Dr. Susan Mendelsohn, the psychologist for eDiets.com, offers It's Not About the Weight, a combination of eating disorder memoir and psychology tutorial. All the elements of a good book on the topic are there, but its many question marks will make readers wonder whether other books may be better suited for their needs.
Topical Strengths of It's Not About the Weight
In a style made popular by the suggestions of the book Life Without ED, Mendelsohn presents several "letters to ED," in which those struggling with eating disorders give voice to their relationships with the disorders themselves. The consistency in these letters is amazing: All demonstrate wrenching ambivalence. Each person is intensely loyal to the eating disorder while hating it at the same time.
A major feature and strength is the book's focus on negative self-talk. A person with an eating disorder often has a "recording" that plays all the time, reminding him, "You're nothing. You look awful. You might as well binge and purge," and so on. Mendelsohn provides several pages of examples of negative self-talk and messages that the reader can use to counter them. The repetition gives the reader with an eating disorder a chance to absorb the idea, since his own internal messages have repeated for so long already.
Mendelsohn also proposes that it's vital to experience emotional freedom -- being willing to feel both the highs and the lows. She describes how the beginning of an eating disorder is the ending of emotional growth for a while. In other words, a person's emotional maturity becomes frozen in place at whatever age the eating disorder began.
Finally, the book offers an excellent discussion on the healing power of being assertive. Many with eating disorders are people pleasers, which makes others happy but leaves the people pleaser's needs unmet. This is a worthy topic of discussion, and Mendelsohn does it justice.
Combining Her Experience as Therapist and Client
What Mendelsohn wants us to relish most is her position as both therapist and survivor. These experiences allow her to weave memories from her own history into the discussion of how eating disorders form and what it takes to recover.
Many of these memories are worthy of compassion: Imagine a child psychologist telling your mother (while you're standing right there), "Your daughter will never be college bound...Never expect anything much from her. She buckles under pressure!" Mendelsohn also gives a brief history of her traumatic experiences in relationships near the end of the book.
If nothing else, the combination of perspectives gives the author's opinions merit. The reader is left with no doubt that she is a veteran of both disordered eating and eating disorder treatment.
Where It's Not About the Weight Falls Short
I found Mendelsohn's chatty, upbeat style surprising. It seems geared more toward early teens than young adults, and I wonder whether the jokes she includes will make much of a dent in the minds of readers hardened by eating disorders. Of course, Dr. Mendelsohn has seen lots of eating disorder patients, and she may use this style interpersonally in an effective way. But trying to communicate technical content (such as B.F. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning) in this voice seemed strange to me.
The book's take on psychological theory pulls from several different schools of thought -- cognitive-behavioral therapy, rational emotive behavioral therapy, and psychoanalytic psychology. In practice, this is something that therapists do everyday, but in book form, it seems confusing. It was hard for me at times to tell how the author integrated these perspectives, but it might be quite clear to someone who isn't a nitpicky therapist like me.
Also confusing was the way in which Mendelsohn made connections between theory and personal experience. It isn't that the connections aren't there, but she seems to fly through tragic moments from her past without giving us a real sense of their impact. We know that they led to eating problems, but the missing links -- the emotions -- are less clear.
We All Want Happiness (But Don't Force It)
And that takes me back to the author's relentlessly optimistic style. I know that brightness and optimism motivate many people. I'm just not usually one of them. When Mendelsohn holds to an optimistic tone even when she refers to having her nose broken by a boyfriend, or being ruthlessly discarded by her mother, I have a hard time accepting the sunny-sounding words. I assume that she's earned her optimism through years of hard work, but we seem to be given no permission to be angry or saddened on her behalf. This doesn't teach the reader to be able to express herself emotionally (as stated above, one of Mendelsohn's worthy goals). It's more likely to make the reader feel ashamed for having darker emotions.
The book essentially offers promises of healing through the information it contains. More than once I took a double take at statements like this one urging the reader to push through a discussion on psychoanalytic psychology: "I promise that if you just stay the course despite the words that might make you close another book...you will be rewarded with the lasting prize of lifelong healing." Wow. It's actually statements like this one that make me want to close a book.
Conclusion
There is much to like about It's Not About the Weight. Mendelsohn is convincing in her argument: Eating disorders are really about conditioning, emotions, and raging negativity. The author's personal pendulum has swung to boundless optimism -- so much that I think it becomes hard to believe. But if you can see through the blinding sunshine, you'll find wisdom from a woman who's seen a lot.
