Beyond Anorexia

A sociological exploration of eating disorders and the first book to focus exclusively on recovery.

There is life beyond your eating disorder—and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Johanna S. Kandel, founder and executive director of The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, struggled with her eating disorder for ten years before finally getting help. Now fully recovered, Kandel knows firsthand how difficult the healing process can be. Through her work with The Alliance—leading support groups, speaking nationwide and collaborating with professionals in the field—she's developed a set of practical tools to address the everyday challenges of recovery.

Traditionally, women's eating disorders are thought to be strongly influenced by media images idealizing a normative thin female body. Taking a different approach, The Anorexic Self critically examines diagnostic and popular discourses on anorexia that construct narrow and ideal notions of the female self. Paula Saukko analyzes the personal and political implications of discourses on the anorexic self in multiple contexts, including her own experience of being diagnosed anorexic; psychiatrist Hilde Bruch's postwar research on anorexia; and media coverage of Karen Carpenter, Princess Diana, and other women with eating disorders. Saukko traces the history of the discourses from postwar idealization of masculine autonomy to postindustrial valorization of feminine flexibility, and also explores their politically progressive and psychologically healing—as well as sexist and humiliating—dimensions. Drawing on narrative therapy, dialogic theory, and multisited ethnography, The Anorexic Self cultivates a less judgmental and more self-reflexive way of relating to ourselves, others, and societies in which we live.

Now in its third edition, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet is the most comprehensive book available for professionals working with clients who struggle with binge and emotional eating, chronic dieting, and body image. Divided into three sections—The Problem, The Treatment, and The Solution—this book is filled with compelling clinical examples, visualizations, and exercises that professionals can use to deepen their knowledge and skills as they help clients find freedom from preoccupation with food and weight. New research on diet failure, health, weight, and weight stigma makes a case for why clinicians must reflect on their own attitudes and biases to understand how a weight loss focus can harm clients. In addition to addressing the symptoms, dynamics, and treatment of eating problems, this book presents a holistic framework that includes topics such as cultural, ethical, and social justice issues, the role of self-compassion, and promoting physical and emotional well-being for people of all shapes and sizes. Drawing from the attuned eating and weight inclusive frameworks, this book serves as an essential resource for both new clinicians and those interested in shifting their clinical approach. Trauma-informed and filled with compelling client stories and step-by-step strategies, Beyond a Shadow of a Diet offers professionals and their clients a positive, evidence-based model for making peace with food, their bodies, and themselves.

This book covers the psychological conditions associated with the many phases of a woman's lifespan: the menarche; the menstrual cycle; infertility; pregnancy and the puerperium; and menopause and perimenopause. Issues such as eating disorders, substance misuse and other disorders are also addressed. For each condition, the nature and extent of the condition, detection or diagnosis, the pharmacological and psychosocial interventions available, and the importance of referral and co-working with multidisciplinary teams are covered. The book is primarily designed to provide a comprehensive summary for candidates preparing for the Part 2 MRCOG examination, and as such covers the RCOG curriculum for psychological disorders. It is also a valuable guide for all healthcare professionals needing a clearer understanding of this important area.

How should one understand the nature and possibilities of politicalradicalism today? The political radical is normally thought of assomeone who stands on the left, opposing backward-lookingconservatism. In the present day, however, the left has turneddefensive, while the right has become radical, advocating the freeplay of market forces no matter what obstacles of tradition orcustom stand in their way. What explains such a curious twist of perspective? In answeringthis question Giddens develops a new framework for radicalpolitics, drawing freely on what he calls "philosophicconservatism", but applying this outlook in the service of valuesnormally associated with the Left. The ecological crisis is at thecore of this analysis, but is understood by Giddens in anunconventional way - as a response to a world in which modernityhas run up against its limits as a social and moral order. The endof nature, as an entity existing independently of humanintervention, and the end of tradition, combined with the impact ofglobalization, are the forces which now have to be confronted, madeuse of and coped with. This book provides a powerful interpretation of the rise offundamentalism, of democracy, the persistence of gender divisionsand the question of a normative political theory of violence. Itwill be essential reading for anyone seeking a novel approach tothe political challenges which we face at the turn of thetwenty-first century.

Sophia Gore was thirteen years old when she began starving herself. She had no idea that nearly two decades later she would still be living with anorexia. This book is a true account of the grim realities of chronic anorexia nervosa and the destruction it causes, providing painful home truths about the way that we as a society deal with this most challenging of conditions. Describing years in and out of hospital wards and treatment centres, willingly and unwillingly, at times being force-fed and physically restrained, the author makes an impassioned plea for treatment that recognises the person behind the disease. The author argues that more support is needed for families caring for the sufferer, and that professionals working with eating disorders should broaden their approach so that they may be better equipped to help their patients. At heart this book is written for all those who are living with an eating disorder, by one who has come to the end of the line, in the hope that it may help them to confront their illness before it is too late.