OT: Help a Syracuse University student

One of my students is looking to interview children of alcoholics for her honors project--especially those under, say, age 25. Anonymity is yours if you want it; she's a sensitive interviewer, as she herself comes from an alcoholic family.

If you'd be willing to talk with her for this project, or know anyone else who might be, please contact Theresa Walsh at tewals01 at syr.edu.

I thank you.

EMAIL ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED.

Revolutionizing the runway

Last Sunday I was lucky enough to be able to take both my daughters to what was billed as a "revolutionary fashion show" put on by Ophelia's Place here in Syracuse. While I'm not in general a fan of fashion shows, this really wasn't about fashion. It was about sending men, women, and children of all shapes and sizes down the runway with confidence. It was about redefining beauty to include many types of bodies and attitudes. It was about celebrating an aspect of the human condition that too often gives us cause for anxiety, obsession, and despair.

My favorite part of the event was the slide show at the beginning that encouraged the audience to stop the fat talk, stop body bashing. You know--the reflexive corporeal self-loathing we all (especially women) get into and express uncontrollably--to ourselves and to the world.

I love this message. Let's just stop--just say no. If you can't say something nice about your body, don't say anything at all. And don't be saying anything about other people's bodies. Because we are more than our bodies. We are powerful, strong, funny, loving, creative, inspiring, and beautiful.

I'm signing up for next year's show. Anyone want to join me?

* The terrible photo at the top of this post was taken by my laptop. I'm holding one of the purple chocolate butterflies that were given out at the event. It was delicious.

This is how myths about eating disorders are perpetuated

By work like this, from a psychologist at the University of Missouri.

If you've got a minute, hop over to the site, read the story, and leave a comment. I don't waste my time arguing with people online, but maybe Bardone-Cone can learn something from a different perspective.

Finally, some good news about fat

This blog post from Tara Parker-Pope discusses a study on the kinds of factors that affect how we visibly age. Make sure to look at the compelling slide show that goes along with it. It's a fascinating look at pairs of twins where one looks considerably older than the other. The study results suggest that smoking, sun exposure, depression, and weight loss all contribute to looking older.

Cool new study on anorexia

It seems clear that family-based treatment is an excellent way to go for adolescents who develop anorexia or bulimia. But what about adults? Now a new study out of University of North Carolina is looking for volunteers to test a related treatment that could help adults with eating disorders.

When a teen gets sick, parents are a crucial part of her/his recovery. This study looks at how spouses can be involved in recovery. It makes a lot of sense to me, because anorexia is anosognosic--people who have it either can't perceive that they're ill or, in the case of some adults, often can't "decide" to recover themselves. Having someone else take charge of recovery or at least be involved in it can make all the difference.

Kudos to Cindy Bulik and other UNC researchers for testing this one out. I look forward to hearing the results.

The world's funniest complaint letter

has got to be this one, written by a passenger on one of Virgin Air's India to England flights in December. Don't miss the photographs of food--that's the tangential link to the subject matter of this blog.

I haven't read anything food-related that's this funny since I read Wendy McClure's Candyboots site. If you haven't seen that, please go there right now. Don't read it while eating or at work.

Feb. 1 is Amazon Spike Day

So if you're planning to buy Feed Me! on Amazon, please do it tomorrow (the 1st). Thanks!

From the department of Gee, I wonder why

comes a gem of a press release that begins like this:

Yikes! 1 of 3 Canadian Women Battling Body Image

TORONTO, ON --- January 27, 2009 --- The mirror doesn’t lie. From muffin tops to thunder thighs, from junk in the trunk to flabby arms, Canadian women say they don’t like what they see.

Um, do you think there could be a connection here?

I get a lot of press releases like this, most of them hawking diets. Some, like this piece of work, pretend to promote positive body image even while undermining it. Note to PR flacks: My readers and I are smarter than you are. We can see the strings moving your arms and legs. And we know who benefits from garbage like this, and it isn't us. I won't name the ridiculous "expert" this press release is flogging except to say that s/he is not supporting positive body image.

Have you come across other oxymoronic examples? Send them my way.

Feed me, then review me

If you've read FEED ME!: WRITERS DISH ABOUT FOOD, EATING, BODY IMAGE, AND WEIGHT, I'd love to have you stop by Amazon and review it, so other people can see how great it is. I'm kidding about the greatness, but I would love to have a couple of reviews pop up on the Amazon site.

I appreciate it, y'all. And of course I hope you truly like the book.

Unspeakable

Eighteen-year-old Alicia Rae of Hampshire, England, was found dead in her bed by her mother yesterday. She'd been struggling with anorexia for two years and, apparently, lost the struggle. She was very nearly the same age as my daughter Kitty, who became ill with anorexia at 14 and who has been well now for three years.

It is unspeakable that Alicia Rae is dead at 18. It is unspeakable that her mother had to find her body. Unspeakable, but we have to speak about it. We have to say her name, Alicia Rae. We have to remember that anorexia kills, that in fact it has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disease, killing 20 percent of those who develop it.

We have to speak about what happens to the body and the brain when they are starved. We must talk of the unspeakable irony of a young woman like Alicia Rae, dying of malnutrition in the midst of plenty. We must speak of the hell she and her family went through, and of the churchyard where she's buried now, not far from her home, not far from the bedroom where her mother found her dead.

We must speak of these things and remember and tell them. We must do everything we can to make sure there are no more Alicia Raes. That means pushing for better treatments and spreading the word about new treatments that work. It means not hiding in the proverbial closet when eating disorders strike. It means standing up for our children and facing down the stigma of anorexia--the stigma that keeps us silent and despairing and alone.

In this season of new beginnings, we must talk of the unspeakable so that there will be hope.

And the winners are . . .

Tisa Agloro and Carrie Rigdon. Congrats!

Now, for those of you who did not win a copy but who plan to buy it on Amazon, I have a plea: Would you order it on our Amazon Spike Day, which is February 1st? That's this Sunday. No big deal if you just can't wait that long, or if you want to pick it up at your local independent bookseller (I'm all for supporting indies) or library. But if you are shopping Amazon and can wait, February 1st would be swell.

Tisa and Carrie, please email me your addresses and I'll get your books in the mail this week!

Thank you everyone! Please let me know what you think of the book. I love hearing from readers.

Win a copy of FEED ME!

UPDATE: We've got 149 entries. Woo-hoo! I'll be giving away 2 copies of the book!

Yep, I'm giving away a copy of Feed Me!: Writers Dish About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image, which I edited and which contains fabulous essays by writers like Caroline Leavitt, Joyce Maynard, Diana Abu-Jaber, Amity Gaige, Jenny Allen, Kate Harding, and many more. All you have to do to enter the drawing is send me your name and e-mail address before 1 p.m. on Monday, January 26. I will pick one lucky winner then.

To find out more about the book, click here and here. To read a digital galley of the intro and three essays, click here.

Good luck!

Why we need to change our attitudes

When my older daughter was ill with anorexia, she went through hell. The rest of the family did too--not the same kind of hell, surely, because after all, we could escape it for an hour or two while she could not. My younger daughter marched through hell along with us. She heard and saw anorexia with all its claws and teeth and terror, and like my husband and me, she came to loathe it.

We've talked quite a bit, she and I, in the years since, about eating disorders, about body image and weight. I've tried to model Health at Every Size for both my daughters. And yet my beautiful, lively, talented younger daughter, Lulu, is convinced that she's fat, and is upset about it.

I've tried reasoning with her: You're not fat; you're going through puberty. Your body needs a little extra flesh on it right now. And even if you were fat, so what? Fat is a descriptive word. We all have fat on our bodies.

And so on. I can practically see my words passing through her like ghosts sailing through a solid wall, making no mark and having no effect. Why should they, when we both know just how viciously society punishes those of us whose bodies are not naturally stick-thin. When the rest of the 8th-grade girls have straight hair and long, lean torsos, and my daughter has hair with a lot of wave and a naturally rounder shape.

The experiences of her sister's illness are now four years behind us. I'm glad they're fading for all of us. But I wish some of what we all saw and learned then could help my younger daughter now. I wish she could remember that there are a lot worse things than being round, that conformity comes with a terrible price, that food is nurturing and sustaining rather than the enemy.

She eats the same way she always has; you better believe I'm watching that closely. I worry, with dread in my heart, when what she thinks is going to inspire her to go on a diet for the first time, and whether she, too, will become anorexic. I worry and I watch and I wait. I wait for the day when I can say to her, "You're beautiful just the way you are," and she will believe it.

I hope I live long enough to see that day.

Change Is Good

Yes indeed.

But in the midst of such happy change, please remember to take a few deep breaths and practice loving what is. Because unlike our outgoing president, you are worthy of love and compassion, right now, as you are.

I want your ideas

Syracuse University, where I teach, has a program called Healthy Mondays. I know, I know; it's a bit silly, really, but the folks who organize Healthy Mondays mean well and may indeed do some good.

Now they're looking for ideas from faculty and students for small projects, and they're giving out small grants to help make those projects reality. I'd like to propose something about eating disorders. My first thought is to suggest a kind of "voices of eating disorders" oral history project, kind of like National Public Radio's wonderful Storycorps project.

I'd love to have your ideas. What, if anything, do you think is worth doing on a college campus?

Oprah and the "brown elephant in the room"

That, according to a recent New York Times article, is how Oprah Winfrey refers to the 40 pounds she's gained over the last year or two. The piece is titled "Her Bulge, His Book and Their Plan B," and focuses on her long-term relationship with the most important man in her life: Bob Greene, her personal trainer/diet guru.

It's an interesting piece and worth reading for those who are interested in the money side of the weight-loss biz. Greene has created several hugely profitable franchises from his work with Oprah--so profitable, in fact, that he no longer charges her for consulting. (I love that--the richest woman in the world doesn't have to pay!) The recent media attention to Oprah's weight gain has been a bonanza for Greene, a fact he readily admits.

There's much to shake your head at here, but it was this quote that really got me:

Ms. Winfrey has so far accepted all the blame for her lapse, not once suggesting the fault lies with Mr. Greene or his diet plan. "This has been a wake-up call for her to let me get back to doing my thing," Mr. Greene said.

Notice anything? Oprah takes blame for gaining weight. Not responsibility. Not ownership. But blame. As in, gaining weight is obviously a moral lapse that must be atoned for. Greene's "diet plan" is blameless, as is Greene himself. Not everyone agrees: At the end of the article, another trainer comments that "any time a client falls off the wagon, the fault lies with the trainer, because it is his or her job to formulate a plan that works for the client."

Here's a radical suggestion: Maybe the fault here lies neither with the stars nor with ourselves* but with the concept of dieting, a concept we know to be fundamentally flawed because 98 percent of dieters "fall off the wagon," as Oprah put it. Maybe the real problem is the frenzy of self-loathing we are so quick to fall into, which, I submit, does more to prevent us from "living our best life" than 5 "extra" pounds, or 30, or 80.

I've been there. Just ask my long-suffering husband, who's had to talk me off the ledge of self-hatred many times. One thing I know for sure: Self-acceptance feels a hell of a lot better than self-loathing. It's not easy to pull off in this culture, whether you're fat or thin. But it's worth the effort. Really.


* I can never resist a Shakespeare paraphrase or pun.

Tell President-elect Obama how you feel

Here's a chance to contribute to the next administration's health care agenda: Take 10 minutes to go to this site and post about an issue you care about. Mental health parity? Health at Every Size? More funding for eating disorders research? Whatever's near and dear to your heart, tell the change team. Today. Really. Because how often do we get a chance like this?

Six-year-olds and eating disorders

This Canadian article, published last November, is one of the few I've seen anywhere that overtly links comments and teasing about weight with eating disorders. A significant percentage of teens with eating disorders are overweight at some point. As this piece points out, other people's responses to their weight can start them spiraling down into the hell of an eating disorder.

"Research shows that when girls are teased about their size and their shape, they stop eating," says Mary Kay Lucier of the Bulimia Anorexia Nervosa Association (BANA).

Notice that she did not say "when overweight girls are teased." That's the part that gets me. The act of teasing and making fun of a young girl's weight, even if it's "all in fun" (a phrase I loathe), can be enough to trigger self-starvation in some kids.

Lucier went on to say, "We've had 25 seven-year-olds in the past year come in in a state of acute starvation." I can imagine all too well what lies ahead of some of these girls. It's not pretty. Not at all.

BANA runs education programs, but its budget (like so many nonprofits') has recently been slashed. If you feel motivated to give away a little money in a good cause, download a donor form here.

Maybe the best thing all of us can do is teach our children that just as it's not OK to touch someone who doesn't want to be touched, it's also not OK to comment on anyone else's body--positively or negatively. We have better things to talk about.

Parent support group meeting in Madison, WI

UPDATE: This meeting has been postponed due to weather. It will now be held Tuesday, 1/20, at 7 pm at Starbucks.

The monthly Maudsley parents support group meeting in Madison will take place this Wednesday, January 14th, at Starbuck's, 3515 University Avenue, beginning at 7 p.m.

This is a fabulous get-together of parents who are in various stages of family-based treatment and who cheer each other on, help each other problem-solve, and support each other through one of the toughest experiences a parent will ever go through. If you're helping a child through anorexia or bulimia with FBT, you might feel like you don't have time for something like this. But try to find the time--it'll help keep you going through the tough moments. And as we all know, there are plenty of those.

For information, contact Denise Reimer, reimer1@charter.net.

Obesity problems--true and faux

An anonymous reader posed a question to me on another thread, which I thought deserved its own thread. He or she wrote:

I've been reading your blog on and off for about 8 months now. Do you ever recognize that there is an obesity problem in the States? Though I am on board with the message that 'fat' does not equal 'unhealthy,' and I am certainly opposed to pathologizing a group of people who have nothing wrong with them, I still believe there is an obesity-related health problem in this country.

In public, I feel I need to be an advocate for fat acceptance (or maybe, Health at Every Size), but I also want to find a way to acknowledge and distinguish the obesity-related health problem that does exist. I'd love to hear your thoughts about how to address this with an even hand.

I'm not an epidemiologist; I haven't done any studies on this question. I've read extensively, I've thought about it, I've talked to people. I'll tell you what I think, personally, and then I'd like to hear from other readers who may know more than me.

What I've read suggests that there is no obesity explosion in this country. That in general Americans are a little heavier than they were, say, 50 years ago. They are also a little taller. Some of what I've read suggests that these two go hand in hand. I know that there was a surge in obesity statistics about 10 years ago, when BMI cutoffs were changed overnight. People who went to sleep merely overweight woke up obese, and an alarming new statistic was born.

I've read research suggesting that weights went up in the late 1980s, after several years of the low-fat craze. Which brings me to the point here: While I don't think we can say with any certainty that people are fatter now and/or why that might be, what we do know is that we can't make them thinner. So let's set assume for a moment that yes, people are fatter now. Let's take it a step further and proclaim that this rise in weight is a Serious Health Problem (and I'm not saying it is; as others have pointed out very well, fat is not equivalent to poor health, and thin does not correlate good health).

Here's the thing: We can't change what people weigh. Some people lose weight for a short time by dieting. But 98 percent of them gain it back, and then some.

So diets don't work for adults. They don't work for children, either. School interventions are notoriously ineffective when it comes to making kids thinner.

Now let's go back to that assumption, that weight is a serious health problem. There is little to no evidence of this. There is a correlation between obesity and diabetes, but it's a correlation, not cause and effect. We don't know that obesity causes diabetes; maybe whatever malfunctioning metabolic shift causes diabetes actually causes obesity. In which case, trying to "cure" obesity would be like trying to "cure" OCD by, I don't know, strapping someone's hands to their sides so they can't obsessively wash them. It would be treating the symptom rather than the cause.

When it comes to other measures of health, the statistics don't bear out the notion that obesity is a serious health issue. In fact, Katherine Flegal's now-famous mortality study points to modest advantages to being "overweight," especially as people age.

So in answer to your question, Anonymous, no, I don't know that obesity is a serious health problem in the U.S., and neither do you, or anyone else, for that matter. We don't have enough information; we don't even really understand the information we've got. Losing weight sometimes raises people's risk of dying from cardiac disease, in fact. We just don't know.

While we don't really understand all the implications of weight, we do know that fitness is good. Eating a varied diet that includes (but isn't necessarily limited to) fresh fruits and veggies is good. Exercising (but not to the point of obsession) is good. Feeling good about yourself is good (and feeling bad about yourself is bad for you).

So until I know more, really know more, I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. Eat well. Live well. Move your body. And, most important, love yourself as you are right now. Not 20 pounds from now but today, this minute. Self-loathing--the kind that is a natural consequence of the current anti-obesity hysteria--is far worse for people than extra pounds. As far as we know.