Living Full: Winning My Battle With Eating Disorders

Finding My FULL: This is my journey from starving to letting myself be FULL–physically & emotionally. What is living a FULL life? Having anorexia, bulimia, or vacillating between the two, you are trying to achieve an empty feeling through starvation or purging. Living a FULL life is a life where you aren’t starving anymore―starving for acceptance and love from others and yourself. It’s a life where you are feeding your mind and soul with good thoughts and foods. A life without your eating disorder. Victim of the eating disorder monster: Imagine waking in a hospital bed to find your frail, pale arm punctured by an IV transferring fluids and nutrients into your weak, stiff body. What happened? You’re an adult, age twenty-six, and you just had a seizure precipitated by your chronic, secretive, decades-long struggle with unacknowledged eating disorders. You have no friends and no normal young-adult experiences. Living FULL is written by Danielle Sherman-Lazar, a woman who passed through the eating disorder crucible to recovery, sharing the most intimate and shameful details of her mental illness. Living FULL is Danielle's story. Hidden out of shame: Eating disorders in young adults are hardly talked about, but are pervasive. Eating disorders are kept hidden out of shame. A groundbreaking 2012 study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that about 13 percent of women over age 50 exhibit eating disorder symptoms. Journey to recovery: Living FULL chronicles the author's step-by-step descent into the full-blown eating disorder nightmare and her path to recovery. Recovery comes from the Maudsley Approach, a regimen of supervised controlled eating or refeeding by out-patient helpers that eventually can result in recovery.