The Fat Fight

Mother daughter relationships can be tricky but especially when you are struggling with weight and body image issues. The article I have chosen this week tells the story of a mother's anxiety and obsession with her daughter's body size and weight. While you read look specifically for the distorted thinking of the mother and how this negatively affects her daughter.

- Ilissa

What's the most treacherous ground for a mother and daughter to navigate?
Robin Marantz Henig and daughter Jess Zimmerman weigh in.

The Mother's Story
"I wanted to spare her pain."

Watching my daughter belly dance last year brought tears to my eyes. Jess was 28 at the time, and she was splendid. She wore a costume of bright blue and a gold hip scarf with jiggling coins. Her midriff—also jiggling—was bare. She was graceful in her shimmies, graceful with her arms, graceful when she flicked her naked feet. I loved watching her.

All the years of sitting through the plays of Jess's childhood came back to me, plays in which she spoke her lines in a sweet, clear voice but could never get over the awkwardness of being herself. I had thought that at the heart of Jess's discomfort, on stage and off, was the fact that she felt bad about being fat. Yet everything I did to spare her insecurity about her weight turned out to be a source of pain for her—and a thorn at the heart of our relationship that we're still trying delicately to extract.

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Surviving Thanksgiving With an Eating Disorder

Yup, Thanksgiving is going to trigger all kinds of emotions no matter what your eating disordered behavior is. Actually, all the holiday meals can be difficult. For some, family time is stressful. In that case you can focus on self-care and set boundaries with others. It’s all about being mindful. Pop in for a pre- holiday session and we can prepare for your holiday events or sign up for a group around the holidays. Mostly, take control of your holiday so that you can enjoy it. Don’t listen to the shoulds and don’t worry about what others may think of you. Who knows? Who cares! You’re a grown up and you deserve to be happy. You more than deserve… Find your voice and create “your” kind of holiday…

What makes Thanksgiving so hard to handle when a person has an eating disorder? Some problems are obvious, and some not so much, but any discussion of Thanksgiving and eating disorders obviously must begin with food.

Thanksgiving Food a Natural Problem With Eating Disorders

The massive Thanksgiving spread is clearly an issue for a person with an eating disorder.

For someone with anorexia nervosa, large quantities of food increase anxiety. There's more opportunity to eat, and eating is considered the enemy. So the pressure is on. The internal reaction is, "How can I avoid eating, and how can I look as though I'm eating when I'm not?"

Binge-eating disorder poses different problems. Chances are that there are foods present that can easily trigger a binge. Often, there is an effort not to eat too much while knowing how easy it might be to binge. Naturally, this creates tension. In my own work with clients who binge, I've seen people who struggle with binge eating have fairly normal meals at the big gathering, and then go home and eat large amounts of food. This relieves the tension (though it also leads to feeling terrible).

In addition to binging, a person with bulimia nervosa will often be concerned with how to eat enough to create a binge, and then to make sure that there is easy access to a place (usually a bathroom) to purge.

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