What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety

by Cole Kazdin

Overview

"What’s Eating Us is a feat of reporting in the hope of helping people repair their relationship with their bodies and food." ––Shondaland

Blending personal narrative and investigative reporting, Emmy Award-winning journalist Cole Kazdin reveals that disordered eating is an epidemic crisis killing millions of women.

Women of all ages struggle with disordered eating, preoccupation with food, and body anxiety. Journalist Cole Kazdin was one such woman, and she set out to discover why her own full recovery from an eating disorder felt so impossible. Interviewing women across the country as well as the world’s most renowned researchers, she discovered that most people with eating disorders never receive treatment––the fact that she did made her one of the lucky ones.

Kazdin takes us to the doorstep of the diet industry and research community, exposing the flawed systems that claim to be helping us, and revealing disordered eating for the crisis that it is: a mental illness with the second highest mortality rate (after opioid-related deaths) that no one wants to talk about. Along the way, she identifies new treatments not yet available to the general public, grass roots movements to correct racial disparities in care, and strategies for navigating true health while still living in a dysfunctional world.

What would it feel like to be free? To feel gorgeous in your body, not ruminate about food, feel ease at meals, exercise with no regard for calories-burned? To never making a disparaging comment about your body again, even silently to yourself. Who can help us with this? We can.

What's Eating Us is an urgent battle cry coupled with stories and strategies about what works and how to finally heal—for real.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250282842
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	77,083
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Cole Kazdin is a writer, performer and four-time Emmy Award winning television journalist. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, The Daily Beast, Cosmopolitan, NPR, and more. Cole is a graduate of Northwestern University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

01/13/2023

Eating disorders are not discussed or studied enough, and when they are, it's often in incomplete or damaging ways, posits four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist Kadzin. This book is both a memoir and a study of how disordered eating has become both normalized and encouraged in American culture. The author focuses on the immensely damaging effects of stress on the human body and the connections between weight loss companies and disordered eating patterns. Her insightful discussions with researchers emphasize areas of eating disorders that are typically ignored, encouraging readers to think about aspects of disordered eating and diet culture they may not have considered. The author also takes care to cite sources from groups or individuals that have no connection to the weight-loss industry, so readers can be confident that they are getting unbiased advice. VERDICT This work will appeal to readers who enjoy memoirs and general nonfiction, but Kadzin's conversational tone and writing style make this book accessible to all readers.—Heather Sheahan

Library Journal

★ 2022-11-07
Eating disorders are a massive yet often hidden problem, writes the author, who speaks with the insight of experience.

Early on, Kazdin, a four-time Emmy Award–winning TV journalist, cites some remarkable, frightening statistics. “Over 90 percent of women in the United States are dissatisfied with their bodies,” she writes, and nearly 30 million people “suffer from an eating disorder.” Furthermore, eating disorders have the second-highest mortality rate of any mental illness, on a par with opioid deaths, and the problem crosses socio-economic lines. Kazdin has struggled with a disorder herself, and her book is as much her personal story as an examination of body anxiety. The author discusses how diet and weight-loss businesses are rebranding themselves as being about good health, a misleading ploy to continue to grow an industry approaching a valuation of $300 billion. “Weight stigma is deeply embedded into our culture,” she writes. The idea that thinness equals personal worth and social success is everywhere. Kazdin examines the wide range of diets on the market and concludes that they simply do not work. Some will lead to temporary weight loss, but it always comes back. The author’s own obsessive drive to be thin involved starvation-level diets, punishing exercise routines, and, ultimately, self-induced vomiting. All this made her feel in control—at least until the larger health consequences began to appear. Through therapy and support, she managed to build something like a normal life, but she wonders if she will ever completely recover. “My eating disorder never left,” she writes. “It’s always there, lying in wait like a trained assassin.” The author also describes new research suggesting that eating disorders may stem from physical problems in the brain rather than from behavioral issues, which would fundamentally change treatment options. The real solution, she writes, is to get past the social pressure and achieve self-acceptance.

Kazdin’s painful honesty is leavened with humor and irony. Hopefully, this book will reach the people who need it.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Cole Kazdin:

"Part research, part memoir, What's Eating Us is a dynamic exploration into the world of eating disorders. Cole's journalistic background lays the foundation for so much of the data and research on the subject, while being cleverly woven into her own personal narrative. With a refreshing voice of honesty, compassion, sarcasm and wit, Cole goes on a quest demanding answers to why so many folks struggle with their relationships with their bodies and sets out to find the pathways to liberation." ––Amanda Crew, HBO's Silicon Valley

"As much a personal story as an examination of body anxiety...Kazdin’s painful honesty is leavened with humor and irony." ––Kirkus (starred review)

"Personal and illuminating, subjective yet relatable. Citing medical research alongside real-life testimonies, with a balance of personal candor and well-executed analysis, this book will resonate with anyone who’s ever been critical of their reflection in a mirror…With empathy and understanding, Kazdin offers the reader everything they need to better understand this difficult topic." ––BookPage

"What’s Eating Us is a feat of reporting in the hope of helping people repair their relationship with their bodies and food." ––Shondaland

"This book is both a memoir and a study of how disordered eating has become both normalized and encouraged in American culture...Her insightful discussions with researchers emphasize areas of eating disorders that are typically ignored, encouraging readers to think about aspects of diet culture they may not have considered...will appeal to readers who enjoy memoirs and general nonfiction, but Kazdin's conversational tone and writing style make this book accessible to all readers." ––Library Journal

"What's Eating Us takes seriously the lethality of eating disorders, a fact that is distressingly absent from most of the discourse on the subject. With disarming honesty and sparkling wit, Kazdin shares her own history with disordered eating, setting it alongside the experience of women she interviewed across the country. What's Eating Us is a vital contribution to the literature on disordered eating, and a must-read for anyone hungry for real data and hard-boiled hope on the subject of eating, diets, and wellness." ––Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group

"For anyone who has ever struggled with body image, for those who have ever wanted to change anything about their appearance, for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to eat a plate of food and not feel guilty, this book is for you." ––Brattleboro Reformer

"A must read. Kazdin recounts her own struggle, and surrounds it with robust research and stories on the incredible prevalence and toll of body dissatisfaction, preoccupation with food, and eating disorders. She beautifully and tragically encapsulates how almost all of us are negatively affected by the toxic diet culture that we live in, how that makes full recovery so elusive to most, and how we can start to fight back." ––Kristina Saffran, co-founder and CEO of Equip Health and co-founder of Project HEAL

From the Publisher