricular, a C on a calc quiz, a non-Jewish shiksa girlfriendone misstep, and his meticulously constructed life splinters and collapses.

The pocketful of breath mints. The weird smell in the bathroom. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road. Why did Liz Emerson decide that the world would be better off without her? Why did she give up? How do we impact one another? How do our actions reverberate? What does it mean to be a friend? To be a daughter? Is life truly more than cause and effect? But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning. As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationship with food, and friends, and family—and how each is healthy or unhealthy.

She has to believe—after many years of being a believarexic. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder.

With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions ; a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.

Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance. Though they are still newlyweds, they seem to have it all. You might not want to like them, but you do.

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Some might call this true love. Others might wonder why Grace never answers the phone. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. Or why she never seems to take anything with her when she leaves the house, not even a pen. Or why there are such high-security metal shutters on all the downstairs windows. Brought on by the obsession over weight and calories, and fueled by low self-esteem, she falls victim to an eating disorder.

The world she enters is a world where thoughts are overrun by fears, lies are no longer fiction, and reality is miles away. The healthy nineteen year old that used to be is replaced by a weaker girl unable to keep up with her peers. In order to get better, change is the only option. The journey told starts during the height of the sickness and follows Erin through the many challenges and lessons of treatment.

In order to start her process in recovery, she must face her greatest fear: There are millions around the world who are living her story, still struggling to find their way.

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What if their child had been born healthy? Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health. Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life? The writers in this groundbreaking anthology reveal a world where bodies come in all their many-splendored shapes, sizes, colors, and textures.

In doing so, they expand the national dialogue on body image to include race, ethnicity, sexuality, and power—issues that, while often overlooked, are intimately linked to how women feel about their bodies. Body Outlaws offers stories by those who have chosen to ignore, subvert, or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies. In our appearance-obsessed society, eating is about much more than hunger and sustenance.

Food inspires pleasure and anxiety, shame and obsession. Powerful and immensely informative, this collection makes accessible the mindset of a disease that has long been misunderstood. A baby no one knows about. A dangerous hidden identity. Everyone keeps secrets—from themselves, from their families, from their friends—and secrets have a habit of shaping the lives around them.

So refreshing to read your truth about a personal struggle. Wow, what a journey! Thank you so much for sharing, I can only imagine how hard that was to share but I know it will help a lot of people. Thank you so much for sharing your recovery story, Gena. As you know, your experiences, guidance, and honesty helped me on my on road to recovery when you were my health coach.

What a great writer you are! I suffered terribly from eds from the age of 14 until 29; anorexia, then orthorexia, then bulimia and sometimes combinations of all of them. I never connected going vegan with it, though, and in the end my love of food and cooking and eating consciously was a great help in my recovery.

The legacy was ruined teeth, low bone density I think I corrected that and much wasted time and mental energy. For me, it was thinking about others- the planet, animals, other people, my daughter, that really helped pull me away from my obsession. It had started as I trained in classical ballet and took up dance professionally, again when I went to uni. I remember my skin turning orange because I was obsessed with carrot juice, and constantly shivering because I was keeping myself cold by eating ice to burn extra calories.

It was only when I got pregnant and realised I had to eat properly for the sake of another that I began to recover. Instead of being scared of my growing belly, I loved it! I was awed by what my body could do, and when I went right back into shape after Radha was born I realised that my weight would take care of itself while I got on with the important business of living life and loving others! What a wonderful surprise to see your story in this series, Gena.

Seeing it all typed out like that was really insightful…I had never realised your story had that many twists and turns. What made EDs so appealing to me, in part, was the desire to be invisible. My loud voice, red hair, quirky sense of style, and active involvement in so many activities always made that difficult. Being a recluse helped me escape that; and when people started noticing the physical symptoms, I quickly restored my weight just to make the comments stop. I just wanted to exist without being seen. EDs are largely unglamorous and mostly sad.

Sarah, my situation is like the opposite of yours. Cripplingly shy, I had no idea how to talk to people. After being overweight, I wanted my thinness to speak for me. I thought being thin could be my identity, and no one would ever need anything else from me at a party. I really thought I could go through life being seen and not heard. It took so long for me to realize that I was drowning in numbers and mirrors while everyone else was making a life. I had a perverse idea of glamor, and it was years before anyone around me recognized and attempted to correct it. I wanted to be noticed, but never approached.

It worked for a long time. When you speak of the blogs that helped shape your relationship with food, and with veganism, please know that when I speak of the same things, Choosing Raw tops my list. Bravo to you for putting your story, with all of its twists and turns, out there. Like you, I also turned to veganism during my recovery. This week I have spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not this was a form of restriction, and it was bothering me, until I just read this post.

Appetite for Life:Inspiring Stories of Recovery from Anorexia, Bulimia, and Compulsive Overeating

Maybe I did become a vegan as a way of restricting my foods, but who cares. I do not restrict my food intake anymore and there is no need to dwell on the past. Following a vegan diet has changed my relationship with food, the animals, and the environment, and I would not want to change that for anything. Thank you for writing this, and for sharing it so bravely. I see a lot of uncannily familiar things in your story—thankfully, in the recovery as well as in what preceded and necessitated it. Reading your blog, especially previous green recovery posts, helped me so much; just seeing, as you say, that no one is alone in this and recovery is possible made all the difference in the world.

Such a powerful journey, thank you so much for sharing. I found your blog 5 or so years ago never commented before but felt a contribution was in order today , when I was delving in veganism and raw foods and came here for inspiration and information often. Eventually I moved away from such restrictive diets for they were sustaining my obsessive behaviour towards food, that I later identified as orthorexia. For me, the most powerful tool and catalyst to transformation and awareness has been yoga practice — it has been, among other things, a lesson in kindness.

But I should also mention meditation for helping me identify the patterns and teaching me non-reactiveness; and the last almost!

This had me crying grateful tears into my overnight oats. You are amazing and inspiring and have been a huge part of a community that had changed my life for the better! Thank you so much for your own green recovery and for the green recovery platform in general. It is an honor to read, every time. I, too, have found blogging—vegan blogging—a valuable tool in keeping me honest with myself. Publicly promoting my idea of preparing satisfying vegan food means urges to, so to speak, pick at iceberg lettuce with balsamic when shit gets hard sets off a serious gong in my head.

Again, isolation and secrecy vs. Such as I do, anyway. Wow, Gina, thank you so much for taking the time to reflect and write all this out! You are truly a beautiful soul! So few people are willing to share the truth of how life evolves, with all the crazy twists and little turns and course corrections. Its so wonderful to read a story that resonates and radiates truth. You are an incredible gift to the world of vegan food, to our fellow animals, and all of us lucky enough to read Choosing Raw.

Beautiful post, and one that will undoubtedly help many people. I knew you when you started this blog and luckily I still know you now — and it makes me happy to see YOU so happy, vibrant and healthy. Very interesting story with luckily a beautiful ending. I am sure this time it will last happily ever after. Well done on inspiring other to follow healthy path. I stuck with it, learned about and embraced the ethics and now see it as a silver lining to my restriction and I like to believe I would have found my way here by another route if I had never got ill.

Much love and thanks again, as ever I look forward to reading through the comments in a few days! However, I have to completely agree with everyone else when they say how wonderfully analytical, intelligent and warm of a post this was. Beautifully honest- not brutally honest- was what I felt the most. This was so maturely written and I found myself not able to stop reading until I had read it all. I am no expert in any of the things you talked about, but my heart has been even more softened, and I feel more compassion and understanding anytime I hear about it.

Thank you for this post,…. Knowing you and your story for some time now, I am honored and grateful that you continue to, with every word, speak to a new and vital facet of our collectives journeys. So much of my own recovery has been recognizing that existing with the problem while being knowledgeable about it or hyper-analytical about ourselves is like breathing with one lung.

Acceptance of ourselves then becomes neither a reaction to our future self nor a reaction to the near-past self. Acceptance is watching storm clouds pass and breathing into the other parts of ourselves. I am so glad things turned out the way they did in the end for you. Thank you so much for sharing your story Gena! The Green Recovery series has been fantastic, and I feel privileged and humbled to be a part of it!

Thank you for sharing your story and creating this Green Recovery series. I am so happy to be a part of it because I still find it difficult to speak about my eating disorder with others but your blog has given me a healing space to do so. I will never be able to thank you enough for all your writings on eating disorders. They so perfectly say many of my thoughts and feelings. Thank you so much. Such a beautiful and powerful story, Gena, and so eloquently shared as always!

A few things really stood out for me and resonated with me. It seems to me that more needs to be done during those pre-teen and teen years to help young girls understand what their bodies need and to help them make educated choices about nutrition, while at the same time combatting some of the cultural issues that help promote disordered behaviors. Finally, yoga was something I did for the first 8 months of my recovery before moving away from my beloved studio , and you stated my own thoughts perfectly. It was a difficult thing to do to try and get in touch with my body, but yoga helped me approach recovery with a gentler attitude and it played a huge roll in helping me maintain recovery as I finished college.

I know I have. Thank you for having the courage to recover and to share so much of your hard-earned wisdom here with us. This is such a beautiful memoir of ED journey— you did it again!! As you know, I can obvies relate on SO many levels which is why I think we have such a strong connection personally and professionally: I rekindled my love for plant- powered fuel as a means of stepping into the next chapter of my recovery; letting down the orthodox walls, layer after layers of food dogmas that had been so strongly cemented; and my powerful sense of self discipline that got all the more stronger during my orthorextic stage.

Oh dear, this made me cry buckets. Thank you for sharing this, Gena, such a beautifully written story! Gena, you touched on so many things here…the danger of extremism which is echoed everywhere from nutrition to religion to politics , the true sources of healing from any emotional ailment! And you talked about an issue that is multi-faceted in a way that is clear and straight forward, but without reducing or diminishing its complexity. This is such an inspiring and rich post, Gena. You raise so many insightful points that never get mentioned, and I hope your post gets read far and wide as I know it will help anyone who reads it.

Gena, thank you so much for such a vulnerable, thoughtful, hopeful post. I have not struggled with disordered eating personally but friends have, and this post as well as many others in the series have been so helpful to me in understanding them. The part of your story that was most triggering for me — if I can put it that way — was your reflection on how it all began for you, in late elementary school.

As the mother of two very young children, I felt a real sense of panic when I read that part. I hope we are raising them in a warm home where food is a source of joy and a means of connecting deeply with one another, and I am intentional if not always successful about not letting the table be a battlefield. Gena, thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your story, and your beautiful spirit with us all! Thank you for sharing the story. I can relate in so many ways. Looking back now, it amazes me how I still managed to function on days when I was eating so little and working out so much.

At the time, I thought of it as testimony to my body being really strong, but it was really a sign of how weak I was and that getting through the day was actually a big accomplishment. Thank you for being so inspiring here and being so open, honest and raw about your experience.

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What a beautiful post Gena — thank you so much for sharing your journey and being an inspiration to so many. Your honesty is so incredible……and I love that you could share — and ultimately I hope accept , that when you began the blog you were still struggling more than you were aware of at the time.

It only adds to the fiber of this blog, the power to heal, the ability to be true, real and open — which is ultimately what is most healing — the ED has no power when we are in that space. Thank you for sharing YOU, for your courage and your integrity. Thank you for sharing your story — sounds like a tough path to follow and it takes a lot of courage to recover and then share your story. I saw this article in our Australian newspaper and just thought it might be of interest that one of the top politicians in Australia is someone who battle anorexia as a teenager — http: I had originally found your blog through her website.

Her principles left me with years of questioning what was and was not right for my body, hating my body because the picture of health can only be quite slim and ultimately giving up what wAs once so important in my life- veganism.. I started veganism when I was 16 found raw foods when I was 20 shortly after found Natalia rose.

When I went vegan I had a very healthy relationship with vegan food. After I had found Natalia roses books website and online community I started questioning whether vegan was right at all because as you say you were really only allowed greens and avocado. I fasted all the time, was at my lowest weight ever and was t really happy. When I started training for a mile bike tour, I gave up on vegan. I gained about 35 pounds, and hated myself even more.

I remember going back to your blog and noticed you were no longer following food combining. I emailed you twice, about food combining and whether or not it was ok to eat beans. Your blog and response helped me get back to a healthy relationship with food and to enjoy a vegan diet without cutting particular food groups out grain, beans etc.

I will never forget how much I hated my body and believed the only way to stay slim was through regular fasting, food combining and excessive exercise.

Appetite for Life:Inspiring Stories of Recovery from Anorexia, Bulimia, and Compulsive Overeating

Gena, you are such a beautiful and strong human being- thank you for posting. Your piece is so honest and I hope others who are in the process of recovering find hope in it. Your story is so relatable, and your telling is so touching. Thank you for being so candid. I think that with things like eating disorders, we often want to jump to helping people before we are fully recovered ourselves — and I feel that often times it is this desire to help others that really creates the fertile ground for a lasting recovery.

I feel much the same way — I want to stay recovered not only for myself, but because I want to be an example to those still in the thick of it — that recovery is possible, and that it is joyful. Thank you for your sharing. Thank you so much for sharing your story Gena. I hugely relate to the sideways step into orthorexia but thankfully am in a good enough place these days to be able to take a broader view of health and mostly overlook the endless stream of diet-related talk and trends which crop up every other week.

Thank you also for your honesty about body image struggles. It makes me happy to see you so happy these days and truly embracing life, love, happiness and health! Hurrah for finding veganism! Clap clap clap clap! When we allow the wisdom of our experience to be our guide, the whole world softens… we can appreciate all the layers. We can continue to unfold and stand boldly in our truth. Thank you for sharing this with such courage, honesty and integrity! I hope, deeply, that your regret about the potential effect your approach may have had when you started it fades quickly and into love.

The path you have taken since then can only have helped provide a safe, healing space and a guided path for anyone who has been with you since back in those days.

The impact you have had is already, and will continue to be, so much greater than any perceived error IMHO. You could never have become such a powerful healer and guide had you not been through all that you experienced. The first time you wrote about orthorexia that I remember, sometime this past year , I cried. I found veganism, like so many people in this community, in a search for greater health and in recovery from health issues although not technically from ED — was seeking to lose weight, weaning off an SSRI and years of BC. But I got lost along the way. The lifestyle that was supposed to be healing me, it seemed, had turned on me and food was ruling my life.

For now, suffice to say there are hardly words to thank you for what you do. You share those things that it takes guts to share, that your readers need to hear, and your empathy shines through in a really special way. Gena — as a reader and fan for years now, this post is my most favorite to date. I love how through are darkest days we choose to see and share the light it has shed on us. As a former bulimic and overall bad outlook on food, it has been the hardest obstacle I have dealt with… and continue to deal with.

Thank you for your rawness. Gena, thank you so much for sharing this. I find it validating to see your exposure of some of the limitations of these approaches and the ways that you model a healthier relationship to food in your work today. If only more people in that community could read this and find strength for charting another path. Your story is a beautiful one, much like the transformation of a butterfly.

I am so grateful that you shared your story. It had the opposite effect, it is empowering. I want to thank you for starting the Green Recovery stories so people have a safe place to share about something that tends to have a bit of a stigma associated with it. I just discovered your blog. I am a Spanish who moved to the US two years ago. It is so sad…. Being an omnivorous for all my life, the decision of changing to a plant-based diet came last summer. My initial motivation was, of course! Loosing some pounds, but the truth is that I started loving this way of cooking, the respect towards animals and the amazing flavors I had not enjoyed never as a meat eater.

It was good for months, but with my ups and downs: I admire you and your story. For me, I am much better than years ago but food is still my obsession, in one or other way.