Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders
by Aimee Liu
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Book Summary Information
Author: Aimee LiuEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-22
ISBN: 0446577669
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Book Reviews of Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders
Book Review: Changes the Dialog on Eating Disorders
Summary: 5 Stars
GAINING: THE TRUTH ABOUT LIFE AFTER EATING DISORDERS is a well-written interesting hybrid of a book that is part memoir, part individual interview/reportage, part summary of existing research, all about the experience of having recovered from an eating disorder. I found it interesting particularly in how it addressed personality and temperament, how they relate to genetics and environmental factors. Liu's book, because it is both personal and researched, paints a vivid and rich portrait of individuals who have suffered and recovered from this particular illness.
Liu's memoir of her own anorexia takes up the story of her life after her last memoir ends. Liu wrote Solitaire in her 20s after she recoverd from a serious period of restricting anorexia as a high school and college student. She writes of a moment when she decided she wanted a happier life and turned toward health. But GAINING isn't focused on her eating disorder, but on the life she lived afterwards that still bore features of someone with her particular former illness.
The individual interviews Liu conducts to enrich her investigation of what her own experience as a recovered anorexic might mean support her thesis that while the eating disorder might stop, many of the concerns and fears continue and are "treated" in other ways. Liu interviews women who became workaholics, engaged in punishing exercise, kept their lives emotionally "clean." Commonalities and connections are made among recovered anorexics and among recovered bulimics that illustrate with personal narratives the findings that Liu focuses on from current research.
Liu's treatment of the research on the topic is interesting and turns a corner in what I think of as the popular understanding of eating disorders (starlets who opine that they could use an eating disorder for a couple of days, etc.). Liu rejects a traditionally feminist position that environment and media messaging against women are primarily responsible for the disorders experienced by many women and men, though she treats these ideas respectfully and addresses how she does think they play a part in the experience. She expands on the thinking that "genetics loads the gun and enrivonment pulls the trigger" in terms of biological predisposition and experiential triggers for those who suffer from eating disorders by writing about the position that genetics creates the gun, environment loads it and extreme emotional experiences fire the ED bullet.
Research is also used to demonstrate the commonalities of those who suffer from such disorders in terms of brain functioning and temperament. Recovered anorexics, for example, often have temperaments that also lead them to choose not to have children. Liu examines brain functioning in terms of how women with a history of eating disorders respond to a photo of cake vs. the brain activity charted in someone who has never suffered from such an illness (the anorexics accessed the parts of their brains of judgment and anxiety, the control group went to the pleasure part of their brains) and also the differences in how anorexics differ from others in how their brains respond to dopamine, the key to pleasure in the human brain, to list just a few examples.
Liu doesn't focus on treatment styles or programs, but on the implications that having suffered from an eating disorder can have for an individual regarding his or her personality, life choices and future. Perhaps the best way to summarize the book is from this interview with Sheila Reindl, who wrote Sensing the Self and is a clinical psychologist and researcher at Harvard. Reindl tells Liu, "Recovery is like a big old house. ... The anorexic or bulimic is always going to live there. ... I prefer to think of it this way. She used to rule the house in a kind of tyranny. ... Now she still gets to live there and she may still have some of those old fears and vulnerabilities, but she's got only one room in the house and has to make way for more and more occupants as time passes" (p. 125).
This book was an artistic, thoughtful and respectful mix of personal investigation, interview and research summary cogent to the subject matter. I thought it was well written and compelling, illustrating some fascinating aspects of personality and temperament that inform decisionmaking and life choices. I found it a moving and informative read.
Summary of Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders
If you've ever suffered from an eating disorder-or cared for someone who is anorexic or bulimic-you may think you understand these illnesses. But do you really understand why they occur? Do you know what it takes to fully recover? Do you know how eating disorders affect life after recovery? Now, nearly three decades after she detailed her first battle with anorexia in Solitaire, Aimee Liu presents an emotionally powerful and poignant sequel that digs deep into the causes, cures, and consequences of anorexia and bulimia nervosa. Aimee Liu believed she had conquered anorexia in her twenties. Then in her forties, when her life once again began spiraling out of control, she stopped eating. Liu realized the same forces that had caused her original eating disorder were still in play. She also noticed that other women she knew with histories of anorexia and bulimia seemed to share many of her personality traits and habits under stress-even decades after "recovery." Intrigued and concerned, Liu set out to learn who is susceptible to these disorders and why, and what it takes to overcome them once and for all. With GAINING, Liu shatters commonly held beliefs about eating disorders while assembling a puzzle that is as complex and fascinating as human identity itself. Through cutting-edge research and the stories of more than forty interview subjects, readers will discover that the tendency to develop anorexia or bulimia has little to do with culture, class, gender-or weight. Genetics, however, play a key role. So does temperament. So do anxiety, depression, and shame. Clearly, curing eating disorders involves more than good nutrition. Candidly recalling her own struggles, triumphs, and defeats, Aimee explores an array of promising and innovative new treatments, offers vital insights to anyone who has ever had an eating disorder, and shows parents how to help protect their children from ever developing one. Her book is sure to change the way we talk and think about eating disorders for years to come.Eating Disorders Books
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