703: How I Lost More Than a Quarter Ton and Gained a Life

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Marya Hornbacher · 301 pages

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustains both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sen

Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin Free

Susan Peirce Thompson · 313 pages

"Over 99% of people who try to lose weight don't succeed. They don't get slender and they don't stay slender long term. The average dieter spends a significant amount of money and makes four or five new attempts each year. Four or five new attempts each year with almost no hope of success. Only 1% of people will get down to their goal weight on traditional diets. Susan Peirce Thompson. Ph.D., sugg

Obsessed: America's Food Addiction - And My Own

Mika Brzezinski, Diane Smith · 239 pages

With insights from notable people in medicine, health, business, the arts, and politics, Brzezinski breaks through the walls of silence and shame we've built around obesity and food obsession and talks openly about how our country became overweight, and what we can do to turn the corner and step firmly onto the path of health.

Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too

Jenni Schaefer, Thom Rutledge · 192 pages

The author describes her life battling an eating disorder and provides exercises to help people deal with their own problems.

High Sobriety: my year without booze

Jill Stark · 320 pages

Booze had dominated Jill Stark's social life ever since she had her first sip of beer, at 13. She thought nothing could curb her love of big nights. And then came the hangover that changed everything. In the shadow of her 35th year, Jill made a decision: she would give up alcohol. But what would it mean to stop drinking in a world awash with booze? This lively memoir charts Jill's tumultuous year

Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life

Jenni Schaefer

Dont Battle an Eating Disorder Forever-Recover from It CompletelyJenni Schaefer and Ed (eating disorder) are no longer on speaking terms, not even in her most difficult moments. In her bestseller, Life Without Ed, Jenni learned to treat her eating disorder as a relationship, not a condition-enabling her to break up with Ed once and for all.In Goodbye Ed, Hello Me Jenni shows you that being fully r

Brain over Binge: Why I Was Bulimic, Why Conventional Therapy Didn't Work, and How I Recovered for Good

Kathryn Hansen · 307 pages

"Brain over Binge is different than other eating disorder books, which typically present binge eating and purging as symptoms of complex emotional and psychological problems. Kathryn Hansen, the author of Brain over Binge, disputes this mainstream idea and explains why traditional eating disorder therapy failed her and fails many. Kathryn explains how she came to understand her bulimia in a new wa

The Heavy: A Mother, a Daughter, a Diet—a Memoir

Dara-Lynn Weiss · 248 pages

"As lightning-rod writer Dara Weiss explains in The Heavy, the "mommy wars" were never more clear than over the issue of her 7-year-old daughter's weight. Some moms looked down on her for "letting" Bea get clinically obese. But that's nothing compared with the scorn others offered when Dara put Bea on a strict calorie-counting diet. Some said she was clearly seeding body image issues; many others

Finding It: And Satisfying My Hunger for Life without Opening the Fridge

Valerie Bertinelli

Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

Geneen Roth · 211 pages

The bestselling author of "When Food Is Love" helps overeaters find the underlying reasons for using food as an emotional buffer. Roth also provides seven basic guidelines for eating and other therapeutic self-help tools.

Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head

Jen Larsen · 267 pages

Offers the author's experiences in going from obesity to having a slender figure by losing 180 pounds after having bariatric surgery, focusing on the confusion and emotional highs and lows that came with such a drastic change.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · 288 pages

The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories s

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

David Sheff · 352 pages

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings.

SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient - Powered by the Science of Games

Jane McGonigal · 466 pages

A renowned game designer describes how she recovered from a debilitating concussion by turning her therapeutic process into a digital game that became the subject of a major NIH research study.

Love Warrior

Glennon Doyle Melton · 272 pages

Traces the author's journey of self-discovery after the dissolution of her marriage, revealing how she found healing by rejecting gender standards and refusing to settle for a "good-enough" life.

Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer

Jen Lancaster · 379 pages

Unfortunately, being overweight isn't simply a societal issue that can be fixed with a dose healthy of positive self-esteem. It's a health matter, and on the eve of her fortieth year, Lancaster learns to make changes. Because what good is finally being able to afford a pedicure if you lose a foot to adult onset diabetes?

Fat Is a Feminist Issue

Susie Orbach · 203 pages

Abstract: Compulsive eating is rooted in the social inequality of women. Drawing on case study experience, the meaning of fatness and thinness in our society is explored, and self-help guidelines are provided for individual or group use. Anorexia nervosa is discussed, based on the author's reading and talks with those afflicted. Medical interventions, as detailed here are part of the problem rathe

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works

Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch

"First published in 1995, Intuitive Eating has become the go-to book on rebuilding a healthy body image and making peace with food. We have all been there, angry with ourselves for overeating, for our lack of willpower, for failing at yet another diet. But the problem is not us; it is that dieting, with its emphasis on rules and regulations, has stopped us from listening to our bodies. Written by

Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet

Jenifer Ringer · 288 pages

Jenifer Ringer, a New York City Ballet principal dancer, presents a behind-the-curtains tour of the rarefied world of classical ballet. She discusses career highs and lows while recounting her childhood, the typical experiences of a dancer's day and the highlights that have defined her career.

Autobiography of a Face

Lucy Grealy · 230 pages

Lucy Grealy's ruthless self-examination, rich fantasy life, and great derring-do inform this powerful memoir about the premium we put on beauty and on a woman's face in particular. It took Lucy twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty reconstructive procedures before she could come to terms with her appearance after childhood surgery left her jaw disfigured. As a you

The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Nonsmokers Using the Easyway Method

Allen Carr · 131 pages

Why I Wore Lipstick: To My Mastectomy

Geralyn Lucas · 208 pages

Geralyn Lucas shares her feelings and experiences after being diagnosed at age twenty-eight with breast cancer, discussing some of the choices she made, the people she met, and the courage she gained from wearing bright red lipstick to her surgery.

American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Craig Ferguson · 332 pages

In American on Purpose, Craig Ferguson delivers a moving and achingly funny memoir of living the American dream as he journeys from the mean streets of Glasgow, Scotland, to the comedic promised land of Hollywood. Along the way he stumbles through several attempts to make his mark-as a punk rock musician, a construction worker, a bouncer, and, tragically, a modern dancer.To numb the pain of failur

What I Lost

Alexandra Ballard · 395 pages

When sixteen-year-old Elizabeth is sent to the Wallingfield Psychiatric Facility's Residential Treatment Center, she encounters girls whose problems seem much greater than her own anorexia.