Hunger Pains: The Modern Woman's Tragic Quest for Thinness

As a therapist and speaker, I will definitely recommend this book to all women. Is there a woman in America who doesn't struggle with body image, if she is truly honest with herself? The most fascinating parts were those stories of women, and very interesting to see how eating disorders are really about wanting to connect deeply with others...to be loved. If I'm attractive enough, I will be liked, desireable, and loved well. Also the desire for many struggling with anorexia to be compliant and to be small and just disappear are apparent in Pipher's amazing book. She also offers helpful strategies and recommends people to get professional help and to belong to a 12-step. Her emphasis on knowing your feelings and getting them expressed in healthy ways is profoundly important. A client recently told me she was addicted to purging because it felt like her entire system (heart, feelings, soul, problems) were cleansed. The fact that most woman in the book began an eating disorder when a painful experience happened in her life is also noteworthy. Once again, illustrating it's about the heart and control and that we are here on earth for relationships. Bravo, Mary Pipher!

Parents, teachers, and others who may work with young girls or women should read this book. It wouldn't hurt for all women to read this and understand the different signs of eating disorders and distorted thinking (in order to help themselves, friends or family.) It has basic suggestions at the end of many chapters to help improve or recover from eating disorders or accepting the body you have whether it is large,small or whatever. I like these cause they give a good summary and some goals. This book will not heal all of a person's problems, and the author also knows this-she encourages those with serious problems to find a good therapist/doctor/treatment. I am looking forward to reading her other books.

I read this book after being discharged from the hospital for treatment of anorexia. More than any other book, "Hunger Pains" made me examine and question the way food, fat, obesity, and thinness are viewed in our culture. It empowered me to want to recover, and to change not only my own life but the society that produces such horrible diseases as anorexia and bulemia. Dr. Pipher is so eloquent and clear in her depiction of how food is conditioned from childhood to be our enemy, and gives very helpful, practical advice for how to develop a healthy relationship with food and weight. I highly reccomend it to anyone recovering from an eating disorder, and also for every woman and every parent of an adolescent girl. It will give you the power and the motivation to look critically at the world around you and to take control over the way it influences you.

I just bought Reviving Ophelia and Hunger Pains, i'm half way through both, So far... These books feel like Bibles, as they are by my side everywhere I go! Mary Pipher is an amazing author and perfectly words the feelings and thoughts of suffers and friends & family. I am certain that the rest of these books will also be as helpful and moving as the first halves! Sorry i'm not done readding them, i've only had them for 2 days, but i'm so amazed i just had to tell everyone how great they were RIGHT AWAY, i'm a bit impatient!