There is no shortage of eating disorder memoirs. The trend seems to be to have a gut-wrenching experience with an eating disorder, recover, write a book ... and, supposedly, live happily ever after. I purchased Aimee Liu's Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders because it promised to continue where other memoirs end. In fact, it had to: Liu had already written her eating disorder memoir, Solitaire, thirty years earlier.
Liu decided that Solitaire hadn't said enough. The story was incomplete, written in her twenties after she left anorexia. Gaining is written with the benefit of thirty years in recovery.
Taking Off the Gloves
I was surprised (and drawn in) by the way Liu comes out swinging in this volume, seeming to show frustration with outdated and narrow views of eating disorders. She quickly takes on Hilde Bruch's The Golden Cage (1978) and its sterotype of the person with anorexia nervosa as a spoiled, middle- to upper-class girl. She argues that feminism, while helpful, had focused too much on society's influence and didn't account for why the media's emphasis on slimness didn't lead everyone to have eating disorders.
She also critiques a favorite book of mine -- Appetites: Why Women Want, by Caroline Knapp -- saying that she was "skeptical" of Knapp's use of her own experience to suggest that all women face common dilemmas in the realm of desire. That got my attention. I remain a believer in Knapp's perspective on the conflict between desire and deprivation for many women, so now I was skeptical. It seemed as though Liu, like many with a history of anorexia, was disenchanted at her own lack of perfection -- not knowing it all for her first book -- and wanted to prove that no one else had it right, either.
Getting Clearer by Admitting Confusion
But it's true. No one had it right, and in many ways no one has it right even today. The origins of eating disorders are hard to identify accurately, and recovery is wildly different for everyone. So Liu doesn't try to tie things up in a nice package. Instead, she offers data from dozens of interviews with those who have suffered with eating disorders, as well as doctors, therapists, psychologists, researchers, and authors (including several helpful quotes from Knapp). Gaining acknowledges many of the risk factors for eating disorders, such as family problems, body-focused sports, genetics, abuse, and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. In fact, I was a bit lost in the flurry of angles.
Turning Toward Recovery in Gaining
The book's stronger contribution comes from its recognition that the underlying anxieties fueling eating disorders don't end when the disorders do. They just show up in different ways. For example, a person who ended a bout with bulimia nervosa might still "binge and purge" on relationships with men. I felt sobered as I read these accounts. Certainly, my experience with clients shows that eating is just a symptom of larger issues, but I felt saddened for those considered "recovered" while they continued to live their lives in chaos or fear.
In contrast, Liu presents a broad view of recovery. The theme that emerges in Gaining is that pursuing life actively is key. Many times, those with eating disorders live in isolation, removed from their bodies and emotions. Returning to life means being willing to experience the world again using all five senses. If it's possible to find pleasure and satisfaction through the same body that has in the past been a sworn enemy, it's possible to conclude that the world is not a dangerous place. Maybe it's not even a place to conquer, but rather a place to explore and live beautifully.
"Life" looks different for everyone, and the stories of recovery in Liu's work are incredibly varied. Some veterans of eating disorders are self-aware and recognize when old anxieties start affecting their behaviors. Others are sure that they've left all symptoms behind, even as they show the author compulsive behaviors that may or may not have anything to do with food. This reinforces the conclusion that recovery is frequently a halting, jarring process.
Why Gaining Is Worth Your Time
Gaining has enough jewels of wisdom to form a machine gun-style self-help book, but Liu doesn't rely on brilliant connections as punch lines. They always serve a larger purpose, which is to show the confusing, unpredictable, sometimes difficult, and ultimately livable and life-filled world that exists when the restricting or the binging and purging stop.
Like most works on eating disorders that have autobiographical themes, Gaining is likely an instrument for the author's own healing as well as a revealing and hope-filled volume for the rest of us. If so, it's easy to be optimistic about Aimee Liu's life. She has incorporated in her work a respect for the imperfect and the unknown that those in the midst of anorexia (and many of her interviewees) have trouble developing. While beautifully crafted, Gaining doesn't try too hard to point readers to formulaic conclusions.
I realized that I was unknowingly waiting for just such a conclusion. But the "truth about life after eating disorders" is that there is more life in being fluid than being rigid. In demonstrating this, Liu sets an example for those with eating disorders who are driven by perfectionism and shame. Her self-exposure comes not from trying to give the "correct" response to the questions of her life. It comes from hope that others who struggle with eating disorders can trust that their lives can improve to a fullness they have nearly forgotten.
Source:
Liu, Aimee. Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders. New York: Warner Books; 2007.
