Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Unlike some other memoirs and fiction I've read, Marya was able to touch me and make me understand her pain and understand her relapses. I never felt like she was careening out of control, because she was explaining to the reader what her thought process was and why she did what she did. Her narrative voice was amazing. Marya had a seriously jacked up upbringing. I wonder what her parents think of her portrayal of them in this book. Her mom had food issues and repeatedly told Marya that she "just came like this" and that her parents had no responsibility for her condition. Her parents allowed Marya to convince them that she was okay to go to a boarding school filled with girls with eating disorders, that she could move in with a family friend in another state during high school (where she got dangerously thin), and that she could attend college at 17 (where she ended up weighing 52 pounds and coming veeeeery close to death). Marya had both bulimia and anorexia. She made some enlightening comments on the differences between the two: [p. 107] I distinctly did not want to be seen as bulimic. I wanted to be an anoretic. I was on a mission to be another sort of person, a person whose passion were ascestic rather than hedonistic, who would Make It, whose drive and ambition were focused and pure, whose body came second, always, to her mind and her "art." Marya admits to every embarassing detail in this book. She details the coat of fur she grew when she starved herself near death, the weekend-long binges of food that resulted in her parents pipes bursting from all the vomit, her weird "safe foods" during anorexic periods (try some carrots covered in an entire jar of mustard). She even admits to a lie about sexual abuse that she told during one period of hospitalization in order to deflect attention from herself, from her real issues. This is an amazing story from a very talented narrator. It could have been edited down for length in some places, but I was so transported by the story that I didn't mind. If you like this book, try A Million Little Pieces by James Frey and Smashed by Koren Zalickas.

This is not a sentimental book about a girl who finds out she has an eating disorder and over comes it against all odds. It's not a feel good book in any sense of the word. The author is aware that she she still is a prisoner to her illness but what she has done is come to terms with it; Anorexia and Bulimia are still millstones around her neck but this book is her way of dealing with this burden. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher is not an easy book to read, not because the author makes the subject she is talking about complex, rather it is a brutally honest picture into a life governed by eating, puking, starving, eating, starving, puking, a vicious in which there seems to be no escape. The author looks carefully into her childhood, her teenage years, her adult life, her relationship with her volatile family, her own detachment from herself as a woman in a man's world. I couldn't read this book in one sitting, I had to do it in stages, it is powerful stuff, I have an eating disorder, and I can relate to some of the thing Marya is saying, especially about how you fit your sickness to suit your life and how you learn to be devious, to hide if from those around you, how the lies you tell are lies that you want to believe and so they become the truth. This is another book that we should give teenage girls to read because I think that it just might sway some of them from taking the road that Marya took and barely survived going down. An incredible, disgusting, compulsive, painful, and totally addictive read about a subject most of us would rather avoid if we could.

Having suffered from a mild eating disorder from the ages of 12-23, and then severe bulimia and anorexia that continues to haunt every meal and bite of every day, I've held this book so tightly to my soul as evidence, and as comfort, that I'm not crazy nor am I alone. Marya is an exceptional writer and an exceptional woman. She holds nothing back, not even the grittiest of details about her lifelong struggles with both her eating disorder and her Self. She exposes the fact that "starvation is not a joke," that an eating disorder isn't just a decision not to eat, but an honest-to-God phobia of food and of getting fat. She discusses candidly that after eating a meal, you honestly think you feel your butt expanding; the compulsion to stand there and stare at your body in the mirror and make sure your knees don't touch each other; the constant feeling of your hip and shoulder bones and your tail bone to make sure there isn't suddenly a massive layer of blubber covering them. That you stare in the mirror and look at the wrong thing- instead of seeing the picture, you see the negative space. Instead of seeing the ribs and hip bones jutting out, you look at where they DON'T protrude, and irrationally see that as proof that you're a fat, disgusting, unworthy pig. She proves that there is nothing romantic about an eating disorder, nothing beautiful about wasting away. She tells in horrifying accuracy the devastating effects of taking ipecac after a binge, of taking boxes of laxatives at a time. How the brain obsesses night and day over food when it has been denied nourishment for so long. The desperate search for a "safe" food to quell that hunger inside- lots celery covered in obscene amounts of mustard, a bowl of peas eaten one pea at a time with a fork. The bizarre and rather arbitrary categorization of what foods are "safe," and what is not. The terror of being in a kitchen that has food, lots of food, hidden behind cabinet doors, knowing you cannot be trusted alone in there. The horrid panic after eating even just two bowls of cereal, the need to throw up, and the tremendous relief when you're done. The endless nights of insomnia caused by your body's hunger, the muscle cramps as your body eats away at itself in the throes of starvation. And the unnatural way you think of your body as this thing, this appendage that you have, as a belonging but not part of You which is what allows you to treat it so miserably. This book is not pretty, but it's incredibly accurate. I've read it more than ten times, I've got notes written in the margins on at least 60 pages. Not only did she tell her story, but she's done her research on eating disorders, adding in factual information where it is pertinent. I'd recommend it for anyone who is going through anorexia or bulimia themselves, but more so for their loved ones trying to understand what's going on in the head of the eating disordered person. I made my boyfriend read it, and he now understa

What many people don't realize about Eating Disorders, is that an anoretic or bulimic can't just start eating "normally" again and make everything better. An alcoholic might be able to give up drinking, but one doesn't need alcohol to live. One will DIE without food. People who develop a fear of food, or an addiction to food, will be in a lifetime of recovery. What I loved so much about this book is the no- holds-barred way that Marya Hornbacher tells her story. She does not sugarcoat or glamorize her experience, nor does she resort to boring statistics to fill space. This is the most unbiased, graphic re-telling of an eating disorder that I have ever read. I have nothing but admiration of Ms. Hornbacher for her utmost honesty in writing this book. She does not ask the reader to take her side, nor does she ask for the reader's opinion. She just unflinchingly tells her story. And what a story it is!This book is NOT a cure for an eating disorder. But maybe one girl will read this book and realize that it hits just a little too close to home. Maybe someone who has been struggling with an eating disorder for years will come to realize that there is someone else out there who feels all of the same empty feelings. In any case, this book can save lives. I cried my eyes out reading Wasted and I will admit that it is very difficult to get through (especially if you are recovering from, or currently dealing with an eating disorder.) I feel confident saying, however, that this is the most worthwhile book I've read in a long time and hands down, the best that I have ever read on eating disorders.

After reading several reviews of Mayra Hornbacher's WASTED, I feel compelled to respond to the book myself. I have suffered from the consequences of my own bad "habit" of bulimic behavior patterns for the better part of my adult life. A year ago, when this book practically jumped off the shelf into my hands, I read it all in one day. My first reactions to Hornbacher's lucid depiction of the damage she inflicted on herself again and again included anger and disgust: how dare she be so honest about her feelings of being out-of-control, her hideously painful purges, without tacking on a Beverly Hills 90210-like public service announcement at the end of every chapter? I wanted a Hollywood happy ending, not because it would make the book more accurate, but because it would make me -- and perhaps those around me -- believe that an eating disorder is easy to recover from, that it's not as life threatening as she makes it out to be...that it's not THAT serious. After all, according to some of the reviewers I've read here, psychologically induced suffering is not "real," right? She could just "stop" at any time, couldn't she? Well, maybe...but I don't know many other mentally illnesses (eg: manic depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder or addiction) that tend to disappear quite that simply; such transformations are usually attributed to miracles for a reason. Why do we feel it's necessary to try to quantify others' suffering, anyway? Since our culture tells us that material advantage solves all problems in a snap, maybe it's a bit too much of a bubble-burster for people to contemplate the reality that stands in stark relief against this suggestion without accusing her of self-pity...yes, even a person with access to many doctors and hospitals can suffer from relapse after relapse...mental illness is not self-indulgence; mind-control exercises can help, but, as anyone skilled in training their minds will tell you, such training can take years of hard work, day after day, before it yields any positive results...in the meantime, the negative habit energies reign supreme.Finally, having grown up in literally the same environment that Hornbacher experienced, and a year after reading the book for the first time, I can now see that hers is not a story of self-pity, but an account of what can happen when a person -- and especially a young woman -- internalizes contemporary social cues (get skinny/deprive yourself/martyr yourself for "beauty" at any cost and you will be happy and loved) for how to ease the most basic of human conditions: suffering. I applaud Hornbacher's tough-minded prose. Her unflinching look at herself and her taking of responsibility for the consequences of her actions -- painfully deluded by a skewed self-perception as they were -- make her a real hero for those of us who struggle daily with the consequences of a bad habit that set in, for many of us, at the same time that most kids were tr