Adult women and eating disorders

16th May 2007

Adult women and eating disorders

posted in Book Reviews, Eating Disorders |

I picked up a copy of the relatively newly released My Thin Excuse by syndicated columnist and journalism Lisa Messinger, who writes of her experiences with an eating disorder from when she was 15 until she was 20.

The book’s blurb:
“Set against the backdrop of the “perfect” middle-class family, Lisa’s story tells of her need to excel in school, her boyfriends, her college life, and her budding career on the sets of America’s most popular television shows. But Lisa also describes her growing compulsion to record every calorie consumed, every measurement taken, and every pound gained and lost, as her obsessive behavior took control of her life.”

Frankly, after skimming through the book and reading selected passages, I was bored silly, perhaps because my eating disorder didn’t develop until my early twenties and I simply can’t relate to Messinger’s teenage angst and woes.

I find the teenage years to be a popular theme amongst most chronicles of eating disorders. Yes, I realize early adolescence to early adulthood are the times of most vulnerability (with scary new statistics of girls as young as nine now developing EDs), but I’m sure that there is a sizable number of women out there who have experienced adult-onset eating disorders. In fact, Renfrew, for example, created separate therapy sessions for women over 35 after they went from constituting 10 percent of inpatients in 2001 to 17 percent two years later.

Though some authors have bridged this gap, like Trisha Gura, the literature on adult women who develop eating disorders remains, well, relatively thin, pardoning the unintended pun. And while the behaviors/obsessions are very much the same for any eating disorder regardless of age, much of the literature on eating disorders develop simply don’t speak for the experiences of why some adult women develop the disorder.

I have a mortgage payment, a car, a professional job. I pay taxes and utility bills. If I hear one more time how my disorder stems from a fear of “growing up” and “assuming adult responsibilities,” I think I will scream.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Eating Disorders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On May 16th, 2007, Wendy said:

The late Carolyn Knapp wrote some great stuff about adult women and eating disorders in Appetites. Had she lived, I like to think she would have had even more to say on the subject.

posted on May 16th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

2 On May 16th, 2007, Rachel said:

Yes – she also wrote The Merry Recluse – both of which occupy slots of honor on my bookcase.

posted on May 16th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

3 On May 17th, 2007, Neel said:

I really enjoyed that post. Maybe the analogy between adolescence and eating disorders creep up from the fact that adolescence is when your sense of body image perception goes haywire the most. It’s a self-critical time. Eating disorders stem from so many deep rooted issues in the society and the individual’s life; it’s a personal story I guess.

posted on May 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

4 On May 17th, 2007, Trisha Gura said:

I’m Trisha Gura, author of “Lying in Weight: the Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women,” (Harper Collins). Thank you for mentioning my name. Having been a scientist, 15-year medical journalist and having suffered from anorexia, I wanted answers. But, at the beginning, I ran into the same wall that you are experiencing. The researchers, except a handful, are oblivious, focused instead on teens and younger and younger girls. There are many reasons why, even the fact that teenagers and college students are easy to recruit for studied because the researchers are on academic campuses.

I urge others to fight for funding into this area because there are 30 million individuals in the US who are suffering. These diseases are far more than wanting to look like a fashion model. I am still writing about older women on my website trishagura.com and in articles for magazines. If enough of us raise our voices, the eating disorders community will hear us.

Let me know what else you find. There is strength and healing in numbers.

Trisha Gura trisha@trishagura.com

posted on May 17th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

5 On May 17th, 2007, Vanessa said:

This piece clearly identifies a hole in the body of knowledge about eating disorders. As someone who has struggled with an eating disorder for more than 20 years, I can honestly say that struggling as a grown woman is just as difficult as struggling as a teen. The amount of pressure to look a certain way and the amount of scrutiny of my weight is the same. This is an incredibly powerful disorder and just because you are in your 30′s, doesn’t mean that it will disappear.

posted on May 17th, 2007 at 9:50 pm