10 Eating Disorder Books to Support Your Healing Journey
There are many eating disorder books that help us heal and learn for ourselves, but also better understand what a loved one might be going through. That’s why we turned to the Project HEAL community for recommendations. With so many to choose from and highlight, we wanted to focus on the ones that have impacted the people in our community the most.
If you’re looking to add some eating disorder books to your queue, here are the ones that came highly recommended by your peers.
8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder
This isn’t just a book about how to overcome your eating disorder. It’s written by two therapists who share their personal experiences of going through their eating disorders. They pair this with their therapeutic insights, making it a powerful book for anyone moving through an eating disorder recovery and healing.
As the book description says, “Interweaving personal narrative with the perspective of their own therapist-client relationship, their insights bring an unparalleled depth of awareness into just what it takes to successfully beat this challenging and seemingly intractable clinical issue.”
This is a great book if you or someone you know are going into recovery treatment because their in-depth detail of what the treatment experience is like can help calm fears and anxiety.
I'm Glad My Mom Died
This New York Times best-seller isn’t just about eating disorders, but mental health in general—and the challenges many of us face in today's world. Author Jennette McCurdy writes in her memoir about addiction, eating disorders, and a complicated relationship with her mother.
Her “unflinching detail” makes her story relatable for anyone who is struggling through criticism, pressure, and the metric ton of expectations that most of us feel while existing in today’s world.
More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament
Twin sisters Lindsey and Lexie, who are also PhDs and founders of the nonprofit Beauty Redefined, have pioneered the “more than a body” movement. This book was built upon their extensive body image research, giving us a different lens with which to view body love and body peace.
In this book, the authors not only share their insights but a practical plan to build body resilience, reconnect with your whole self and break free from self-objectification. If you love data and practical insights, this is one of the best eating disorder books for your healing journey.
Food Isn’t Medicine: Challenge Nutrib*llocks & Escape the Diet Trap
Diet culture has made many of us believe a lot of things—and one of those things is that “food is medicine.” Author Dr Joshua Wolrich is an NHS doctor who has had personal experience with the dangers of diets. Now, he’s on a mission to fight weight stigma, call out the BS of diet culture, and remind us that we can eat all foods.
This book uses nutrition science to debunk the myths many have come to believe as truths so you can reclaim food and ditch diet culture once and for all.
Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders
Many people have a singular vision in their mind of what an eating disorder “looks like.” If they, or someone they love, don’t fit that picture but are still struggling with disordered eating and body image, they may feel they’re not “sick enough.” Maybe you even feel or have felt that way.
Jennifer L. Gaudiani, the founder of the Gaudiani Clinic, seeks to bring light to the many medical issues that arise from eating disorders—no matter how they may “look.” This can help those struggling, along with family members and clinicians, better understand the many nuances of eating disorders.
Gaudiani uses relatable examples and “scientifically sound” insights to paint a clear picture of how people of all shapes and sizes can struggle with eating disorders and diet culture.
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness
The correlation between these two aspects of our modern culture has become more and more clear as people like author, Da’Shaun Harrison, have begun speaking out. In this book, Harrison shares their experience as a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans person living in our world today.
They show us how “anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life”—and in ways you may never have known unless you lived it. This is one of the must-read eating disorder books for everyone, whether you’re struggling with eating disorders or mental health, or just want to learn more.
Believarexic
Unlike many other eating disorder books, this is a fiction story. J. J. Johnson tells the story of a girl struggling with an eating disorder, based on her own experience of being hospitalized for eating disorder treatment. This isn’t just any fiction book, though.
As the book’s description explains, “The innovative format using blank verse and prose changes in tense and voice, and forms, workbooks, and journal entries mirror Jennifer's progress toward a healthy body and mind.”
This is a book about trust, asking for help, and healing, much of which mirrors the experience many of us have had on our own journey.
Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
Author, Christy Harrison, registered dietitian, podcast host, and journalist, has been a pioneer in the anti-diet space. Her acclaimed book, Anti-Diet, attacks diet culture head-on, along with the multi-billion dollar industries that most benefit from it.
Using science, personal experience, stories from patients, and history, she helps readers reclaim food freedom and their bodies so they can focus on the things in life they love most.
Along the way, she introduces the idea of Intuitive Eating, a non-diet approach to eating created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Readers learn about mindful eating and body kindness and learn practical strategies to implement these practices in their own life. The Intuitive Eating Workbook, created by Trobole and Resch is a great supporting resource for this book.
Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight -- and What We Can Do About It
An important part of the eating disorder healing journey is unlearning all the myths and lies you were taught about weight, food, and our bodies. Body of Truth is one of the best ways to unlearn all of those lies. Author and science journalist, Harriet Brown, rebuttals the four biggest lies about weight with research-backed facts and data.
In doing so, she uncovers “how the medical profession is complicit in keeping us in the dark; how big pharma and big, empty promises equal big, big dollars; how much of what we know (or think we know) about health and weight is wrong.” Plus, she helps readers understand how all of this is impacting us every day, whether we realize it or not.
Reclaiming Body Trust
Authors and founders of Body Trust, licensed therapist Hilary Kinavey and registered dietician Dana Sturtevant, help readers heal through their Body Trust framework. The book explains how diet culture has taken advantage of and profited from our trauma, stigma and disembodiment.
In addition, their framework, which includes The Rupture, The Reckoning, and The Reclamation, orients readers toward healing and reclaiming their body. Interspersed throughout the book are also relatable stories from the hundreds of people they’ve worked with.
