First of all, thank you SO MUCH for the wonderful support.  I have the best readers, bar none, and I will seriously kick anyone's ass who says you aren't.

I've gotten emails and texts from quite a few people who have shared their own struggles. One comment I was particularly struck by was via Twitter (it was a private message, so no need to waste time looking!):

I lost a bit of weight recently and it's started up this annoying talk in my head. I hate how freaking pleased it makes part of me.

It's the last line in particular that really resonated.  It would be so much easier to fight off urges and behaviors if we found them seriously distressing.  The problem is that distressing is not always the word that comes to mind when ED behaviors return.  This summer, I did experience distress at the return of ED stuff, both while I was in Europe and then when my parents were away for a week or so.  Serious distress and only a little weight loss.  I remember being simultaneously puzzled and relieved at the distress--puzzled because it was something totally new, yet relieved that the distress meant I was extra motivated to address these issues.

Eventually, the ED stuff does get distressing.  Things like blue lips, anemia, and utter exhaustion ultimately take their toll.  For me, the notion that I wouldn't be able to keep working up to my usual capacity was a major motivator for me to take action.  For better or worse, my identity is very tied up with my career, and I take any threats to that very seriously.  I realize that I am more than just a writer, but that's also primarily how I think of myself. I don't have the security of disability or sick leave as a freelancer, and so if I can't work, I don't get paid.

Addressing a slip is generally much more stressful for me than the slip itself.  And therein lies the problem.  It's hard to change when you're not feeling any internal pressure to.  Of course, external pressure quickly stepped in and helped me move along, but still.  When I notice my depression increasing, I'm generally pretty motivated to do something about it (assuming I feel there's something that can be helped, but that's another story).  Same for the anxiety.  It's unpleasant.  The ED isn't always the same.  Staying in recovery would be so much easier if falling out of recovery was harder to deal with.

Usually, a mild relapse initially makes me feel better.  Hence the problem.

I think I need to start accepting that minor relapses aren't going to cause me any sort of distress and that I need to stop expecting distress to happen and relying on it to take action.  It's totally counter intuitive, but not much about EDs makes logical sense.  Why wouldn't a recurrence of a potentially deadly illness not stress me out?  I dunno.  Here's what I need to get through my thick skull: just because I'm not freaked out doesn't mean that it's not a big deal.


If that came naturally, my life would be so much easier, I think.

I'll be honest: the past few weeks have been rough, ED-wise.  Nothing catastrophic has happened (as in, people are talking in nervous whispers about "hospitalizations" and such), but my weight is down some and I've noticed an uptick in ED thoughts and behaviors.  I've been remanded to daily doses of Ensure Plus, which isn't my idea of a good time, as well as upping the food intake.

As a consequence, I've been unusually tired and wiped out, which probably explains the decrease in blog posts over the past few weeks.  Either I didn't know what to say, or I didn't have the energy with which to say it.

The fight for recovery is exhausting, and I just want the fight to end.  I want food to be food and not filled with doubts and terrors.  I want my own mind to cease being a minefield and my own worst enemy.  I want anxiety to stop snowballing into something bigger and more sinister.

It's frustrating mostly because I thought I was past the point where I thought something this serious could happen.  I knew that small slips and things were likely just because life is life.  But to have to go back to Ensure Plus?  Seriously?!?

Ouch.  It's a bit of an ego blow, I'll confess.

The good news is that I've learned from previous experience and I'm not in any medical danger, I'm still working to my usual capacity, and I'm not a suicidal basketcase.  I've gotten a handle (or at least started to address things) before they spiraled totally out of control and I lost my ability to fight the anorexia as an outpatient.  Because as bad of an ego blow as this is, it's not as bad as having to quit my job and/or move home and/or go back into treatment.

So.  That's where I'm at.  Down but not out.  I'm pulling myself together and getting back on the recovery bandwagon.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

Scientists discover that bacteria in our gut influences anxiety, via "cross-talk" with the brain.

New brain imaging study challenges "reward deficit" theory as a factor for increased vulnerability to overeating.

You Aren't What You Eat: Judging Character From Food.

You are what your friends eat: systematic review of social network analyses of young people's eating behaviours and bodyweight.

What I'm really thinking: The anorexic teenager.

Why one therapist recommends considering the Maudsley Approach for anorexic adolescents.

'Blogging about my anorexia helped save my life'.

Dieting Can Make You Lose Your Mind.

Less extreme eating disorders often undiagnosed.

Prevalence and magnitude of body weight and image dissatisfaction among women in dietetics majors. I think this study would have been more informative if they compared the dietetics students to other majors.

An fMRI investigation of the fronto-striatal learning system in women who exhibit eating disorder behaviors.

Outcome of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Concurrent Eating and Substance Use Disorders.

I was thinking about my snack this afternoon, and several options floated through my head.  As I was contemplating what to have, I remembered my after school snacks from almost 20 years ago now.

The fluffer nutter was one of my favorites. 

For those of you that aren't in the know, a fluffer nutter is a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich.  Except my mom didn't make fluffer nutters with bread. She made them with graham crackers.  Actually, I didn't know that my mom's confection had a formal name until I was in high school or college.  Nonetheless, I loved my peanut butter and marshmallow fluff on graham crackers.

Of course, an eating disorder changed that innocence where all I thought of was "sweet-salty-crunchy-yumminess." 

Now I think about things like carbs and whole grains and high fructose corn syrup.  I wonder whether I'm eating too much added sugars. I worry what others might think of a 30-year-old eating a fluffer nutter for a snack.  I worry what others might think of a 30-year-old having an afternoon snack, period.

The truth is this: I don't remember what it feels like not to worry about every crumb I eat.  I remember that there was a time when I didn't, but I don't actually remember that feeling.  Some of that loss may be the inexorable process of growing up.  After all, I think about lots of things in a much more nuanced way than I did as a 10-year-old.  But there's a difference between being aware of the fact that straight up sugar might not keep you satiated for long, and fretting over what the sugar might do to your butt.

I don't know that this innocence is ever coming back.  And that's sad.  I'm tired of worrying so much.  I want to switch this off, just for a bit.  Yet the fact of the matter remains that it likely won't every go away, not really.  Not completely. 

I'm not saying that this worry will never stop consuming much of my waking hours.  After all, I'm not dropping substantial cash on therapy for nothing.  I am working to relax about food and, you know, pretty much everything.  But I feel like I know too much and have let too much of my life be taken up by these obsessions to ever go back to the carefree person that existed before the anorexia struck over ten years ago now.

At the same time, I think it's important to remember that this person did exist in the first place.  That I could manage my food and weight without interfering in every little detail, without worry and fear and gnawing anxiety.  That I didn't need to follow a food plan to the letter and yet I was okay and the world was okay.  It's a very different mindset to how I currently manage things.

I suppose sitting here and being all mournful about these changes is neither uplifting nor enlightening.  I don't want to just piss and moan over what used to be.  I don't do nostalgia.  I can't change the fact that I got sick and have been sick and have changed.  It is what it is.  Time passes and the person I was has become the person I am now.

I'm not missing a sandwich, I'm missing a mindset.  But that doesn't mean I can't still enjoy a fluffer nutter or two.

I had some extra yogurt pretzels last night.  Five of them.  They were leftover from Christmas, so they were in the shape of little trees and had candy cane crumbs on them.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

But then I freaked.  I had already fulfilled my meal plan for the day.  Now I had something "extra."  This was scary not just because of the additional calories, but because I was breaking one of my "rules" (i.e., Thou shalt not eat more than is required on thy hallowed meal plan).

I mentioned it on Twitter because I'm like that, and I got some wonderful support.

One of my friends says that her nutritionist tells her to "say yes amidst the resistance."

I seriously love that phrase.

It's hard for me to confront my own internal resistance because it is just so damn strong.  At the root of that resistance is anxiety.  Recovering from an eating disorder means that I have to confront issues in basically every aspect of my life.  Many of those issues have to do with food, and many of them don't.  To overcome all of them--to overcome any of them--I had to say yes despite the resistance.  I had to say yes to butter.  To days off from exercise.  To going out with friends.  To ordering off a menu.  To spending money.  To relaxing.  All of these created tremendous inner conflict.

To change or not to change, that is the question.

Not all internal resistance is bad.  I feel resistance when I think about purging now, which is something that was not always there.  But when challenging our fears, we have to accept the resistance.  Move with it.  Move through it.

One of the ubiquitous recovery quotes I was always given was this by Eleanor Roosevelt: "Do one thing everyday that scares you."

I'll confess, I've received this quote so many times, it seems a bit cliche.  That doesn't mean it's not true.  Saying yes amidst resistance is the same as doing something that scares you.

Feel the resistance.  Understand it.  Identify it.  And then let it go...

But yesterday I was adjusting my shoe in the bedroom when my eyes fell upon two sets of magazine holders.  On my bookshelf.  Across from my bed.  Literally at eye level.

I reached in
and plucked out
my map.

Just like that.

I was so expecting the map to be somewhere tucked away--after all, I had been looking for it for so long.  It couldn't be somewhere obvious.  It had to be in a box or a bin, buried under some useless knick knacks. 

Instead it was hidden in plain sight.
We just need to open our eyes and take a look. 

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

Exploring Sensible Alternatives in Evidence-Based Psychotherapy.

Cognitive Remediation Therapy (CRT) for anorexia in group format: A pilot study.

Nonfat phobic anorexia nervosa: Clinical characteristics and response to inpatient treatment.

Just Let Go: Happiness is Within.

Neuropsychological psychopathology measures in women with eating disorders, their healthy sisters, and nonrelated healthy controls.

Thoroughly fascinating piece on the neuropsychology of courage.

Stepped care and cognitive-behavioural therapy for bulimia nervosa: randomised trial.

World premiere of documentary "Someday Melissa".

Prevalence of all relevant eating disorders in patients waiting for bariatric surgery: A comparison between patients with and without eating disorders.

Few US Teens Receive Treatment for Eating Disorders.

Outcome of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy for Concurrent Eating and Substance Use Disorders.

Remuda East location in Virginia to close.

Exploring eating disorder quality of life and functional gastrointestinal disorders among eating disorder patients.

Girls in girl-boy twin pairs may be a bit heavier but less likely to develop an eating disorder.

Season of birth and anorexia nervosa.

Evidence-based pharmacotherapy of eating disorders.

The Cannabinoid Receptor Agonist THC Attenuates Weight Loss in a Rodent Model of Activity-Based Anorexia.

Parental eating disorder symptoms and observations of mealtime interactions with children.

I have been following an email discussion between eating disorder professionals, and the issue came up when Therapist A referred to those with anorexia as having an "unusual ability" to go without eating.  Therapist B said that this is more of a disability than a skill; people with AN are afraid to eat, not unusually skilled at starving themselves.

Therapist B has a point.  A lot of how people think of anorexia in popular culture (besides fetishizing thinness, which is another story) is that people with anorexia are, like, super skilled at not eating.  It explains why people have told me they wished they could have "a little" anorexia, or asked me for diet tips.  We can learn skills from others.  We can spend time with talented people and hope that it rubs off.  We can study with the best teachers and practice and...

Food restriction is a behavior.  That's just a fact.  But is it a skill or ability?

There's definitely a biological component to this "skill," but research has shown similar things for musicians and athletes.  That doesn't mean that Mozart wasn't talented because of some genetic blessings.

Where things get muddled is this: so many people engage in deliberate food restriction on a daily basis. I'm not talking about people with food allergies (though this is true for them), but about all the people who are dieting or trying to lose weight.  From the outside, a strict diet looks an awful lot like anorexia.  In western cultures, people with eating disorders and dieters often use similar terms to describe their thoughts and feelings about food and weight.

Some people are really good at dieting.  Others aren't.  I would hazard a guess that someone with anorexia would be really good at dieting.

But anorexia isn't a diet.  It can look like a diet, but it fundamentally isn't.  It's like saying that someone who is manic is really good at being energetic or that someone with OCD is really good at cleaning the house.  They might be, but it's not because of some sort of inherent skill.  It's part of the illness.

Often, when an eating disorder starts, it does appear that sufferers have an improved ability to restrict their diet (for whatever reason).  They can override hunger cues.  But as time goes on...as the illness deepens...that skill doesn't go away, but it ceases to be the main reason or motivation for ongoing food restriction.  That "natural skill" morphs into an illness.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It's nice to think about preventing eating disorders.  I'm not saying we can't do it or we shouldn't try.  But I'm wondering how teaching kids about "loving your body" and the dangers of eating disorders is actually going to help.

In a recent Huffington Post article, therapist Judith Brisman writes:

•Talk about eating disorders and how dangerous they are. Talk about it in the same way you talk about lung cancer and smoking -- or death and drunk driving. It's that dangerous. It can't be ignored.


•Help your kids pay attention to their inner life. What are they feeling inside when they turn to the third batch of cookies, or when they are skipping breakfast and lunch? Be genuinely curious about their fears, thoughts and worries about their body. And educate them! They may not know that skipping breakfast and lunch disrupts metabolism.

•Help your kids be responsible for what they are eating. Allow them snacks. For example, it's okay to eat cake -- but how many times a day? And what should portion size look like? Talk, be curious, instruct and pay attention. Kids need to know that if they get too skinny or become anorexic, they won't be able to be in the school play or on the hockey team. Kids should be as scared of anorexia, binge eating and bulimia as they are of smoking and drunk driving. They also should know that there are many things that can be done to help if they worry they are in trouble with food.

I don't think that these things are bad.  Open lines of communication between parent and child are very important.  And I do think that kids should be taught about eating disorders the same way they are taught about smoking, drunk driving and cancer.

My question is this: do we know that this will actually prevent eating disorders?

I'm guessing that most people who develop an eating disorder today probably know what one is.  I knew eating disorders were dangerous before I got sick, and it didn't really stop me.  One, I thought it would never happen to me. Two, I didn't realize I had anorexia until I was already stuck. 

I wish more kids (and adults!) were taught about the dangers of dieting and that "healthy eating" can go too far.  I want more people to know about exercise--too much and not enough.  I can believe that these things might help.

But explaining to someone how dangerous eating disorders are isn't going to prevent someone from getting sick.  It's like telling someone that cancer can kill you and expecting that this will make cancer rates go down.  It's a nice thought, but that's not how cancer works.  And that's not how eating disorders work, either.

Eating disorders are baffling and scary, and it's probably nice to think that if we just don't complain about our butts and if we tell little Susie and Sammy that EDs can kill, then surely they won't be stupid enough to get sick.  After all, my mother once told me (in all seriousness) that she never thought I would develop an eating disorder because I was smarter than that.  As in, I knew it was dangerous so why would I "dabble" in anorexia?

Because I didn't know I was dabbling in anorexia when I first got sick.  I just wanted to eat "better."  I was actually trying not to get anorexia.  It happened all the same because an eating disorder isn't a choice.  It's not logical.  It's an illness. 

It's pretty much impossible to have missed the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and now nuclear meltdown in Japan.  Massive tragedies like this always throw me, because I think of how petty my concerns are in comparisons.

It's like realizing there are people who don't have food and housing makes me feel pretty shallow for fretting how many fat grams might be in my microwave popcorn.

Despite knowing the pettiness and shallowness, I still fret and these things still worry me.

I'm not trying to compare--because you really can't compare--and I'm not trying to make natural disasters all about ME ME ME as I've been accused in the past.  But it was helpful to hear the mom of a girl recovering from anorexia refer to the illness as her own personal tsunami.

Both are destructive.  Both require a lot of people to help clean up the mess, outside assistance, and things don't just return to normal once the massive clean-up crews return home.

This helped me to put things into perspective.  Not that global events aren't horrific, but so is an eating disorder.  It's a different kind of horror on a much different scale.  But measuring suffering is rather futile, and perhaps even more petty than fussing about fat in popcorn.  I get that a paper cut causes different suffering than losing an arm.  I get it.  I get that losing your house and your family is a hell of a lot worse than wondering if your low fat popcorn is actually the low fat stuff or if the packets might have gotten swapped in the open box and it's actually the stick of butter on each kernel kind.

But if that was the maximum amount of suffering caused by an eating disorder, I would welcome that suffering with open arms.  An eating disorder often seems superficial, as we crane our necks to make sure our asses haven't magically expanded after that extra bite of apple.  But there's a difference from the occasional "Do these jeans make my butt look fat?" and honest-to-goodness watching your thighs expand after eating a meal. Some of us howl and shriek about getting fat and food and calories and it sounds almost identical to the cultural hogwash we hear every day.  Maybe that's how we're translating something that's bizarre and inexplicable.  I don't know.

It's easy to feel guilty for thinking about EDs and recovery when there is so much legitimate suffering going on in the world.  I frequently do.  And yet my neglecting my recovery isn't going to help anyone.  Perhaps my suffering doesn't compare to what people in Japan are going through.  It probably doesn't.  But that doesn't mean that it's not suffering and that my eating disorder is simply excessive vanity.

I need some help from my wonderful female readers aged 18+ (sorry to exclude people--part of the request from my editor) for the story I'm working on for Self Magazine.

The story is on late-life joy, and using wisdom from your grandparents to live a better life.  I want to get comments from real women about life lessons they've learned from their grandparents that have helped them find fulfillment in their current lives.

If you would be willing to share your comment and/or be interviewed (briefly), please email me at carrie@edbites.com.  I will need your full name, age, and location.

Feel free to use the comments section on this post to share anonymously.

THANKS!

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to!

Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in Adolescents: Results From the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement.

Depression Needs A Second Opinion.

Ask the Therapist: Scared to See A Therapist For My Eating Disorder.

For UK readers: A trustee of Men Get Eating Disorders Too speaks of his experience (you need to be in the UK to view the video clip due to BBC rules).

Recovering from an eating disorder - the urgency of emergence.

Updated Intuitive Eating References 3-11-2011.

Ghrelin reactive autoantibodies in restrictive anorexia nervosa.

Does Positive Body Image Even Matter? Here's how it does.

New book for my to read list: Quirk: Brain Science Makes Sense of Your Peculiar Personality.

Can eating disorders become 'Contagious' in group therapy and specialized inpatient care?

Must-read piece on the damage that obesity panic is doing.

The role of email guidance in internet-based cognitive-behavioural self-care treatment for bulimia nervosa.

Beautiful Nature video on new science of 'connectomics': untangling the brain's connections.

Autonomic correlates of attachment insecurity in a sample of women with eating disorders.

Open Access research articles on addiction from the journal Neuron.

Attention to Ugly Body Parts Is Increased in Women with Binge Eating Disorder.

A designer's minimalistic interpretation of mental disorders.

Hypoglycaemia following a mixed meal in eating disorder patients.

The Science of Cooking and Molecular Gastronomy.

The role of psychological flexibility in the relationship between self-concealment and disordered eating symptoms.

Why teenage angst is a very real thing.

Becoming 'whole' again: A qualitative study of women's views of recovering from anorexia nervosa.

Types of eating disorders tied to other destructive behaviors.

I have been waiting to make this announcement for almost two years now.  With a FedEx delivery this morning (followed by the solid hour it took for me to stop screaming and peel myself off the ceiling), I learned that two years of blood, sweat, and tears had finally paid off.

I am more thrilled than you can possibly imagine to announce the acceptance of my third book:

"Decoding Anorexia: How Science Offers Hope for Eating Disorders"

It will be published Summer-ish of 2012 by Routledge.  The manuscript is due in December.

{{Excuse me while I indulge in a few squeals for a minute. Okay, all better now.}}

Cindy Bulik, Director of the Eating Disorders Program at UNC Chapel Hill, is going to write the introduction and serve as medical advisor.

Walter Kaye, Director of the Eating Disorders Program at UCSD and my homeboy (Hugh Laurie was otherwise occupied), will be contributing a chapter as well, likely on translating scientific research into better treatments for anorexia and other eating disorders.

Special thanks to Kim and Cammy for helping me prepare the book proposal, and Laura for virtual hand-holding and a shoulder to cry on as the book was rejected by publisher after publisher after publisher.

It's hard for so many people to understand why recovery can be so difficult.  All you have to do is eat, or keep your head out of the toilet, or stop binge eating, or get off the damn treadmill already.  It's one thing to know that this is what needs to be done.  It's quite another to actually do it.

For one, the neuropsychological changes caused by eating disorder symptoms can make it difficult to interrupt the cycle (it can make it almost impossible to see that there's a cycle that needs to be interrupted, for that matter).  For another, behavior change is complicated.  Very complicated.

I worked in public health for several years, and figuring out how to implement successful behavioral change--whether it's anti-tobacco messages or everyone's favorite current dead horse, obesity--was largely an exercise in futility.  It's easy enough to tell people that smoking is bad and you should eat more veggies.  It's also relatively easy to get people to absorb these messages.  It's quite another to get someone to put down the cigarettes and start eating broccoli.

This is known as the intention-behavior gap.  That's the technical name for knowing what you need to do and not doing it.

It's been a frequent issue in my recovery.  I can argue circles around myself to justify things, and come up with great reasons why it's to "hard" to eat lunch or take a break from exercise.  Behavior change is hard.  No one is going to argue with that--at least, no one who's broken a nasty habit or changed a major behavior.

But as I've progressed in recovery, as I've slipped and come clean and learned from my mistakes, I've learned that there are some general actions I could take so that my behaviors would match my intention of ongoing recovery.

I learned about batch cooking one summer when I was living in Baltimore and commuting into Washington DC every day.  It was two hours each way.  Getting home, wrung out and exhausted, at 8pm was not conducive to cooking dinner.  That wasn't an eating disorder excuse, that was just reality.  It would have been easy to turn that into a great reason to simply not eat, or to just nibble on some cereal before I passed out from exhaustion.  A conversation with my dietitian reminded me about batch cooking.  On Saturday or Sunday, I would cook all my meals for the week.  That way, when I got home, all I had to do was shove something in the microwave.  Easy peasy.

There were other things, like (when I was more in binge mode) not eating out of the box, packing my lunch the night before, or turning in my gym key to apartment management.

I've never been all that good at analyzing these things in the moment.  Usually, "the moment" is about damage control and getting more stable.  But looking back, I can generally (okay, with lots of help from my therapist) identify what went wrong.

What are some intention-behavior gaps in your recovery? How can you start to address them?

Other members of the Academy for Eating Disorders alerted me to this upsetting/appalling/annoying article in Bicycling Magazine.  It's so awful that I'm not going to link to it for any number of reasons: lots of height/weight stats, weight loss stats, and I also don't want to give the article any more traffic than it's already getting.

I blogged many moons ago about how TNT encouraged me to try Internet dating.  I even did an interview for Jezebel about my experiences (which was, granted, less than a week after I started and had been on zero dates).

About two months ago, I was getting fed up with the whole thing.  Guys would flake out.  They'd seem to be interested and then fall off the face of the earth.  They wouldn't be the right fit.  My last subscription to Anonymous Dating Site was expiring and I was pissed.  This wasn't cheap and I didn't have much extra cash to begin with. I canceled my subscription and sent my email address to the one guy I had started communicating with.  I wasn't holding my breath.  I was willing to re-think the Internet dating thing, but I was burned out and needed a break.

This burn out was illustrated by the following: I sent my friend Libby a swear-word laden screed about how dating sucked, life sucked, and the whole world could just go suck it.  I dropped enough f-bombs in the one paragraph email that someone might have legitimately investigated me for harboring weapons of mass destruction.

I felt much better after sending that email.

But then the guy from Anonymous Dating Site (I don't mean to be cryptic, but since this is my real name, I get very skittish about privacy stuff.  There are definitely people out there I don't want knowing the intricacies of my life.  So apologies in advance.) contacted me.  And then we went to see The King's Speech*.  The next weekend he came up near me.  Since then, it's been an every weekend thing with J.

He is...totally awesome.  Kind, fun, funny.  He found my blog--can we say Cammy's Awkward Turtles?  But he's asked smart, respectful questions about my eating disorder and, just as importantly, it didn't scare him away. J is considerably more mellow than I am, which is a good thing.  I need some calm and Zen in my life.  Our religious views (or lack thereof) mesh.  It's really nice to have someone like this.

So after sending some hair-raising emails to my friend and nearly venting my spleen at some poor customer service rep at Anonymous Dating Site--I wouldn't have done it, but I must confess I did fantasize a bit--I must conclude that this whole thing has been a success.  It was an emotional roller coaster.  But I've come to accept that I'm not the usual girl and so it would probably take me a while to find a proper partner.  Eventually, though, I did find someone.

*If you haven't seen it, get thee to a movie theater NOW.  Run, don't walk.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the internet for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more, so you don't have to.

It’s not just girls who are affected by anorexia.

Canadian group wants to set up eating disorder treatment centers in Ontario.

Asian Americans Weigh In on Body Image Issues and Eating Disorders.

Great review of June Alexander's new memoir "A Girl Called Tim." Wonderful read from my wonderful friend!

Binge Eaters' Brains React to Food Like Addicts With Crack.

Where BMI Fails, Researchers Suggest A New Measure of Body Fat.

Weight discrimination worsens health for people who are overweight or obese.

Repetitive hair-pulling in people with eating disorders more similar to OCD than impulse control behaviors.

The concept of body image disturbance in anorexia nervosa: an empirical inquiry utilizing patients' subjective experiences.

Long-term Outcome of Residential Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa.

Brain dysfunction in anorexia nervosa: cause or consequence of under-nutrition?

Body image distortions in bulimia nervosa: Investigating body size overestimation and body size satisfaction by fMRI.

The role of the central ghrelin system in reward from food and chemical drugs.

Quality of life among caregivers of patients with eating disorders.

For the past 6+ months, I've been steadily chipping away at this freelance writer thing.  I'm not going to lie--it was exhausting and difficult at first.  I didn't quite know what to do.  I lucked out in that I had established enough contacts previously that I could make it work from the start.

When I moved into my new place last month, I splurged on cable.  I tried to justify it for any number of reasons (my other entertainment budget is nil, etc), but ultimately, I thought it would be kind of fun.  It didn't hurt that TV reception is pretty minimal without cable where I live.  So cable it is.

I used to be one of those "Oh, but I don't watch TV" people.  It started as a legitimate I-have-no-real-inclination-to-watch things.  When I was younger, I preferred reading.  Now that I'm older (and I spend all day reading and writing), I need to relax with less eye strain.  And I've gotten over my need to appear as a cool Intelligentista who is way the hell too cool to sit in front of the boob tube every night.

I thought eschewing TV made me hip and edgy.  It made me different from the stereotypical "fat, lazy American" that you read about in the papers.  It made me feel sort of better than.  I'm not the kind of person who would spend heaps of cash every month on something that just rots your brain!  There were plenty of times when, financially, forking out any extra money wasn't going to happen.  Not that my current budget has me rolling in the dough, but I can be careful and comfortable.

Here's the confession: I really like cable.  Every Saturday night is House reruns on Bravo (which is, as far as I can tell, the sole redeeming feature of that network).  I watched Bones reruns tonight on TNT.  I tuned in to a true crime marathon the other day, which was way too much fun. We all need a bit of smut, right?  I don't have DVR or Tivo--generally speaking, I'm around when a show airs, and if I like the program enough, I'll make an effort to watch it.  If it's not worth the effort, that I guess I'm not all that attached to the show.  If two shows ever aired at the same time, I would be in trouble, though.

It was something my eating disordered brain fought tooth and nail.  A chance to laze about!  Sit and do nothing! Become a couch potato!  Heavens, no!  Cable was banal and indulgent.

Well, maybe it is.  But it's also fun.  That's something I'm really starting to enjoy.

I haven't not wanted recovery in a very long time, but I think it's also important to reaffirm to myself exactly why I do want recovery.