THIN IS PRETTY. AND LOOKS ARE EVERYTHING. Throw in feelings of worthlessness or an overactive conscience and you have an obsession with perfection that ends in defeat, failure and shame.
This book offers a ladder out of the black hole of food fixation: anorexia, bulimia, and exermania. The author reviews the standard therapies (behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic, family, support group, drugs) and includes appendices on books and treatment resources. But it is the detailed, heart-rending stories of struggle and triumph – including Schwirzer’s own – that life the heart. Ultimately, the secret of victory is to take sufferers out of their isolation, turning the eyes away from self and fixing them on God.