“disFIGURED” bills itself as a film about “women and weight,” but this is no chick flick of women bemoaning the sad, fat state of their thighs. Two women with overlapping insecurities – one is struggling with anorexia, the other with emotional overeating and morbid obesity – embark on an unlikely friendship in Glenn Glers’ directorial debut. Shot on a barebones budget of little more than unknown talent and a director’s dream, “disFIGURED” is both absorbing and evocative, sentimental but not saccharine. This is a film that shows female body-image dysfunction comes in all shapes and sizes.

Lydia (Deidra Edwards) is a fat woman struggling with the Cartesian duality of wanting to accept herself as she is while still wrestling with how her life could be if only she were thin. She joins a fat acceptance support group dedicated to fighting the fat prejudices of a thin-obsessed culture, but it soon becomes clear that the negative voices Lydia hopes most to stifle are her own. Yet even amongst her fat peers, Lydia still doesn’t quite fit in. She proposes a fat walker’s group and is harshly scolded by the militant group who see any such move as simply code for dieting.

Strangely, the only person who supports Lydia is Darcy (Staci Lawrence), a shockingly thin newcomer who wanders in mid-meeting to the open-mouthed shock of the group. Darcy identifies herself as a recovering anorexic who hopes that joining the group will allow her to finally accept her “fat” – an image only visible to Darcy herself. For group members whose weights number in the hundreds of pounds, Darcy appears both mocking and cruelly satirical. She’s voted out of the group, despite Lydia’s protestations that no one should be excluded.

The two outcasts soon strike up an uneasy friendship and in Darcy, Lydia finds a perfect parallel: Darcy is sophisticated, willowy, elegant… and mentally ill. There isn’t an ounce of fat on her body, or in her acting: She has pared himself down so remarkably her skin barely covers her soul. Darcy receives accolades and praise from an adoring public; Lydia faces taunts and jeers from strangers on the street. Yet, it soon becomes apparent that happiness isn’t found in the junior’s department. Lydia’s story reveals itself in lush, saturated colors, while Darcy’s unfolds in cold austere tones and stark black and white imagery. There are no shades of grey in Darcy’s world, both literally and metonymically. It becomes obvious that Darcy still actively struggles with anorexia, but viewers get the sense that while she is starving physically, its human connection Darcy hungers for most.

Despite Darcy’s emotional constipation, she and Lydia strike up a curious friendship that pivots uneasily on the opposite ends of the weight spectrum occupied by the women. In each other, the two find solidarity, but it’s a friendship fraught with insecurity and marked by brutal honesty. When Lydia hesitantly asks Darcy what she thinks of Lydia’s body, Darcy doesn’t sugarcoat her words. “I think it’s disgusting,” she replies without apology. Later, Lydia invites Darcy over to her pad, where she makes a major faux pas in encouraging Darcy to join her on a wild food binge. For Darcy, the idea of submitting to her own flesh and desires is inconceivable and the proposal nearly marks the death knell of the fragile friendship.

With Darcy’s help, Lydia’s walker’s group idea meets with great success – in more ways than one. When burly Bob (Ryan C. Benson) joins the group, sparks fly between him and Lydia and the two soon embark on a non-committal sexual relationship. Genuinely fat people are rarely featured in films, much less are they made the subject of a non-satirical love interest. And sexual scenes involving one or more fat partners? Unheard of. But fat sex appears perfectly au natural in “disFIGURED” and Gers deserves kudos for the film’s beautifully-constructed and artfully-shot sole sex scene. The burgeoning relationship between Lydia and Bob brings an unforced intimacy to the film that is one of its strengths. To watch their characters interact is to eavesdrop on some of life’s smallest but most universal moments.

Armed with a new love interest and a fledgling friendship, Lydia’s life appears to be making an upswing. Then Bob mentions he’s getting gastric bypass surgery, shocking Lydia out of her calm complacency and back into her deepest insecurities. She asks Darcy to give her “anorexia lessons” to which the latter reluctantly obliges.

The bizarre concept might easily have easily turned into a how-to guide paraded across pro-ana boards and studiously studied by legions of aspiring anorexics. But in Gers’ capable hands, anorexia is seen not as a glamorous way to get thin quick, but as the emotionally-devastating and all-consuming mental illness it truly is. My only quibble with Gers here is that while he responsibly shows the mental toll of anorexia, Darcy appears almost too healthy in body.

On the flip side, Gers skillfully deals with the issue of Lydia’s emotional overeating while yet stopping short of falling into the stereotype of the fat person as uncontrollable glutton. Writing about issues of eating disorders and disordered eating amongst fat people is a difficult balance to strike. There’s the danger in the implicit assumption that all fat people must have problematic relationships with food – hence explaining their obesity. But it is also very difficult to be fat (or thin) in this current culture and not have fallen victim to social cues and conditioning that reaffirms and rewards weight-loss and thinness and denigrates and degrades fatness and fat people. To ignore this reality is self-delusion, at best, and “disFIGURED” does a beautiful job of portraying the struggles many people face in light of an increasingly disordered culture.

“disFIGURED” is a film of great risk-taking. People who believe in the absolute infallibility of the calories in/calories burned weight-loss equation will likely pass by this film altogether. But nor will hardcore fat acceptance activists see this as a valentine to fat people or to the movement. To their credit, most fat acceptance circles are more inclusive than the film’s group, and very few fat activists would reject even the most shockingly thin. Anti-thin sentiments do exist amongst those in the movement, but fortunately they are thin in the ranks. Fat people have a heavier load to bear than thin people, but most fat activists recognize that weight-based discrimination is a collective fight. Despite the unlikelihoods that drive the film, the filmmaker finds so many grace notes in the humanity of his characters that it ends up feeling fiercely and emotionally real.

The often ad-libbed discussions of this wounded group of mostly women sound off on experiences that won’t come as unfamiliar to fat viewers. Their search for empowerment and self-acceptance in a crazy-hostile world doesn’t stint on desperation and anxiety, but also refreshingly includes positive affirmations and personal validations. I wish there were more voluptuous actors like this, these men and women who look like someone you might sit next to on the bus, pass on the street or even see in the image reflected in the mirror. They hold the spotlight beautifully.

“disFIGURED” has the tact and sophistication not to tie things up too tidily for either Lydia or Darcy. The film ends on a vaguely optimistic note, but it remains uncertain if any of character’s personal catharses will pan out. In the end, these characters find that while the process of healing is a step forward each has to make for herself, it’s not a journey one has to make alone.

Ultimately “disFIGURED” is less about the ways in which we treat and are treated by others and more so about the lies we tell ourselves. This is a film that shows the power of words and of speaking honestly — both with others and with ourselves. Fortunately, “disFIGURED” helps us answer the difficult question of how to start that dialogue in our own lives.

Showing in Manhattan through July 24. Widely released through major retailers (Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster, Best Buy) on July 29.

Written and directed by Glenn Gers; director of photography, Idit Dvir; edited by Mr. Gers and Gregory Plotkin; music by Kayla Schmah; production designer, Tabitha Johnson; produced by David W. Higgins; released by Cinema Libre Studio. Cast: Deidra Edwards (Lydia), Staci Lawrence (Darcy) and Ryan C. Benson (Bob).

Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes; this film is not rated.

Website: www.disfiguredmovie.com

In the meantime, I’ll be posting my review of the film “disFigured,” followed by an interview with writer and director Glenn Gers. See you in a few days, everyone.

You can’t visit Northside without also stopping by Shake It Records. The locally-owned indie music shop specializes in the obscure, from Chicago post-punk art-rock to Ethiopian boog-a-loo. Each time I visit, I immediately head for the ‘C’ section in hopes of a Bruce Cockburn find. The man has some 28 records, but since more than a third of them were made before I was even born, they can be a rare find. I lucked out this visit and stumbled across his 1997 album “You Pay Your Money And You Take Your Chance.” The album is a compilation of previous hits, but it does have one song that I love and don’t have in my personal collection, “Fascist Architecture.”

One of the things I love about Bruce Cockburn is that while he’s old enough to be my grandpa, his songs still cover the gamut of my own rollercoaster of emotions. Throughout my eating disorder and recovery afterwards, his songs filled me with a hope and inspiration like no other. Bruce recorded “Fascist Architecture” in 1980 – just a year after I was born – but each time I listen to it, I’m reminded that while the past may at times seem like a bad dream, like the nights of Gethsemane, they were always lived through with the promise of morning.

Who are the artists that inspire you? Do you have any particular pro-recovery song favorites? Discuss your favorite artists or post a link to your favorite song lyrics in the comments below.

Many of us, especially those of use who are recovering from an eating disorder, are on some kind of antidepressant or psychotropic drug — drugs that affect brain chemistry. So, let’s have it. What are the good, the bad and the ugly about the drugs you’ve tried in the past? Are there any you’d recommend? Others you’d issue a warning label to?

As always, this discussion should not be mistaken for professional advice. The Mayo Clinic has a good section on choosing an antidepressant (sponsored by the manufacturers of Lexapro) although I prefer the plain-speak site Crazy Meds. You should also talk to your doctor.

You can read my medicinal experiences after the break.

Antidepressant Review

I’ve been prescribed Zoloft and Prozac in the past, but the only antidepressant I have tried and will try is Wellbutrin (generic name bupropion hydrochloride), which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline. Interesting enough, buproprion hydrochloride is also marketed as Zyban, a drug used to quit smoking. There are four general types of antidepressants:

• Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs)
• Norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitors (NDRIs)
• Combined reuptake inhibitors and receptor blockers
• Tetracyclic antidepressants

Wellbutrin is considered a multiple reuptake inhibitor and it works by helps balancing the levels of neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine. For those of us lacking medical degrees, it’s believed that depression can be caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters — chemicals used to send messages from one nerve cell to another. So, Wellbutrin works by soaking your brain in two of those chemicals — norepinephrine and dopamine — longer.

The reason I use Wellbutrin exclusively is because it’s weight-neutral. Other drugs say they are weight-neutral, but a cursory search of internet messageboards will usually reveal lots of frustrated people who swear they’ve gained 30 - 40 pounds from medication alone. Keep in mind: I am recovering from an eating disorder and so I am especially and even overly-sensitive to weight gain side effects. You shouldn’t let a possibility of weight gain keep you from trying a medication that may work for you — better to gain a few pounds and be sane than to be thin and crazy is my motto. It’s important to note that while I tried Wellbutrin because it’s weight-neutral, I continue to use Wellbutrin because it works well for me. I have gone off and back on it several times without any major withdrawal symptoms or side effects. I can usually tell when it starts working because I notice a marked difference in my mood. Plus, Wellbutrin is also prescribed for people with AD/HD, which I also have.

Wellbutrin is rumored to actually help people lose weight, but I haven’t noticed this side effect. This and one reason may be why more people with eating disorders aren’t prescribed Wellbutrin: it can cause seizures in people with bulimia. I’m not exactly certain why this is so, but my uneducated guess is that binging/purging can alter your electrolyte levels, which may not play so nice with Wellbutrin. If you try Wellbutrin, I recommend you ask your doctor to prescribe the name brand only if your insurance will cover it. My company made a change to our insurance policy so that if a generic is available, it must be prescribed or you pay the difference. The generic version of Wellbutrin causes me to have migraines in the late afternoon. I also take Adderall, which helps ameliorate these migraines, but on weekends when I don’t take Adderall, the migraines are so debilitating that I often have to lie down for a few hours until they pass. Unfortunately my insurance won’t cover name brand if a generic is available, even after my doctor wrote a letter of medical necessity.

When I was first prescribed Wellbutrin, I was also prescribed Topamax. Wellbutrin can induce mania in people with bi-polar disorder, so my doctor prescribed Topamax as a mood stabilizer. Topamax is most commonly used to treat migraines, but in recent years, it’s also been used as a mood stabilizer and doctors have even prescribed it off-label for weight loss. Some people do experience weight loss as a side effect, but I would rather be fat than have its awful side effects. There’s a reason people who have taken this drug call it Dopamax; some of the drug’s most common side effects include difficulties with memory or concentration. I found that I forgot common words and phrases that I should have known. I forgot where my classes met and it was the end of the quarter. My head felt too big for my body and I remember describing the feeling similar to sitting in one of those mini Shriner’s cars. The drug made me so dazed and confused that I almost got into a car accident once. And here’s the thing with Topamax: It might work in suppressing the appetite and inducing weight loss, but if you go off it and try to go back on, you get all the bad side effects and none of the “good” ones. I read later that for some 30 percent of people who go off the drug and back on, the drug is ineffective.

Psychotropic Drugs Review

I’ve included my reviews of a couple AD/HD drugs in here because not only are they technically psychotropic drugs, but because there has also been shown to be links between eating disorders and AD/HD. I was diagnosed with ADD while in recovery from an eating disorder. The first drug I tried was Strattera and I was prescribed this because of my psychiatrist’s concerns that other stimulant-based AD/HD drugs would induce loss of appetite and weight loss — the last two things I needed while in recovery from anorexia and bulimia. I took Strattera for a month before I went off it. Strattera, I imagine, is what the candy dishes in hell are filled with. I was constantly sick and nauseous and I didn’t notice any differences in my ADD symptoms. I discovered later that Strattera and Wellbutrin don’t play well together. According to the Crazy Meds website, both drugs “want to grab the same precursors to activate the reuptake inhibition of norepinephrine. And as it turns out that Wellbutrin (bupropion hydrochloride) does norepinephrine reuptake in its own right adding Strattera might be tweaking the norepinephrine just a bit too much.”

My doctor then prescribed Concerta, which uses the same active ingredient — methylphenidate — as is used in Ritalin. I wasn’t on Concerta long either, but from what I remember, it didn’t do much for my ADD symptoms (which may be because I was started on a low dose) but it kept me up until 4 a.m., which isn’t good when you start work at 8 a.m.

Last fall my new doctor started me on Adderall. I specifically asked for Adderall because from what I read, the drug has been shown to have promising results. Plus, at the time, my brother worked for Adderall manufacturer Shire Pharmaceuticals, and I knew the company to not only be reputable and to have high business and ethical standards, but they also treated their employees very well. Adderall works differently than Concerta, Ritalin or Strattera: It’s also a stimulant, but it works by a combination of salts that dissolve at different times throughout the day. As in depression, it’s thought that the two chemicals dopamine and norepinephrine are key in one’s ability to focus and pay attention and that AD/HD is caused by an imbalance of these neurotransmitters. Adderall works by restoring the balance of these two chemicals in the brain.

When you first start on any kind of amphetamine, you’re usually put on a low dose and you graduate up to a dosage that is effective for you. I’m still on a relatively low dosage of Adderall, but I noticed a difference within just a few months. The most telltale sign for me that Adderall is working is that I do not have to go on a mad hunt for my car keys every day. I also notice a difference in my ability to focus and pay attention, even to things I don’t particularly enjoy doing. Amphetamines like Adderall may not be a good pick for people still struggling with anorexia or who have hyperthyroidism — side effects include loss of appetite and weight loss. I notice that I don’t get hungry until later in the day and sometimes I have to remind myself to eat lunch or I will be ravenous when the drug wears off in the evening. You also have to time when you take the medication just right. I usually take it mid-morning, so I can concentrate through the day and into the evening. If you take it too late however, it will disrupt your sleep patterns.

Have a different experience with any of the drugs I listed? Share your reviews below.

I have ADD, which is to say, the above is not unusual for me. But since I started on medication for it last fall, my focus and attention problems have gotten much better. And I’ve always been able to hyperfocus on things that I enjoy, like my job and looking up every cake design Duff Goldman has ever made, much more than things that I do not enjoy, like paying taxes or writing 25-page papers on Whiggish interpretations of the Revolutionary War.

Later, it occurred to me: I had eaten nothing all day. I normally do not eat breakfast, but it was mid- to late afternoon and I hadn’t had lunch, either.

Basic law of physiology: A starving brain will not function properly. Intellectually, I know this; in fact, I parrot it often on this site. But while they’re two halves of one whole, reason and emotion can be two very different beasts. I consider myself stable in recovery, and yet I still couldn’t quell that disordered part of me that immediately whispered “You’ve gone this long without eating… why ruin it? Don’t give in; you can wait until dinner. Think of the weight you might lose!”

Ahh, the ever-familiar Bitch in My Head. She and I once had a close, intimate relationship, but although she lives rent-free in my head, I can’t quite evict her.

I can, however, ignore her.

This is what recovery looks like: You will never be free from the disorder and you might even relapse from time-to-time. It and you will reside uncomfortably in mutual antagonism, perhaps, for life. Eating disorders are ever so seductive and there will always be triggers luring you back into into eating disorder hell. The distinguishing mark of recovery, however, is that you have now have choices. I could choose the possibility of losing a fraction of a pound and be irritable, unfocused and unorganized for the rest of the day; or I could choose to nourish both my body and mind with a healthy lunch and then get back to my life and my work.

I ignored the high-pitched mosquito whine in my head and fixed myself some tomato soup and a cheese and lettuce sandwich. Pepperjack on rye never tasted better.

New York restaurants are already feeling the squeeze of the new regulations. One TGI Friday’s restaurant ran out of its Classic Sirloin — one of the lowest calorie items on its menu — before the dinner rush. Other patrons are reporting “sticker shock” at the newly-revealed calorie counts of their favorite foods, with many choosing to forego them altogether. Some restaurant customers have even requested old menus, sans calorie counts, so they can continue to eat in calorie-free bliss.

I’m kind of straddling the fence on this new law, which may be surprising to some given my past eating disordered history, but in all fairness, I will make cases for both before offering up my final thoughts.

Con Position:

We shouldn’t base our food choices on the basis of calories alone, and this law certainly encourages people to do exactly that. In Roni’s article, she speaks to several women who suddenly reconsidered their food choices based on nothing more than calorie count. The posting of calories is also frustratingly triggering for people who are recovering from an eating disorder or even disordered eating, and seeing how eating disorders are already on the rise, we should be pushing people towards recovery and not further into eating disorder hell. And simply encouraging patrons to cut calories won’t necessarily make the Big Apple thinner. Keep in mind: These regulations affect only chain restaurants. Given that poor people are disproportionately fatter than other classes, these regulations will only affect only a fraction of the obese demographic city officials hope to slenderize. I mean, just how many poor people have the financial means to spend $8 on a 600-calorie Starbucks cappucino and 400-calorie muffin? If city officials were truly serious about reducing obesity, they’d start by reducing poverty. Two things that would have a bigger effect than posting calorie counts? Make fresh fruits and vegetables and healthy food more accessible and affordable for working families and reduce crime rates so people have safer places to exercise and recreate.

Other cities, including Seattle and California’s Santa Clara and San Francisco are scheduled to have similar laws go in effect later this year, only their laws require sodium, carbs, fats and cholesterol numbers — all of which also play roles in health and body weight — to also be posted. For some people with certain health conditions and especially those with diabetes, carbohydrate counts are more important numbers to know for health than are calorie counts. And listing calorie counts exclusively not only further demonizes calories in general, it also reinforces the old and flawed equation of calories in/calories burned to be the end-all-be-all in regulating body weight. It isn’t. There are a multitude of reasons why we weigh what we do and what we eat and how much we eat are just a couple out of a vast many.

Pro position:

On the flip side, we already have detailed nutritional information posted on the foods we buy at the grocery store, making this new law not very much different. Restaurants are supposed to make available nutritional information on the foods they sell, but not all restaurants post these in conspicuous places or even have information ready and on-hand for customers. Case in point: I’ve fallen in love with Whole Foods’ vegan meatloaf and vegan General Tso’s chicken. Whole Foods lists the ingredients of each of its deli counter items next to the item, but they do not have nutritional information available for them either in the store and on its website. Because I have hypothyroidism, I try to eat low-glycemic foods and I wanted to know the carbohydrate counts for these items. I contacted customer service, who gladly provided me with the information, but I had to send an email requesting it and then waited nearly two weeks for the information. If Whole Foods didn’t have such awesome customer service, I may never have known the nutritional information for these items. Sure, I could just not shop there if not having the information is that important to me, but who benefits? I don’t buy two items I love and can’t prepare and cook myself, and Whole Foods doesn’t get my business. It’s a no-win situation for all.

Also, many restaurants do deliberately mislead customers about the food items they sell, touting certain offerings as healthy when, in fact, they aren’t the most healthy option. In Roni’s article, she quotes a woman who was surprised to find that TGI Friday’s pecan-crusted chicken salad (served with mandarin oranges, dried cranberries and celery and promoted as healthy) contains 1,360 calories — more than half of the recommended caloric daily amount the average woman needs — while the cheeseburger served with fries weighs in at 1,290 calories. While we’ve made great and obvious gains in educating people on nutrition, there still exists a gross national lack of knowledge about the foods we eat and on nutrition in general. And thanks to crazy fad diets that promote potatoes as evil and foods processed with chemicals and synthetic sugars as “healthy,” our ideas about health and nutrition are even more skewed. These regulations may provide consumers with some much-needed nutritional perspective.

While listing calorie counts may possibly encourage disordered eating habits, the problem is not in the listing of the information itself, but in the ways that people understand and then act on the information posted. People do not base their food intakes on calories alone; they’re often subject to and influenced by region, culture, ethnicity, gender, age, religion and a number of other factors. Even if we erased every bit of nutritional information from items we buy at the grocery, eating disorders would continue to exist because at their root, eating disorders are not about food — they’re about our relationships with food and the ways in which we express our feelings through food.

My thoughts:

So, my final thoughts on the matter is this: Restaurants should be required to make available complete nutritional information to customers — if they want it. Instead of posting calorie counts on the menu, a note instead should be posted alerting customers that such information is available upon request. Or, restaurants could give customers the option of a menu with nutritional information and a menu without nutritional information. Information is power, but while this kind of in-your-face posting of calories is intended to help customers make better choices, it also robs them of a choice — the choice of not-knowing.

What are your thoughts?

Thirty-three year old Korto hails from Liberia and attended fashion school in Canada. Here’s her bio, according to the show’s website:

After school, she moved outside of Little Rock, Arkansas, where she now resides with her husband and daughter. Drawing from her African roots, Korto infuses tribal details into her classic designs. She is inspired by rich fabrics and textures and says her designs are intended for real, full-figured women. In her spare time, Korto works as a freelance fashion photographer, dances in an African dance troupe and does African hair braiding and makeup. She says her family considers her to be fun and easygoing.

Warning! Minor spoiler ahead if you missed last night’s premiere.

Ready?

After just the first challenge, Korto has already shown herself to be a designing force worth reckoning with. She placed in the judges’ top three for her creative re-imagination of ordinary grocery store items. I tend to dislike the application of the term “real” to full-figured women — all women are “real” women — but full-figured isn’t always a euphemism for fat, either. A friend of mine recently went to a posh and pricey boutique and lamented over the fact that the only items on clearance and in her price range were in sizes 2 and 4. She is at a healthy weight for her frame and is clearly thin by societal standards — and she wears a size 8-10. “Real” is a poor word choice; I think we would be best served if used the term “average” instead. And the average American woman? Isn’t a size 2 or even 4. In fact, she’s a size 14. Realistically, how many women do you see walking around today who can fit into the double-negative sizes of the models on Project Runway? As the Body Shop said in its “Love Your Body” campaign, “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only eight who do.”

The carrot dangling before contestants on Project Runway is the opportunity and financial means to create their own fashion line. If we go by current estimates, some 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to continuously shifting government guidelines. Wouldn’t then the designer who designs clothes for a larger subset of the demographic thus have the best chance of success with their line? Here’s hoping Korto goes far in the competition. There are three billion women who could use some fashionable clothes.

I applaud any effort to raise awareness of and education about eating disorders. I especially applaud the organization for not being afraid to show the often harsh and definitively unglamorous side to an eating disorder. I further applaud the organization for seeking to establish a residential treatment facility, and for its summer camp and scholarship programs. We need more organizations like The Looking Glass Foundation.

My only issue with the campaign, and it’s a minor quibble, is its theme: “Not every suicide note looks like a suicide note.”

It’s a common stereotype that people with an eating disorder are subconsciously or even consciously trying to kill themselves. And I can see where many might get this idea. After all, eating disorders erode not only the mind, but also the physical self. Many sufferers, like me, are left with lasting physical reminders of our eating disorders years after we have reached a stable point in our recovery — that is, if one succeeds in recovery. For all too many, recovery is the carrot forever dangling out of reach. And don’t doubt it: Eating disorders are as real and deadly as cancer. There is no cure. The final symptom is suicide.

I’m sure there are people with a death wish who hope an eating disorder will help them achieve this goal, but for me and most people with eating disorders I know and have talked to, eating disorders aren’t a way to die. They’re a way to live. There is a reason why people who promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice say that a dead anorexic is a failed anorexic. For many, an eating disorder is a way to cope with larger emotional issues in their life. We are unable to comprehend and manage the real issues in a healthy and constructive way, and so we fall back on our bodies, allowing its behaviors and compulsions and urges to say what we really feel and need. In flesh, we describe a pain we can not communicate in words. For me, my eating disorder came at a unique crossroads in my life, a time when I felt deeply depressed, confused and unsure of myself and also a time of great upheaval in my family, personal and professional life. Starving gave me a goal, a way to stand out and exert control.

Many eating disorders naysayers like to bandy about the statistic that only some two hundred people die each year from anorexia, but the truth is, we have no way to realistically estimate just how many people die each year from an eating disorder. One would be hard-pressed to find anorexia or bulimia cited as the cause of death on any death certificate, just as obesity itself is never listed as a cause of death. Most often, it is the complications that arise from an eating disorder — heart irregularities, malnutrition, kidney failure, electrolyte imbalances, depression and suicide, etc… — that cause the death of a person with an eating disorder. And since we don’t even have a reliable estimate of the numbers of people with an eating disorder — many cases go unreported for fear of shame or due to a lack of resources — we will never be able to pinpoint a reliable estimate of just how many lives are taken each year by eating disorders.

It is true that an eating disorder is often a silent cry for help. It is also true that starvation and chemical imbalances brought on by an eating disorder often cause such great depression in sufferers that many feel suicide is the only way out of their pain. It is also true that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses. In fact, the annual death rate associated with anorexia alone is more than 12 times higher than that of all other causes combined for females between 15 and 24 years of age. But most people with an eating disorder do not want to die and their disorders are not a suicide note in the making. Most people with an eating disorder want to live – and an eating disorder allows them the only way forward they know how to take in order to keep living.

Eating disorders carry with them great ironies: Most develop as a form of control, but soon begin to control us; the object of our obsession does not bring us happiness, but rather more sorrow and pain; and no matter how much weight we lose, it’s never thin enough. But perhaps greatest irony of all is that that which allows us to live has also the power to kill us.

What about you? Would you say your eating disorder represented a form of suicide or is it instead a way to cope with life?

I came across the website of Irene Rubaum-Keller, an eating disorder therapist based in Los Angeles. She has a wealth of good articles on her site related to eating disorders and body image. She wrote about “feeling fat” here (originally published in Strive magazine) and I want to re-list her tips of how to work through the feeling of fatness.

How To Turn A Fat Day Around

Here are some simple things you can do to help yourself feel better when you’re having a fat day:

* Go to the gym. Not just to work out for your health, but also to spend some time in the locker room. Here you will see what real bodies look like. This is the only “fair” place for you to compare your body to others.
* Think Sophia Loren. She’s not 23, she’s not a size 4, and she’s gorgeous.
* Dress and act as if you were having a thin day. Pretend you feel good about your body. Again think Sophia Loren.
* Be aware of how you talk to yourself on a fat day. See if you can be nicer.
* Find all the studies that show men prefer normal weighted women to thin women. Read them often.
* Get into therapy if your self-image is poor and it’s making you miserable. It’s worth the investment in yourself.
* Spend some time looking at a Rubens. If you’re built like that, you’ll see the beauty in it. If you’re not, for a few moments, you might just feel thin.

What does “I feel fat” often translate into for you? What are some other ways you turn your own fat days around?

For other, unrelated reasons, I decided not to keep in touch with this friend so I have no idea where she’s at now in her recovery or if the image of her face above the toilet has become a fading memory for her daughter. But I was reminded of this after reading Jeanne Sager’s article “Bad Parent: Weight Watcher,” in which Sager worries that she could be passing down her eating disorder to her own toddler daughter. Sager is a recovering bulimic whose instances of purging have been limited now to just a handful of occasions a year. A first-time parent, she worries now that because she views weight through a glass darkly, she will unwittingly pass along her anxieties to her daughter. She’s also worried about a genetic link, too, and for good reason. According to NEDA, eating disorders often run in families and current research shows significant genetic links amongst eating disorder development.

But Sager also makes a good point that it’s not only parents with an eating disorder who pass down harmful traits and behaviors to their children.

Even “normal” moms, moms who groan in the mirror or keep a scale handy for the morning post-shower ritual, run a risk of passing bad habits onto their kids.

A study in published in 2003 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition warns that parents who restrict their children from eating certain foods are in essence pushing their kids to eat when they’re not hungry. “The more severe the restriction, the stronger the desire to eat prohibited foods.”

When a mother is dissatisfied with her body, daughters will learn to base their self-worth on their appearance, says Christine Gerbstadt, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. In fact, a study published by the Association showed that girls as young as five are likely to try dieting simply because Mom has.

Of course, I must add, that even children with stellar parents who have healthy relationships with food and weight can go on to develop an eating disorder. Eating disorders are still much of a medical mystery. For some, the problem is rooted in biology, others, in sociology. The reasons why one develops an eating disorder also vary by sufferer, making it even more difficult to nail down any exact reason why they occur.

Did you learn disordered eating behaviors from your own parent(s)? How did your parents affect your own relationships with food and your body today? Or are you a parent yourself who worries you could be passing along bad food-related habits to your kids? Share your thoughts below.