Aimee Liu, the author of over 10 books, spoke with me recently about her new work, Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders (Warner Books, 2007), and how her life with anorexia impacted the words within.

Kelly Jad’on: Why the title, Gaining?

Aimee Liu: That is the word which strikes fear and loathing in the hearts of those with eating disorders. It is associated with gaining fat. It has richer meanings, though. Gaining pleasure, gaining independence, gaining confidence. All of these appetites are connected. To gain freedom from eating disorders, you have to gain in power and maturity. This is central to recovery from eating disorders.

In our culture, women are told implicitly to be afraid of gaining weight both in pounds and purpose; a lot of women portrayed as celebrities or in fashion magazines are encouraged to remain in a state of immature adolescence. The unspoken message has long been that an “ideal” woman is a perennial child whose sole value and responsibility is to look cute. But today, with the creation of Size Zero clothing, the message is even worse. Now the “perfect” woman is a zero – in other words, nonexistent.

Aimee, where did the anorexia begin? How old were you when you began losing or wasting?

Wasting has multiple meanings related to one’s life and body. I originally began dieting in 7th grade. I developed what is now considered true symptoms of an eating disorder in the 8th grade. That was back in the 1960s, when few were diagnosed. I was obsessive, and at 5’6”, remained below 100 lbs until college, around age 19-20.

I was never as severe as some anorexics, near death; I maintained a weight that was too low. Like a vast majority who hover on the brink of anorexia, the real damage is psychological.
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Victoria Beckham has inadvertently boosted the sales of a new diet book that highlights the current obsession with extreme svelteness.

Posh ‘n’ text: Victoria’s patronage gave a boost to sales of ‘Skinny Bitch’
Until recently, not many people had heard of the American diet book, Skinny Bitch. That is, until Victoria Beckham decided to buy a copy.

The perpetually pouty British singer – dressed in her trademark dark sunglasses – was snapped by paparazzi buying the diet guide in an LA boutique last month. Within hours of the photo appearing on the web, the book had jumped from 77,939th place on the Amazon website sales chart to 209th – a whopping increase of 37,000 percent.

The sassy book – described as a “no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous” – had failed to garner much attention prior to being lifted off the shelf by the rail-thin Posh. Now its authors are reaping in the cash as thousands of readers turn to the unconventional book for quick weight loss advice.

The book was written by two LA fashion luminaries: former model Kim Barnouin, who has a degree in holistic nutrition, and ex-Ford model agent Rory Freedman. “They may be bitches,” the book warns. “But they are skinny bitches.”

Not for the faint hearted, the in-your-face book is loaded with strong language and no-holds-barred advice such as, “you are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin”; “soda is liquid Satan”; and “coffee is for pussies”.

Based on a vegan philosophy, the Skinny Bitch guide encourages women to eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables while urging them to abandon dairy products, eggs, meat and fish. The authors also issue a scathing attack on meat eaters, calling those who choose to eat meat while attempting to lose weight “morons”.
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Nicole Richie’s ‘joke’ Memorial Day email invitation has been met with further criticism – this time from a healthy weight loss group.

‘The Simple Life’ star poked fun at her alleged eating disorder in the invitation, which leaked last month, warning there would be scales outside the party and wannabe attendees should start starving themselves immediately.

But campaign group Thinspiration have not seen the humorous side.

In a MySpace posting they write: “If it was a joke, it wasn’t funny. Richie is a disgrace.”

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Nicole Richie, whose rail-thin frame has been a source of much discussion in the media, is now joining the chorus of voices saying that she is too skinny.

“I know I’m too thin right now, so I wouldn’t want any young girl looking at me and saying, ‘That’s what I want to look like,’ ” Richie tells Vanity Fair in its June issue. “I do know that they will, which is another reason I really do need to do something about it. I’m not happy with the way I look right now.”

Richie blames her severe weight loss on, in part, her December breakup with then-fiancé Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein. “I get really stressed out, and I do lose my appetite,” she says. (She and AM have been spotted together again recently.)

In an effort to put on a few pounds, Richie says she forced herself to eat – particularly high-calorie foods like burritos – but eventually sought professional help. “I started seeing a nutritionist and a doctor. I was scared that it could be something more serious.”
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The Cranberries star Dolores O’Riordan suffered a nervous breakdown and anorexia because the band was so successful. The singer says she couldn’t eat or sleep when the Irish rockers reached the height of fame more than a decade ago.

She says, “I honestly think that it was beyond anorexia – it was bigger than that. I was having a nervous breakdown. Losing lots of weight.

“I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t eat. I was suffering an awful lot from out-of-control anxiety attacks. I just couldn’t control my motor skills – I was panicking too much to move my limbs.

“So I went to see the psychiatrist and he just said it was too much stress.”

O’Riordan left the band after suffering a breakdown in 2003.

via StarPulse

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Em left us her story and her fight against anorexia, thanks Em

I’m an 18 year old girl and I suffered from anorexia for 2 years from age 15-17yrs and I’m still recovering- its a slow process. Anyone who encourages anorexia in anyone is disugusting, its one of the most horrible, painful, troubling times in my life! I’ll tell you what anorexia is like first-hand: Imagine the only thing you think about all day is food- that’s it- when you can eat it, how much of it you can eat, what you are going to eat I was so obssessed with food that if someone asked me what I was going to eat that week I would be able to tell them exactly what I would be eating each day that’s how sad it is. You stop trusting anyone else who makes your food paranoid they are secretly putting in “extra” food. I used to eat hardly anything a day. My day was waiting for assigned times where I could eat I was so hungry that I just couldn’t wait until I allowed myself to eat. It makes you stop socialising with your friends cause you don’t want to have lunch with them because then you have to eat resturant food which is higher in calories. I would a strict food plan as I knew exactly what I was eating like a comfort zone- I am serious I ate the same thing everyday 95% of the time. I would exercise 14 hours a week, my exercise instructor cried after class one time seeing how thin I had become- that hit me hard.

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A centre of excellence to treat a growing number of patients with eating disorders has been relaunched in Yorkshire as experts warn more young people than ever are in need of specialist care.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson officially marked the landmark at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Seacroft, Leeds.

The number of inpatient beds at the centre is being increased from 16 to 19 as it deals with an increasing number of referrals of seriously ill patients from across the North of England and further afield, treating as many as 200 people a year.

A link-up with the world-leading service provided at St George’s Hospital in London is also enhancing expertise and leading to new research into problems caused by anorexia nervosa and severe bulimia.
Doctors fear increasing pressures on both sexes are leading to more cases amid evidence one in five young women aged 14-30 now have eating binges, one in 20 have bulimia and one per cent are anorexic. A massive 80 per cent believe they are overweight while even girls as young as nine or 10 view their bodies in disparaging terms.

There are also signs more boys are suffering disorders. About 10 per cent of patients treated in Leeds are male.
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Doctors have been issued with controversial new guidelines which spell out for the first time when they are legally allowed to force-feed anorexic patients close to death.

The rules state that if two doctors believe an anorexic patient is mentally ill and in danger of dying, the patient can be sedated and tube-fed against their will.

The new Scottish guidelines, issued by the Mental Welfare Commission, also allow dangerously underweight children to be force-fed against the wishes of their parents.

Anorexia affects a growing number of Scots and there has been severe criticism of the lack of specialist services. Scotland on Sunday can reveal that each year around 30 patients are already tube-fed without consent north of the Border.

The practice is allowed under existing mental health laws, but until now there has been no specific guidance on when and how anorexic patients should be force-fed, leaving medics vulnerable to compensation claims.

Patients’ groups last night expressed concern about the guidelines because they fear doctors will be more likely to resort to force-feeding rather than trying to persuade patients to consent to treatment.

But Dr Flora Sinclair, medical officer for the Mental Welfare Commission, said they wanted to ensure the practice was only carried out as a last resort and under strict criteria.

Patients who become extremely ill as a result of their eating disorder need to be kept alive by artificial means, such as a tube inserted into the nose or stomach which gives the body vital nutrients.
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Without their parents’ knowledge, many adolescents with diagnosed eating disorders are visiting Web sites that encourage anorexia and bulimia, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics last month.

“Parents of pro-eating-disorder Web site users were more likely to know about these sites” – which provide “thinspiration” (images of extremely thin women) and reinforce disordered eating habits – than other parents, said Rebecka Peebles, one of the study’s authors and an instructor in adolescent medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “Still, over half the parents of these pro-eating-disorder Web site users didn’t know their own kids were on these sites.”

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The struggle with anorexia is a long way from the glamour of catwalks, fashion glossies and the latest diet. Two men talk about the women they love for whom ‘thin’ is a constant state of mind

It’s hard to say whether, if Grace had been bigger, I would still have found her attractive. You can never know that kind of thing. But her slimness wasn’t part of my initial attraction to her. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Slim girl – great!’ It was more about our connection. I don’t think Grace was very thin when I first met her, and I don’t think her size has really changed since then. Physically she had recovered from anorexia while at university. The psychological part is a longer recovery process and I met her during this time, when she had just moved from university to London, and was in her first week of a new job. She wasn’t comfortable with changing her environment or disrupting her control or routine; it wasn’t an easy transition for her.

But I would say she was still recovering for the first year we were together. We met at a work party – she was 23 and on the graduate scheme for an advertising agency; I was 24 and worked for a media agency in the same London building. We got talking and found we knew some of the same people. Grace called me the next day to arrange another meeting that weekend, and a month later she was my girlfriend. On our second date – over dinner in a restaurant – Grace told me: ‘There’s something you need to know. I was anorexic, but I’m better now.’ I didn’t really understand what eating disorders were all about. I don’t think I would have known at all, unless she had told me, at least not for a couple of months. I might have asked her why she needed to diet, because she was very slim, but I never thought of her as too thin. Every woman seems to be on a diet and think she is too fat! As soon as Grace told me, I was very conscious of looking out for signs that she was controlling her diet. I looked to see if she had finished her plate, but there was nothing really obvious. No one else would have noticed.

I read Grace’s book [Thin, published by Penguin, which details her experience of anorexia], and there’s a section where Grace says she felt she had to tell me this secret, even though she’d only just met me. She wrote that she didn’t want to spend too much time in the loo, because I’d probably think she was being sick. That’s exactly what I was thinking! Being sick after eating is, of course, a different eating disorder altogether, but I didn’t really know that then. For a few weeks after she told me, I kept an eye on her – seeing if she went to the toilet during a meal, that sort of thing. But as I got to know more about how Grace was actually feeling and the history of it, and how far she had come from where she was, I got less concerned. Grace has actually never binged in the time I’ve known her.
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