Self-Help

Intended as standard reading for members who participate in EDA groups throughout the world, this book is accessible and appropriate for anyone who wants to recover from an eating disorder or from issues related to food, weight, and body image.

Eating Disorders Anonymous: The Story of How We Recovered from Our Eating Disorderspresents the accumulated experience, strength, and hope of many who have followed a Twelve-Step approach to recover from their eating disorders. Eating Disorders Anonymous (EDA), founded by sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), have produced a work that emulates the “Big Book” in style and substance. EDA respects the pioneering work of AA while expanding its Twelve-Step message of hope to include those who are religious or seek a spiritual solution, and for those who are not and may be more comfortable substituting “higher purpose” for the traditional “Higher Power.” Further, the EDA approach embraces the development and maintenance of balance and perspective, rather than abstinence, as the goal of recovery.

Initial chapters provide clear directions on how to establish a foothold in recovery by offering one of the founder’s story of hope, and collective voices tell why EDA is suitable for readers with any type of problem eating, including: anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating, emotional eating, and orthorexia. The text then explains how to use the Twelve Steps to develop a durable and resilient way of thinking and acting that is free of eating disordered thoughts and behaviors, including how to pay it forward so that others might have hope of recovery.

In the second half of the text, individual contributors share their experiences, describing what it was like to have an eating disorder, what happened that enabled them to make a start in recovery, and what it is like to be in recovery. Like the “Big Book,” these stories are in three sections: Pioneers of EDA, They Stopped in Time, and They Lost Nearly All.

Readers using the Twelve Steps to recover from other issues will find the process consistent and reinforcing of their experiences, yet the EDA approach offers novel ideas and specific guidance for those struggling with food, weight and body image issues. Letters of support from three, highly-regarded medical professionals and two, well-known recovery advocates offer reassurance that EDA’s approach is consistent with that supported by medical research and standards in the field of eating disorders treatment.

This newly updated and expanded edition of Desperately Seeking Self; Second Edition offers a unique, spiritually-centered approach that emphasizes the how of healing from an eating disorder. It guides readers on a journey inward, showing them how to connect with their true self and from there, heal their eating disorder and transforms their lives.

How do you look within when an eating disorder has filled you up with pain? Desperately Seeking Self; Second Edition speaks directly to this need. Its message is simple, gentle and accessible, resonating especially with a new generation of millennial readers who are hungry for meaningful spiritual connections.

This updated edition preserves its “conversational” approach and composite client profile (a woman with bulimia). To frame the ongoing significance of the book today, this conversation answers such basic human questions as: Why do I have this illness? Who am I to think that I deserve better? How will my life be different when I awaken to a deeper level? What exactly is a transformation?

The Parent's Guide to Eating Disorders shows that effective solutions begin at home and cost little more than a healthy investment of time, effort, and love. Based on exciting new research, it differs from similar books in several key ways. Instead of concentrating on the grim, expensive hospital stays of patients with severe disorders, the authors focus on the family, teaching parents how to examine and understand their family’s approach to food and body-image issues and its effect their child’s behavior. Parents learn to identify an eating disorder early, to establish healthy attitudes toward food at a young age, and to intervene in a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental way. The authors concentrate on teens, the age group most often affected by eating disorders, as well as younger children. Individual chapters cover boys at risk, relapse training, dealing with friends, school, and summer camp, and much more. The book includes an appendix and sections on further reading, organizations and websites, residential and hospital programs, and references.

Does this sound like you?

Food will make me fat. My body should be perfect. I am ashamed of how I eat. I am not in control of my body. I am only lovable when I'm thin. Eating is the only pleasure I have in life.

An unhealthy relationship with food, weight, and body image can cause scores of irrational beliefs—beliefs that will affect every aspect of your life. The Rules of “Normal” Eating targets these beliefs, feelings, and behaviors, and points the way toward genuine physical and emotional fulfillment. Filled with humorous insights, compassion, and practical wisdom, this book outlines balanced attitudes and patterns that will benefit all types of eaters.

• Learn the four rules that “normal” eaters follow instinctively.
• Change unhealthy thinking and old habits.
• Manage difficult emotions, rather than starving or stuffing them.
• Feel healthy and “normal” around food.
• Create a life that is truly satisfying and fulfilling.