Product Description
Featuring an honest account of the author's own struggles with food, "Anatomy of a Food Addiction" helps readers understand binge eating and plan a recovery through exercises, self-tests, and an examination of family issues. Illustrations.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 18 reviews)

Put It All Together For Me

I have worked with eating issues for a long long time and I learned something so incredibly powerful from this book. I learned that when I binge, it's not because I'm weak, stupid, self destructive, etc. It is because I do not have enough support. That support for me usually means that I've been tuned out to taking care of myself. I can't really do justice to this book - if you've struggled and read more books, attended more meetings, done more teleclasses, studied more methods than you care to remember - this is a must read. It really put it all together for me.
October 28, 2008

Food Addiction or Compulsive Eating

Excellent book, very informative, easy to understand.
Explains the body chemistry of addiction to sugar
and refined carbohydrates.
Promotes gradual abstinence for recovery, first from sugar,
then from refined carbohydrates, which is ESSENTIAL for many
many addicted individuals, including me personally.
September 03, 2008

It Is Worth The Money

I am a male in my early 40's and despite that the book was geared towards females, I thought the book was excellent. I could relate to just about everything she wrote about and agree with it. I was extremely pleased to discover this book, it help me understand the problem with food addiction. I got a lot out of the book, it was worth the small price, even if you got just a one or two little thoughts out of it.

May 29, 2008

Self-indulgent, neurotic pop-psychology drivel. NOT for hard-core food addicts

Garbage. 98% of this book is pure, unadulterated, contradictory bull----. First, the author claims in Chapter 2 that food addiction is biological. Although she's got the basic science right, that chapter is SO badly-written that the author, apparently realizing that, felt the need to use another several pages to re-explain the whole thing all over again "in a simpler way" at the end of the same chapter. Slogging through Chapter 2 was akin to reading a third-grader's essay in which the student piece-mealed the information from various encyclopediae and other sources in bits and pieces, but didn't quite "get" it herself enough to write clearly or coherently.

In what seems to be an escape from scientific concepts she doesn't understand, the author then abandons the whole biological aspect for most of the rest of the book, and drifts off into useless psychobabble for chapter after unending chapter of self-indulgent pity-party-promotion.

Most of the other 15 chapters in this book are devoted to statements that the real cause of food addiction is an awful, deprived childhood filled with abusive and mean, neglectful, absent parents. According to Ms. Katherine, all food addicts got that way by being emotional basket cases and pathetic abused wrecks: "Sit back in a comfortable chair with a teddy bear or pillow. Wrap your arms around yourself and the bear or pillow. Close your eyes. Send yourself warm, loving thoughts. Give yourself some sympathy for how hard it's been to handle this difficult problem all by yourself." Or this: "When a child isn't held enough, she experiences a deficit. It's horrible then if the child is ridiculed, ignored, or hit for asking to be held. ... She then learns her need leads to pain and punishment and will likely aim her wrong interpretation against herself..."

It only gets much, much worse from there.

Inconsistent with her own early chapter about the bio factors in food addiction (which frankly she doesn't seem to quite understand herself), the author advocates STAGED abstinence - abstain from sugar for a full year, THEN begin abstinence from refined carbohydrates. Meanwhile, it's ok to eat more of other things as long as you're not eating the sugars. Oh, puhleeze!! This is like telling an alcoholic: "Ok, first you have to abstain from hard liquor for a year, but you can keep drinking beer and wine, even more of them if you need to. Meanwhile we'll discuss all the ways you were abused as a child. THEN you can stop drinking for real." Yeah, right.

Addiction is addiction, period. You are simply not going to deal with the biochemical processes involved in food addiction unless you eliminate the chemical triggers completely - ALL sugars, refined carbs, wheat, and high-fat foods.

This author's "plan" is tortuous and unrealistic. She discusses a conversation you are to have with family members, in which you are to state that you will not be capable of making decisions for at least 3 weeks after starting your sugar withdrawal. Hello? Stop real life, just like that, while you walk a cravings-crazy chemical tightrope of half-abstinent hell.

Don't waste your money on this book. Instead, get real information and real solutions from a true expert, someone like Kay Sheppard in Food Addiction: The Body Knows: Revised & Expanded Edition, and From the First Bite: A Complete Guide to Recovery from Food Addiction, in which the genetic tie-ins and biochemistry of food addiction are simply explained, and immediate total abstinence is recommended, along with providing a detailed, real, workable plan which really does work to eliminate cravings fast and promote clear thinking and recovery.
July 23, 2007

Very psycho educational book

I find this book very useful in understanding binge eating disorder. I think its very user - reader friendly and use is very often in therapy.
July 11, 2006

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Food Addiction: The Body Knows: Revised & Expanded Edition
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From the First Bite: A Complete Guide to Recovery from Food Addiction
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