Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder: Reclaim Yourself, Regain Your Health, Recover for Good

by Johanna S. Kandel

There is life beyond your eating disorder—and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it.

Johanna S. Kandel, founder and executive director of The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, struggled with her eating disorder for ten years before finally getting help. Now fully recovered, Kandel knows firsthand how difficult the healing process can be. Through her work with The Alliance—leading support groups, speaking nationwide and collaborating with professionals in the field—she's developed a set of practical tools to address the everyday challenges of recovery.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Psychology

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: the author is a dear friend, who I have witnessed powerfully impact the world over and over again.

This book is excellent. It took me ages to finish only because I strive to only read work oriented books at work, and work has been suuuuuuper busy, lol.

I look forward to sharing this with clients. It's filled with tips and tools and terrific metaphors to assist people in their own recovery journey, all while tying it back to Johanna's journey. She is one of the people I point to when I need to offer clients tangible hope; this book is chock full of reasons why.

Highly recommend.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in no time because it is engaging, comforting, and practical. I do not know what it is like to have the type of eating disorder (anorexia or bulimia) described in this book but I do have issues with my weight and dieting has not worked, especially when counting points or color coding foods make some foods “good” and some foods “bad”. Many of the points the author makes are helpful to anyone in any situation. It is about choosing the life you really want vs. what society says you need.

[Katrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book! Tells a lot of stories of people who over came the eating disorder and different ideas on how to over come the eating disorder and be on a recovery path

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Recovery GPS*

Johanna Kandel's _Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder_ is the perfect companion for a young woman on the path to recovering from an eating disorder, particularly anorexia or bulimia. Written with compassion, empathy, and humor, this book does a praise-worthy job in providing a healing combination of information, insight, and inspiration in a highly readable and engaging form. Using her own eating disorder recovery experiences, Johanna writes about the recovery process in a reader-friendly way that's always very encouraging, genuine, and human. She offers a realistic view of the road to recovery--including its potholes and speed bumps--and she clearly provides very specific tips, techniques, recovery exercises, gems of wisdom, and tools that have helped her and many of the patients she's worked with in her support groups. Although the road to recovery is undeniably a long one, books like this one can certainly help navigate the journey.

[Izlinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A friend and I were talking about recovery, and she mentioned she relapsed and the conversation turned to whether someone is always recovering from an eating disorder or if full, complete recovery is possible.

I didn't finish this memoir/how-to guide. There are a lot of catchphrases sprinkled around. Big italicized phrases on practically every other page, then exercises about visualizations that worked for her. It got a bit annoying, though that's because visualization exercises don't really work with me. I basically gave up a third through the book.

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kandel founded the Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness in 2000. This non-profit organization is dedicated to eating-disorder prevention and provides resources for those struggling. She speaks openly and honestly on life after eating disorders and how to cope with a new lifestyle. The positive speak, clear use of words and the ideas of reclaiming yourself, regaining your health and recovering for good will speak to all that read it.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just a "what I did to myself" memoir, but a practical guide how to get beyond an eating disorder, even in this culture of thin-is-beautiful. She is savvy enough not to include her lowest weight, because that in itself can trigger an "I can beat that" attitude in her readers. Highly recommended.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good recovery book to read, she had a lot of great examples and stories that helped for her suggestions to click and make sense. If you can get past cheesy metaphors that fill all self-help/how-to books then I would recommend reading this. I zoomed through it in a day because she doesn't get too heavy with things, but there was enough sustenance that I still feel as though it was a helpful book. It's great because her focus isn't on the eating disorder or just saying that recovery is possible, but she talks about real struggles that come up during the recovery process and suggestions for how to overcome them.

[Nicolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most helpful self help book I’ve read on eating disorders. It’s obvious that she took the time to make sure she wasn’t triggering in her writing. I didn’t get a sense of gloating about her recovery nor did I feel that she victimized herself. This book was given to me by my E-D therapist and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to read it!

[Scarlo Manbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this could use a little more focus on “atypical” anorexia and basically anyone who doesn’t look like the typical after school special anorexic but it was a good and compassionate book. Very heavy on campy metaphor but it worked for me

[Sage Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

I go to the Alliance at least 4 times a week and I love being there! Johanna and the staff are so amazing and supportive. I feel at home there. Thank you Johanna for this amazing book!

[Elsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

great for its purposes

[Sarah Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was hard to finish this because it was so powerful. It provided a lot of tools and resources. Great for those in recovery and those helping others on their journey.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended! I had the pleasure of interviewing Johanna Kandel and reading this book as part of a piece I wrote about eating disorder recovery. She's the real deal--honest about her own journey, but avoids sharing numbers or other potentially triggering details. She emphasizes that recovery is a process, but totally possible. There's also a lot in this book that would be helpful for family members and friends of recovering eating disorder patients.

[Leslie Lea Nord · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on the topic, filled with personal stories, and practical advice.