You Must Be Hungry

A food critic grapples with her daughter's eating disorders.

by Sheila Himmel

How Do I Look?

Hooray for Julia Bluhm, the eighth-grader from Maine who recently met with an editor at Seventeen magazine to talk about girls’ body images. Julia presented a petition signed by 46,000 people asking Seventeen to “commit to printing one unaltered—real—photo spread per month.”

The answer was something like: No can do. But very nice to meet you. Read More

Finding Balance in Eating and Exercise

Eating disorders often get triggered by a change in diet or exercise that’s healthy at first but goes too far. That’s what happened with my daughter, Lisa. Read More

Two Wins for Women

Often the news about women's health focuses on disease and hardship, so that when something good happens, we need to notice. Today, we need to cheer. Two good things happened on the world stage. One is about eating disorders, the other about athletics, both about women's self-image and identity. And as it happens, the good news comes from three Muslim countries and Israel. Read More

Are Health Spas a Healthy Choice?

Four women friends, two from the East Coast and two from the West Coast, meet for a long weekend every winter. Usually we go to a health spa, for two reasons. Read More

Watching Eating Disorders on TV: How Does This Help?

Last month Lifetime premiered a show about eating disorders, hosted and produced by Tracey Gold. The actress famous from the hit sitcom Growing Pains nearly died from anorexia. In each one-hour episode of Starving Secrets, Gold, she works with women in the grips of anorexia or bulimia. Is this a good idea? Read More

From Growing Pains to Starving Secrets

A reality show about eating disorders? Really? Yes, Lifetime TV premieres Starving Secrets, hosted by Tracey Gold, starting Dec. 2. It sounds like the worst idea since Bridalplasty, an E! series pitting 12 women against each other to win a plastic surgery procedure and a dream wedding. Read More

Walking the Talk

Just before winter, the San Francisco Bay Area gets a final burst of the most perfect weather—cool in the morning, upper 70s by afternoon, cool again by sunset. Zero humidity. Read More

Finding the Right Help

What does recovery look like? A sunny road of constant progress? You wish. With eating disorders, at best it's "two steps forward, one step back." For my family, the key was finding the right person to help our daughter, Lisa, get started. Read More

Lives on the Line

You have a life-threatening illness–the highest death of rate of any mental health diagnosis. Higher than schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disease. Your doctors recommend residential treatment, which is expensive but a lot less than hospitalization.

Your insurance company says no. Read More

A Former Anorexic Enjoys Food Again

Four years after being hospitalized, ten years after starting anorexia in high school, my daughter, Lisa, is enjoying food again, on her terms. Here is her news from the front: Read More

Play On - It's a Beautiful Game

The whole world is watching healthy women play hard. Not celebrities. Not stick figures in designer dresses. Read More

Acting our age

Had he been diagnosed with anorexia earlier, the disease might not have progressed so far. Read More

Is Maria Shriver Anorexic?

Is Maria Shriver anorexic? Way before the shocking revelation of her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger's teenage love child with their live-in housekeeper, Maria Shriver was one of those celebrities whose heavy eyes and chiseled appearance kept raising the anorexia question. Read More

Rejoining the holiday table

"Who is that?" my cousin asked my son as the family gathered at our house for Passover, the springtime Jewish holiday celebrated at home with a ritual meal. "Um, that's Lisa," Jake had to say. His sister. That was eight years ago, when my daughter was in the depths of her struggles with anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating, you name it. My cousin hadn't seen Lisa in maybe six months. Read More

How to feed a child without really trying

Sometimes a food product encapsulates all that's wrong with feeding children in America. With the children's vitamin called SmartyPants, it starts with the name. Do you want your child to mouth off? As a food writer, I get to see lots of product promotions, but Smarty-Pants Gummy Multi-Vitamins caught my eye. How is a vitamin related to Earth Day? Read More

What teenagers know about beauty

"What is beautiful about you?" Hard to say, right? No body parts ("I have great kneecaps!"). No broad personality claims ("I'm nice!") that could apply to anyone. Be honest and specific. It's hard enough for adults, but let's check in with teenagers, who fight for identity every day. Read More

The foodie family

For my daughter, Lisa, our being a family in which food is central - because of my job as a food writer and her dad's passion - contributed to her struggles with eating disorders. What about a child whose family owns restaurants and bakeries? Read More

Do mothers really have that much power?

I don't have to read Amy Chua's hot hot hot Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, so I'm not going to, but what strikes me about the spectacular controversy is the assumption by all combatants that Mom really does have the power to produce perfect children. Only the technique is in question. Read More

The death of the little girl who didn't want to get fat

The death of French model Isabelle Caro knocks the wind out of you. Whatever the causes of her becoming anorexic at age 13, whatever the inner, familial or societal torments that took hold and wouldn't let her go, Caro's death is a violation of the natural order. People die at 82, not 28. Read More

Is a dancer's body fair game for criticism?

For clear thinking about body image issues, go to A.) The New York Times or B.) The Gossip Queens.

Recently the go-to source was not the internationally influential daily newspaper, the "Gray Lady," but the daytime talk show that bills itself as featuring "the hottest scandals, hook-ups and headlining stories to rock your world of entertainment and pop culture." Read More

Young ladies who lunch

One morning in high school, the boy I'd been dreaming of asked me to have lunch with him. Be still my beating heart! My outfit was OK (check). It wasn't a terribly bad hair day (check).

But lunch loomed as a horror show from my side of the bench, because of ... my lunch. Mom had packed leftover chicken parts. Read More

How checklists can lead you astray

Eat less and exercise more? Even Homer Simpson knows he should put down that donut and get off the couch. But reversing the ratio between energy input and outgo carries its own dangers, and compulsive exercise can become a habit with life-threatening consequences, as well as stress fractures, arthritis and reproductive problems. Read More

Eat, drink, recovery

Last month our family enjoyed dinner in a fancy French restaurant. What's so hard about that? Only this: When a member of the family has been severely ill, going out and having fun is a big deal. When the disease is an eating disorder, even bigger.

In our previous post, my daughter, Lisa, explains what that dinner meant to her. Read More

The French food route to recovery

How do you know you're recovering from eating disorder? It's never either/or, clearly STOP or GO, but are there signposts? During Lisa's years of anorexia and bulimia, we've had some of our worst scenes in restaurants, and now, one of our best. Here is Lisa's version: Read More

Even pro-anorexia Web sites know they're wrong

In a Google search for "bulimia side effects" the second Web site to come up was "How to Avoid Bulimia Side Effects." Here a former bulimic writes that while she doesn't recommend bulimia to anyone, "The best way to slow down the erosion of your tooth enamel is to brush your teeth rigorously with a whitening toothpaste immediately after vomiting." Read More

Just say no? Well, no

Unless you have an eating disorder, or are close to someone who does, it's very hard to understand. Is it like diabetes or cancer, or is it self-inflicted and manipulative, or a product of our appearance-focused culture? Read More

How can you starve yourself?

How can you starve yourself? Don't you know there are children around the world who don't get enough to eat? Why don't you do something to help them, rather than putting so much energy into harming yourself? Read More

Naked no more

Stripped down, Jamie's pitch to parents is, "Do you want your kids to end up like you?" Read More

Pediatricians: first responders to possible eating disorders

What should pediatricians know?

After publication of our book, "Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia" http://tinyurl.com/y9cgz9a Lisa and I have spoken to high school students, college students, medical students, book groups, public libraries and community organizations. It's always rewarding. People often say, "I had no idea anyone else felt like this." Read More