Fat & Furious: Mothers and Daughters and Food Obsessions

by Judi Hollis

Dr. Judi Hollis, founder of the nation's first eating disorders hospital unit, reports that in thirty years of clinical practice, she has never met a starving or bingeing person who wasn't raging within. Why? What is the link between unexpressed anger and food obsession?In Fat and Furious, Dr. Hollis traces the rage back to the "mother-daughter wound" where, at the root of all disordered eating, is one painful truth-our mothers passed on lies about their own pain, making healthy separation for their daughters impossible. And when daughters cannot claim their lives, they try to sedate, control, and suppress themselves -with food.Dr. Hollis cautions that facing the mother-daughter wound does not mean blaming your mother. The challenge is to fearlessly confront the ways in which we are repeating the dynamics of the mother-daughter relationship in our lives today.Fat and Furious is not an answer book. It is a book that will teach you how to ask probing questions-the first step to self-healing. With the wisdom and guidance in Fat and Furious, you will begin to hear and trust your own inner voice-and you will never be hungry again.

Genres: Self Help

338 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 1994

About the author

For more than thirty years, Dr. Judi Hollis has been featured on CNN, Extra, Inside Edition, Oprah, Sally, and Leeza among others. Self magazine voted her treatments among the top ten in the nation. She has been a licensed family therapist for more than 30 years and is maintaining her own 70-pound weight loss. Her difficult message of promoting internal spiritual connection and deep personality change is the only valid and lasting approach to weight loss.

Reviews

[Erika Nerdypants · Rating 2 out of 5]

I both liked and disliked this book. Here we are told that the reson for fat women lies in repressed and unresolved feelings of anger and the broken mother-daughter relationship. While I believe we learn from our parents, and are socialized by our mothers in particular, I don't agree that disordered eating is soley the result of mother-daughter bonds. Still, I was left with feeling more compassion for my own mother, and the struggles of women to be "more" and be "better" all the time.

[Ilze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talk about some hard truths about your body ... or maybe that should read: about the relationships that make you think badly of your body.

Hollis cames straight to the point and on several occasions I had one of those "aha"-moments. You can believe what she says, as she's been there too.