Living Full

Winning My Battles with Eating Disorders

Imagine waking in a hospital bed to find your frail pale arm punctured by an IV transferring fluids and nutrients into your weak, stiff body. What happened? You're an adult, age 26, 67 pounds, and you just had a seizure precipitated by your chronic secretive decades-long struggle with unacknowledged eating disorders (ED). You have no friends and no normal young adult experiences. Living Full is author Danielle Sherman-Lazar's story.

A groundbreaking 2012 study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders found that about 13 percent of women over age 50 exhibit ED symptoms. To put that in perspective, breast cancer afflicts about 12 percent of women. Everyone knows about breast cancer and how dangerous it is, yet eating disorders are kept hidden out of shame.

Filled with pop culture references, humor, and delivered with raw honesty about the escalating and increasingly dangerous behaviors of a person acting out the mental illness of ED, Living Full chronicles Danielle Sherman-Lazar's step-by-step descent into the nightmare that is full-blown ED. Recovery comes using the Maudsley Approach, a treatment that is rarely tried on adults. In a grueling battle, sometimes reminiscent of Helen Keller's fight with Anne Sullivan, the Maudsley Approach is a regimen of supervised controlled eating or refeeding by outpatient helpers that can eventually result in recovery.

Written by a woman who has passed through the crucible of ED to recovery, Living Full exposes the rarely talked about behind-the-scenes triggers and treatments, shame and guilt, and even coexisting addictions that go undetected in adult women today.

©2019 Danielle Sherman-Lazar (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Really Good

I've read a few books based on eating disorders and found this one to be one of the better ones all around.

Soooo helpful

This book gives me hope that disordered eating can be transformed to a more orderly way of life.

great recent story

narrator did a beautiful job! loved listening to this, I was always rooting for Danny! it's amazing how different our lives are but how eating disorders can give us a lot of the same experiences. thank you to the author for writing this. a lot of other memoirs don't take place so recently, and it's relieving to know that people are still going through things like this even in 2013. it's hard to relate to someone with an ed when at the time you were just a baby. I enjoyed the societal context

Recovery

As someone who has been trying to recover from an eating disorder since 2012 this book really hits home. It’s written extremely well and it really sends a message of hope and healing.

This book helped me save my daughters life

The ED monster is an enemy trying to kill my daughter. As a former Marine, one key to battle is to know your enemy. This book did that, thus instrumental in helping me - help my teenage daughter into recovery. I did audible over 4 days (a few f bombs. ~ loosen up, it’s worth it)...

Good luck and God Bless