Living Full

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.