Must-Read Books About Eating Disorders For Different Sufferers in 2022
Contents:
What are eating disorders
Eating disorders: signs and symptoms
Book on Eating Disorder Treatment
Realistic Books About Eating Disorders
Books on Eating Disorders and Families
Often people have a lot of misconceptions about eating disorders, thinking that it is just a problem or disease of eating, such as eating disorders caused by irregular eating or bloating, but it is not only related to eating but more serious and complex Mental health conditions that require intervention by medical and psychologists to change this behavior.
Most eating disorders focus too much on your weight, body shape, and food, leading to risky eating behaviors. These behaviors can significantly affect your body's ability to receive proper nutrition. Eating disorders can damage the heart, digestive system, bones, teeth, and mouth, and lead to other diseases.
According to the National Eating Disorder Association, more than 70 million people worldwide suffer from eating disorders. These numbers also seem to be on the rise, as the media has an ever-increasing influence on our daily lives. Thankfully, there are plenty of books on eating disorders that document the struggles of this problem in an enlightening and empowering way.
Here's an introduction to eating disorders and book recommendations.
What are eating disorders
There are several behavioral disorders that affect physical, psychological, and social function, including eating disorders. Symptoms include severe and persistent disturbances in eating behavior and distressing thoughts and emotions. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, other feeding and eating disorders, pica, and rumination disorders are examples of eating disorders.
Eating disorders: signs and symptoms
In general, eating disorders are characterized by an excessive focus on food and eating, and some of them are associated with excessive weight loss.
Food and weight may interfere with other aspects of life because of this preoccupation.
Behavioral and mental symptoms may include:
l A dramatic drop in weight
l Public eating concerns
l Obsession with weight, food, calories, fat grams, or dieting
l Excessive energy, constipation, and cold intolerance
l Avoiding meals with excuses
l Being "fat" or gaining weight is an intense fear
l Staying warm or hiding weight loss by dressing in layers
l Consumption of food is severely limited and restricted
l Having a food intolerance
l Refusing to eat
l Burning calories is a way of expressing a need to lose weight
l Continually weighing oneself
l Consumption patterns that include bingeing and purging
l The development of food rituals
l Excessive physical activity
l Without eating, you prepare meals for others
l People who normally menstruate do not have menstrual periods
Physical signs may include:
l Symptoms of gastrointestinal distress such as stomach cramps
l Concentration problems
l Anemia, thyroid dysfunction, low hormone levels, potassium deficiencies, low blood cell counts, and slow heartbeats are examples of atypical lab test results.
l Feeling dizzy
l Feeling faint
l Constantly feeling cold
l Irregular sleep
l Irregular menstruation
l Itchy, swollen fingers (a sign of vomiting)
l Excessive dryness
l Thin, dry nails
l Hair thinning
l Weak muscles
l Healing of wounds is poor
l Deficiency of the immune system
Eating disorder self-help books for sufferers
Overcoming Binge Eating By Christopher Fairburn
In my opinion, Overcoming Binge Eating is the best self-help book for binge eaters. The binge-eating book consists of a psychoeducational component as well as a structured self-help component, which has proven to be extremely effective. There are solid steps for self-help, and it is easy to read and follow.
Getting Better Bite By Bite By Ulrike Schmidt, Janet Treasure, & June Alexander
For those who suffer from bulimia nervosa and are seeking self-help, this is another very useful self-help book. Despite being written by two of the most influential researchers in the field of eating disorders, this self-help book is not only grounded in evidence-based principles, but it is also a warm, compassionate, and understanding book for people with eating disorders that should be commended.
If Not Dieting, Then What? by Rick Kaufmann
"If Not Dieting, Then What?" is a unique book written by a Melbourne-based medical professional who provides a unique perspective on addressing disordered eating by teaching readers the pitfalls of diet culture as well as how to properly engage in a sustainable eating pattern based on internal signals of hunger and satiety as well as guiding them through the process.
Books on eating disorder Recommendation
Many people begin to pay attention to their diets to lose weight and maintain health. But, we are often overwhelmed by too many theories and diet programs. This book analyzes essential dietary nutrients such as fats, protein, and vitamins. By analyzing the effects of various diets, it eliminates many of the misunderstandings surrounding food. It provides us with useful dietary advice, which can help us identify the key factors affecting health and obesity, as well as create healthy diets to suit our needs.
Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College, London. He is among the top geneticists in the world and has published over 800 research articles. As the director of one of the world's largest twins registries, he has been conducting a follow-up study of 13,000 identical twins around the world for 20 years. He aims to obtain a large amount of data from comparison studies. In the book, Tim Spector uses large amounts of data and references, combining his personal experience with data and facts, in order to expose the diet myth.
Memoirs About Eating Disorders by Stephanie Covington Armstrong
She is not a typical example of the stereotype of a woman with an eating disorder. She grew up poor, hungry, and mistreated by her foster parents. She suffered physical abuse and mental abuse during her childhood and she was subjected to overwhelming insecurity. But her biggest difference is her race: Stephanie is black.
This moving first-person account of Armstrong's struggle as a black woman in a society where she has always been stereotyped as a white woman's problem describes her struggle with a disorder. As Stephanie keeps going through her daily routine in an attempt to escape her self-hatred and food obsession, she becomes entrapped in a downward spiral, unable to stop for a second. It is at this point that she can no longer argue with the fact that if she does not get help, overcome her shame, and overcome her addiction to using food as a weapon against herself, she will die.
Beauty Sick by Renee Engeln PhD
It has been argued that the culture's obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that damages women's chances of getting ahead in life and living fulfilling, meaningful life. In this powerful, eye-opening work, an award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor examines how it is an epidemic that harms women's opportunities to achieve success and lead fulfilling lives.
It is a bewildering set of contradictions faced by young women in today's society when it comes to beauty. While most women do not wish to be Barbie dolls, they are being told to look like them, like generations before them. Even though they are angry at the way the media treats women, they hungrily consume the very outlets that humiliate them. The modern culture's ideal of beauty is mocked by them in videos where they expose Photoshopping tricks, but they feel they must emulate those images by posing with a “skinny arm,” which they do. It is apparent that they are aware that what they see isn’t real, but they still download apps that make their selfies airbrushed. Although these young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about, they still need a way forward to fight back against their beauty-sick culture. They are ready to create a different world for themselves, but they need to know how to do that.
TEDx speaker Renee Engeln, who has received more than 250,000 views on her beauty sickness talk, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with women’s appearance for their mental, physical, and financial health as well as the goals they wish to achieve, such as depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and a loss of time and money. In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln reveals the shocking consequences of this obsession. Her book offers a powerful combination of scientific studies and the opinions of real women of all ages to demonstrate that for women to reach their full potential, we must break free of the cultural forces that promote destructive desires, attitudes, and words - from fat-shaming to comments that are disparaging of other women. This book is a powerful guide for girls and women who want to embrace their whole selves, change their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, make a difference in the world. It provides inspiration and workable solutions for girls and women who wish to overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves.
Book on Eating Disorder Treatment
Surviving an Eating Disorder: Strategies for Family and Friends by Michele Siegel
Having first been released back in 1988, Surviving an Eating Disorder quickly became the bible for parents, caregivers, and clinicians wishing to help their loved ones who are suffering from eating disorders. It also proved to be an invaluable resource in helping clinicians provide guidance and support to the families of these individuals. As this edition is being updated in preparation for the fifth edition, the authors have added new information that has been based on new diagnoses such as binge eating disorder and ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), as well as a description of enhanced treatment options including partial hospitalization programs. They also discuss how improved psychotropic medications can be used to treat these conditions, as well as their personal experiences with parenting older children and their own experiences with parenting them. In this book, the authors address the "silent sufferers" – the unseen victims of an eating disorder – the children, spouses, friends, partners, and even parents who are dealing with their parents' eating disorders.
Throughout this edition of the book, the authors introduce an entirely new model of eating disorders that takes into account the family context. In this treatment model, the goal is to “use the eating disorder as an opportunity to evaluate the family or relationship now to prepare for the recovery process at the same time as setting the stage for the recovery process itself to occur.” In addition, the authors provide specific guidelines to help each person’s individual needs, such as growth, connection, communication, and privacy, be better heard and addressed. It is not only the authors' intention to help the patient recover, but also the family members as a whole. As for the medical complications of bulimia, this reviewer observed that the book minimized those risks: "Medical complications [of bulimia] are often minimal" and "complications that lead to death are less common in bulimia." Even though deaths are not common among those suffering from bulimia, the statements are in stark contrast to Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani's work which states that if a patient purges, he or she needs to consider the possibility that their heart may stop due to low potassium levels.
A heartfelt, compassionate book that cannot be predicted in advance. Throughout the book, you feel as though the authors are sitting right in front of you giving you a helping hand, offering you well-thought-out strategies and examples of how to confront a loved one productively. In this book, the authors encourage readers to not attempt to figure things out on their own. This book is a rich and comprehensive resource.
Realistic Books About Eating Disorders
Elena Vanishing by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle
To cope with their daughter's anorexia, a mother-daughter team wrote Elena Vanishing. Over five years, Elena tells a story entirely through her perspective, with the help of her award-winning author mother Clare, revealing the anxiety that plagues her.
Identical by Ellen Hopkins
To be honest, I thought the book Identical by Ellen Hopkins was pretty hard to finish. Among the issues in the novel are sexual abuse, self-harm, and eating disorders, which are also wrapped up in Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is another aspect of the protagonist's mental health struggle. Although eating disorders can occur on their own, books like Identical help explain what other symptoms to look for if the ED is part of a bigger problem.
Books on Eating Disorders and Families
Eating Disorders: A Parent’s Guide by Rachel Bryant-Waugh and Bryan Lask
For parents who are seeking a deeper understanding of the challenges they may be facing as their child recovers from eating disorders, this book may be helpful as an overview of eating disorders in children and adolescents. The authors provide brief and practical advice on how to navigate the recovery process.
My Kid is Back: Empowering Parents to Beat Anorexia Nervosa by June Alexander
A book written by June Alexander, who has suffered from an eating disorder herself, explores how family-based treatment can be an effective treatment for eating disorders. Ideas and advice from experts and professionals are shared throughout the book.