Hunger Pains

Rating:
Summary: It's really not about food, but about wanting to be loved
Review: As a therapist and speaker, I will definitely recommend this book to all women. Is there a woman in America who doesn't struggle with body image, if she is truly honest with herself? The most fascinating parts were those stories of women, and very interesting to see how eating disorders are really about wanting to connect deeply with others...to be loved. If I'm attractive enough, I will be liked, desireable, and loved well. Also the desire for many struggling with anorexia to be compliant and to be small and just disappear are apparent in Pipher's amazing book. She also offers helpful strategies and recommends people to get professional help and to belong to a 12-step. Her emphasis on knowing your feelings and getting them expressed in healthy ways is profoundly important. A client recently told me she was addicted to purging because it felt like her entire system (heart, feelings, soul, problems) were cleansed. The fact that most woman in the book began an eating disorder when a painful experience happened in her life is also noteworthy. Once again, illustrating it's about the heart and control and that we are here on earth for relationships. Bravo, Mary Pipher!

Rating:
Summary: It's really not about food, but about wanting to be loved
Review: As a therapist and speaker, I will definitely recommend this book to all women. Is there a woman in America who doesn't struggle with body image, if she is truly honest with herself? The most fascinating parts were those stories of women, and very interesting to see how eating disorders are really about wanting to connect deeply with others...to be loved. If I'm attractive enough, I will be liked, desireable, and loved well. Also the desire for many struggling with anorexia to be compliant and to be small and just disappear are apparent in Pipher's amazing book. She also offers helpful strategies and recommends people to get professional help and to belong to a 12-step. Her emphasis on knowing your feelings and getting them expressed in healthy ways is profoundly important. A client recently told me she was addicted to purging because it felt like her entire system (heart, feelings, soul, problems) were cleansed. The fact that most woman in the book began an eating disorder when a painful experience happened in her life is also noteworthy. Once again, illustrating it's about the heart and control and that we are here on earth for relationships. Bravo, Mary Pipher!

Rating:
Summary: Very true, very real, very helpful
Review: I read this book after being discharged from the hospital for treatment of anorexia. More than any other book, "Hunger Pains" made me examine and question the way food, fat, obesity, and thinness are viewed in our culture. It empowered me to want to recover, and to change not only my own life but the society that produces such horrible diseases as anorexia and bulemia. Dr. Pipher is so eloquent and clear in her depiction of how food is conditioned from childhood to be our enemy, and gives very helpful, practical advice for how to develop a healthy relationship with food and weight. I highly reccomend it to anyone recovering from an eating disorder, and also for every woman and every parent of an adolescent girl. It will give you the power and the motivation to look critically at the world around you and to take control over the way it influences you.

Rating:
Summary: Parents should read this
Review: Parents, teachers, and others who may work with young girls or women should read this book. It wouldn't hurt for all women to read this and understand the different signs of eating disorders and distorted thinking (in order to help themselves, friends or family.) It has basic suggestions at the end of many chapters to help improve or recover from eating disorders or accepting the body you have whether it is large,small or whatever. I like these cause they give a good summary and some goals. This book will not heal all of a person's problems, and the author also knows this-she encourages those with serious problems to find a good therapist/doctor/treatment. I am looking forward to reading her other books.

Rating:
Summary: no wonder this is the best book i've ever read
Review: This book is geard purely for the novice. It gives little insight or insiration for change. I felt as though I was reading a text-book. If you are looking for books too "move" you on this subject read any book by Geneen Roth.

Rating:
Summary: Very true, very real, very helpful
Review: This is undoubtedly an excellent book, in that the author is a clinical psychologist, specialized in treating eating disorders, and definitely knows what she is talking about.

Having read it thoroughly, however, I still feel that the big question has not been answered: True, statistics indicate that the overwhelming majority of those battling an eating disorder tragically fail in the long run to successfully become thin and stay thin. But is change possible and to what extent? The author seems to indicate that it is not, or at least, one can achieve recovery to the extent that one abandons their previous destructive behavior.

Most professionals treating eating disorders seem to share the author's view, and I understand that to most people battling them this attitude should be disheartening. Others, like Covert Bailey, seem to be more optimistic, and I think that medical doctors specializing in endocrinology tend to agree with him: it is only through a sensible diet and, especially, a structured program of regular exercise that a body will be able to reach its realistic goal. Most of us tend to have a distorted image of ourselves and a distorted idea of what we ought to look and how much we can weigh.

My conlusion is that yes, the book is very informative and honest, and yes, we should all fight against low-fat obscessive weight imposed by the media (and we can definitely do that). But the author should have underlined more the fact that exercise DOES raise metabolism (this is a fact), stress more that we HAVE TO exercise on a regular basis, AND change our behavior, or we can never hope to be anything other than overweight at best. If a radical change in lifestyle (through counseling of course) is not possible, then we should accept reality and stop the diet foolishness. But we should give ourselves the chance to change and get our facts straight.

Finally, I strongly disagree with the author's view that it is possible for overweight people to be healthy, and that this was so in the past. Overweight people are not healthy. Maybe they are not necessarily the picture of death, but they are definitely not the picture of health. However, I agree that one gets less healthy the more they diet.

Sara