Most people know someone who is anorexic. Cosmopolitan recently ran a feature 'Have you heard the latest school girl craze. Starving yourself within one inch of your life is now the acceptable face of teenage angst.' It is a controversial subject that attracts constant media attention - as an illness it mystifys as much as terrifies. This is Claire Beeken's story of her battle with anorexia. She was first hospitalized at the age of 10 with an eating disorder and spent the next 13 years locked in a cycle of ...
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Most people know someone who is anorexic. Cosmopolitan recently ran a feature 'Have you heard the latest school girl craze. Starving yourself within one inch of your life is now the acceptable face of teenage angst.' It is a controversial subject that attracts constant media attention - as an illness it mystifys as much as terrifies. This is Claire Beeken's story of her battle with anorexia. She was first hospitalized at the age of 10 with an eating disorder and spent the next 13 years locked in a cycle of starvation, binge-eating and laxative abuse. This is an incredibly honest, moving - and at times darkly funny - account of her illness. Claire takes us on her personal roller coaster ride - from the early years ('I wanted to make myself smaller so there would be less of me to hate') through her teenage years (school, friends, family and boyfriends, child abuse, attempted suicide, plummeting weight, obsessive exercising, long periods spent in the psychiatric wing of her local hospital etc.) and finally how she gained the upperhand and put herself on the road to recovery. This book will strike a chord in every reader; it stimulates rather than depresses and offers incredible insight into a life lived with anorexia.
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