In this blog post, I’ve decided to tackle the topic of males with eating
disorders for a couple of reasons: 1) I am working with more men with
this problem than ever before and have noticed a huge rise in this
phenomenon as an Eating Disorders Therapist and 2) I feel that we don’t
discuss how boys and men are vulnerable to eating disorders enough and
how to help them avoid the eating disorder trap.
I am working with a number of men lately who engage in all kinds of
disordered eating practices and who suffer from low self-esteem and
very poor body image. Their stories have deeply touched me and forced
me to re-examine my beliefs around eating disorders being mostly a
female phenomenon. Continue reading »
In light of my last post about “full” recovery from disordered eating, I’d like to share with you my thoughts of this morning upon awakening and looking in the mirror and seeing back fat…
“Oh crap. It’s still there. And it’s actually in ROLLS! Okay Esther…calm down. You’re 38 and know that women’s bodies change and morph as we age. But I don’t want it to! You don’t want to go back there…but maybe if I just did Bikram yoga 5 days a week instead of 3, it would take care of the back fat problem. Maybe if I went back to the 100% raw foods diet. Oh God…here we go again…Get a grip girl! Let’s face it, we’ve been there, done all that and look where it got us- nearly dead.”
Memories of fainting on the exercise bike at the gym come flooding back to me. Being 100% “raw” and feeling miserable and hungry all the time, dreaming of cooked food. I share these raw honest thoughts I actually had TODAY with you (after having over 17 years of solid recovery from a life-threatening eating disorder) to show you that I am human, just like you and that even though I’ve come A LONG WAY on my path of healing, I still struggle at times with these thoughts. Continue reading »
My Twitter buddy, Andrea Owen just sent me this wonderful post she wrote on her blog about recovering from disordered eating. In it, she explores whether one can ever fully recover from an ED. She quotes my book which provides my answer to that question.
http://liveyourideallife.blogspot.com/2009/12/can-we-ever-fully-recover.html
I think this is a very important discussion and one we need to hear more about. Please send me your comments and thoughts and I’ll post ‘em to get this topic out even more…
Just finished reading Gabor Mate’s, “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts” about addiction. Mate is a physician, who for the last decade, has been working as the resident doctor at The Portland Hotel; a refuge for drug addicts in Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. In my opinion, this is the best book on addiction ever written and I have read a lot of them. Not only that, but I have taken many courses throughout my schooling on addiction and treatment methods and I think that Mate’s words are some of the wisest I’ve ever heard on the subject.
What I particularly loved about this book was the honesty and soul-searching from a doctor working with the toughest of the tough. Mate doesn’t separate himself from his patients in the typical medical-model way; but rather, searches deep within himself to ask how he is similar to his patients. He discovers that he is an addict as well- his “drug of choice” is not exactly heroin or crystal meth, but classical music CD-buying- a habit he confesses once cost him $8,000 in one shopping trip!
Continue reading »
I’ve been saving these for a while until I got this blog up…
Here’s a review for Elizabeth Patch’s book, “More to Love” (www.moretolove.net):
“Elizabeth, thank you for this glorious book. My question to you is, Do you make wallpaper out of your gorgeous illustrations? If so, I would like to plaster them all over my office walls to uplift and inspire my eating disorder clients and myself and to remind us of how beautiful we really are. If I could give women therapy in art form, it would surely be through your drawings, which give us images of real, magnificent, and gorgeous women owning our bodies, our power, and our incredible life-force. I will recommend your book to every woman I know who has ever thought she was anything less than fabulous.”
Continue reading »
