“A great resource for anyone working with people with eating disorders. This cleverly written memoir is a window into one incredible (and hilarious womans’ journey with anorexia. I cried and laughed. I could not put it down! A future mandatory read for healthcare professionals!
Dr. Sara Hostland, MD, CCFP-EMOttawa, On – For fans of personal essays and memoirs that delve deep into an emotional issue with humour and refreshingly honesty, comes…
The Skinny: My messy, hopeful fight for full recovery from anorexia (A decently comical) Memoir, written by Sheri-Segal Glick, couldn’t be more timely or relevant.
This is not your everyday account or just another recovery memoir. Segal Glick embraces this serious topic with wit, wry humour, and raw honesty, in her powerful, personal, and unique story about surviving serious illness and being in recovery.
*Hospitalizations for eating disorders amongst young and mid-life women jumped by more than 60% during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Sheri, now a mother of three, was in and out of the hospital for anorexia throughout her teen years. And, like many who develop anorexia young, she was still privately battling her eating disorder decades later, unbeknownst to most of the people around her.
Even Sheri had no idea just how unwell she still was until a relapse after the birth of her third child.
At that point, she learned there was a term for the bleak and incredibly common place in-between illness and health that blends so seamlessly into the fabric of our fitness and diet obsessed society — quasi-recovery.
Once Sheri accepted that she’d never fully recovered from her eating disorder, she began to understand how it had tainted everything: nights out, birthdays, weddings, vacations, hobbies, jobs, pregnancies, childbirth, motherhood.
She’d never been fully present, and she was constantly at odds with the voice of her eating disorder inside her head.
If she didn’t want to keep missing out on her life, she needed to recover. But were her childhood doctors right in their prognosis that full recovery was not even a possibility?
The Skinny challenges our beliefs about diet culture, body image, and eating disorders and takes us along with Sheri in her fight to fully recover from Anorexia. Segal Glick’s personal story, written with her signature wry humour takes us to some dark and deeply personal places while embracing the moments in life where all one can do is laugh — and open a conversation — about a very serious issue, timelier than ever.
Pre-Order “The Skinny”
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Some Alarming and Timely Stats:
*Newly diagnosed anorexia cases in Canada rose by about 60% during the first wave of the COVID pandemic, according to a study published in JAMA psychiatry. The cases reported were more severe with greater mean weight loss and more profound bradycardia. Many cases of anorexia are never diagnosed.
*One in seven men and one in five women will experience an eating disorder by age 40 and in 95% of those cases the disorder begins by age 25.
*Globally, 13% of women over 50 experience disordered eating behaviors (International Journal of Eating Disorders, 2012)
*In the US around 9% of people will have an ED in their lifetime. During the pandemic eating disorders became even more prevalent, moving up to the fifth most prominent mental health condition by August 2020.
*Almost half of all Americans know someone with an eating disorder (South Carolina Department of Mental Health)
*Eating disorders are among the deadliest mental illnesses, second only to opioid overdose.
*According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), at least 30 million people of all ages and genders in the United States have an eating disorder, with one person dying from an eating disorder every 52 minutes.
*Dr. Sydney Hatman-Munick, assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School told CNN that, “We are likely to feel the impact of this increase in volumes (of eating disorders) for quite some time.”
Sheri Segal Glick is available to discuss:
As someone in the unique position of being in recovery, Sheri can speak to a wide audience about anorexia and its long-term impacts as well as the following talking points:
* Why did she decide to tackle her personal journey with humour
* Growing up in a family that rewarded thinness and what she learned
- What does it mean to be in quasi-recovery? How did she find out about that term?
- The signs parents can look out for
- How the medical community can better help patients in need.
- When did she realize she was so unwell
- How her eating disorder took over all aspects of her life
- How she made steps to full recovery
- What’s it like being middle-age and in recovery.
- How she coped in quasi-recovery while being a wife and mother.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sheri Segal Glick holds a degree in journalism, a JD and a half-eaten muffin that one of her kids handed her and made her promise not to throw out. Lawyerly stuff she has done includes working at the Department of Justice and the House of Commons. Writerly stuff she has done includes writing for newspapers, magazines, and drafting a great deal of federal legislation (though maybe nothing you’ve read). This is Sheri’s first book.
