Hungry Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  one - A Very Bad Day

  two - Foodies with Issues How Sheila Met Ned and Planned to Eat Happily Ever After

  three - Feed Me, I’m Yours

  four - Growing Gourmets

  five - Fat Girls, Husky Boys

  six - Middle School and the Great Job

  seven - You Are What You Don’t Eat

  eight - Roots of Anorexia Lisa’s Early Days and a Bit of History

  nine - High School

  ten - Our Big Nights

  eleven - College

  twelve - Relapse Spring Warning Signs Prompt Action

  thirteen - Fetishes and Talismans Desperate Parents

  fourteen - Treatment Centers and Their Aftermath

  fifteen - The Trouble with Experts

  sixteen - Ten Things We Learned About Eating Disorders

  seventeen - You Get to Sit Down

  Acknowledgements

  sources

  “A courageous account of what it is like to exist with a life-threatening eating disorder from two quite different standpoints—Lisa, the daughter who stops eating, and her mother, Sheila, a restaurant critic. The irony of this situation is lost on neither, and both are unsentimental and deeply honest about their experience. I especially admire their separate advice for how best to support recovery. This book should comfort anyone confronted with this illness as well as provide much practical help for dealing with it.”

  —Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat

  “Sheila and Lisa Himmel put on paper—with rare vulnerability, wit, and courage—what millions of American mothers and daughters face privately, but fear speaking about in public. Their capacity to mine the depths of Lisa’s struggle with eating disorders and Sheila’s struggle with Lisa will undoubtedly bring an overwhelming sense of relief and recognition to so many mother-daughter pairs trying to make sense of so much pain. Perhaps most admirable, blame is never a weapon in this extremely personal memoir. Instead, these brave women acknowledge the complex sources of illness and point a way toward real, messy, tentative, hopeful recovery.”

  —Courtney Martin, author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters

  “An engrossing look at the power of food and eating. Mother and daughter have given us a deeply personal story about what happens when that power overwhelms.”

  —David A. Kessler, MD, author of The End of Overeating and former commissioner of the FDA

  “Hungry covers a deadly and serious topic in a poignant story that addresses the irony of our culture’s obsession with food. Sheila Himmel brings her talent as a journalist and food critic to show intimately how this disorder took over her family’s life for the eight years that her daughter, Lisa, suffered from a spectrum of disordered eating—from anorexia to bulimia to anorexia. As Sheila notes, ‘Eating disorders function like addictions, but no, you can’t just say no to food . . . America is a twenty-four-hour buffet.’ The Himmels bravely share their ups and downs, with honesty and sometimes even humor. Mother and daughter both learned a lot during the recovery process and report on helpful resources they found along the way. I love that the book ends with an optimistic tone and their two lists on Ten Things We Learned About Eating Disorders.

  “I highly recommend this firsthand and easy-to-read mother/ daughter account of a complex illness that will provide comfort, insight, and support for anyone struggling with or affected by an eating disorder.”

  —Janice Bremis, executive director of the Eating Disorders Resource Center

  “Through their honest and compelling story, the Himmels reveal the human impact of eating disorders from multiple perspectives: Sheila as a mother and professional reporter and Lisa as a daughter and eating disorder sufferer and survivor. This book is a gift to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of this often misunderstood disease.”

  —Ellie Krieger, registered dietitian and author of The Food You Crave

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2009 by Sheila Himmel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Himmel, Sheila.

  Hungry : a mother and daughter fight anorexia / Sheila and Lisa Himmel. p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-10869-7

  1. Himmel, Lisa—Mental health. 2. Anorexia nervosa—Patients—United States—Biography. 3. Mothers and daughters. I. Himmel, Lisa. II. Title.

  RC552.A5H56 2009

  362.196’852620092—dc22 2009015587

  [B]

  This book describes the real experiences of real people. The authors have changed the names and disguised the identities of some, but none of these changes has affected the truthfulness and accuracy of their story. Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors’ alone.

  Most Berkley books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  To our grandmothers:

  Elaine Highiet

  Tilda Himmel

  Hertha Highiet (Nana George)

  Edna Phillips (Nana Bill)

  Sophie Himmel (Grandma Pancake)

  Annie Esenoff (Grandma Soup)

  The main thing in life was staying power. That was it: stand around long enough you’d get to sit down.

  —ANNIE PROULX, “The Bunchgrass Edge of the World”

  introduction

/>   LISA’S BLOOD GLUCOSE DIARY: BINGED. One-half chocolate banana. One-third vegan apple nut pastry. Pita chips (about 10-12).

  SHEILA’S WORKDAY: Taste-testing french fries at seven restaurants.

  On a postcard-perfect June afternoon, green hills going gold, I am driving around Silicon Valley to sample french fries. It is my job. In another universe, my daughter, Lisa, records each bite she takes in her Blood Glucose Diary, a booklet from her nutritionist. She is frantic about veering from anorexia to binge eating. We don’t understand each other at all.

  As the restaurant critic of the San Jose Mercury News, I had noticed french fries popping up on high-end menus, many more than the three instances needed to call it a trend. Was it merely another cheap thrill that posh restaurants could overcharge for, or were these frites really that much better than at McDonald’s? After all, no less an authority than James Beard, the dear leader of foodies everywhere, had approved of McDonald’s fries.

  Food reporting’s serious aspects concern safety, fraud, and consumer protection, but this story was just fun. It was also an escape. While I was out judging America’s favorite vegetable for flavor, texture, and price, my daughter was home, starving herself. Lisa spent much of her nineteenth year in her room, like a child being punished. Her struggles with anorexia and bulimia had become apparent two years earlier, in 2001, starting with an interest in diet, nutrition, and exercise that was healthful before going very wrong.

  Lisa grew up with a lusty appreciation of food. My husband, Ned, is an excellent cook. When we get together with friends, it’s in a kitchen or a restaurant. Our vacations are food pilgrimages. Food to us is home, health, family, fantasy, entertainment, education, and employment. Heart disease in the family, yes. Anorexia, never. And bulimia? What was that?

  We had experienced none of the common triggers often associated with eating disorders: divorce, death, job loss, sexual abuse. As for the anorexic family stereotype—domineering mother, distant father, perfectionist daughter—um, no. We come closer to the opposite—quietly supportive mother, loving father who cries easily, creatively disorganized daughter. We forced the kids to visit distant relatives and to write thank-you notes, but when they tired of piano lessons and soccer we didn’t argue about jeopardizing Ivy League prospects.

  After a very bad senior year in high school, Lisa got well enough to go to college in the fall of 2003. There she soon relapsed, but came out of it and had three pretty good years before crashing in an even worse way, just shy of graduation. As we write this book, Lisa is twenty-four, coming back to life, and again we all have hope. But the past seven years brought police cars and emergency rooms into our life, and phrases like “seventy-two-hour hold” and “danger to yourself or others” into our everyday conversation.

  As a newspaper writer and editor, I used to love irony. It made for the best stories, especially when they involved an apple falling far from the tree, or at least a little oddly. For example, “Liberal, Matriarchal Family Spawns Pro-Life Leader” and “Anti-Gay Vice President’s Lesbian Daughter Says . . .” What fun when it’s someone else! How to explain the intergenerational drama? Too often, the shortcut answer was to blame the mother. “She’s so controlling.” “She’s too lax.” “She’s distant.” “She works too much.” “She’s always home, interfering in everyone’s life.” When we need someone to pin to the wall, Domineering Mom is so convenient. I have to admit I did it, too, although I was just as quick to blame the Distant Dad in those deliciously ironic situations. As in “Publishing Heiress Patty Hearst Robs Bank.” Extrapolating, I wasn’t the only one picturing a love-deprived child of privilege, rattling around the mansion, hungry for the family feeling she was to find, briefly, as a soldier in the Symbionese Liberation Army.

  I didn’t love irony when it happened to me: Food writer, in the public eye, has an anorexic daughter. Our life was like a movie in which the audience understands what’s going on but the main characters are clueless. And I certainly didn’t appreciate the armchair psychologists, real and imagined, pointing the finger at me as the cause of my daughter’s ED (the catchall term for eating disorders). Our family went into triage mode, trying to help Lisa.

  The upside of irony, when it happens to you, is that you have to learn something. Perhaps there’s a loosening of attitude. I’m doing a lot less tut-tutting these days, and more tapping into a well of compassion, even for myself and my missteps in our family drama.

  Hungry traces our fall from grace as a healthy middle-class family and follows our tightrope walk back to a tenuous perch. In many chapters, Lisa and I write alternating sections, so that families can see eating disorders from both the child’s and the parent’s point of view. In some chapters, we stop and look at the larger picture of craziness around food.

  At first, Ned and I kept Lisa’s illness to ourselves and very few friends. All we knew about eating disorders was that if they didn’t strike in early adolescence you didn’t have to worry, and that turned out to be wrong. Our daughter was older, preparing to leave home for college, when her symptoms first became severe. When she started acting strangely around food Ned and I thought, “This must be stress, it couldn’t be anorexia. That would’ve shown up already.” Many denials and common misconceptions later, my editors at the San Jose Mercury News asked me to consider writing a story about our experience with ED.

  A few months went by, and Lisa seemed to be getting better. We agreed to share what we’d learned. The story would bring a shameful subject out into the open and, who knew, maybe putting Lisa’s improvement in print would make it stick. It happened to be Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, the Sunday in 2003 that the Mercury News published our dueling first-person account as the front-page centerpiece, with photographs of Lisa as a smiling six-year-old holding a soccer ball, a pudgy fourteen-year-old, a stick figure at nineteen.

  Reader response was overwhelming and heartbreaking. Desperate families appreciated knowing they weren’t alone. Like them, we had discovered that eating disorders are moving targets. Just when we thought we’d learned the rules and found the right strategy, the whole game would pack up and move to a new field. We’d been studying anorexia and the test was on binge eating. We had to learn to say, “Okay, that didn’t help. Now we have to try something else.”

  “Something else” was at times a new medication, a therapist specializing in eating disorders, a nutritionist, another medication, a different therapist—all of which helped for a while and then didn’t—and an eating disorders treatment center, which was a disaster.

  “Looks like you’ve thrown everything at this,” said one hospital doctor. I think he was trying to sympathize with our desperation, but all Ned and I heard was, “Look what you’ve done to this child.” And when we went the route he recommended, it was a different kind of disaster. The lessons of the past several years never presented themselves in an obvious way.

  When Lisa was diagnosed with anorexia, I picked up book after book, but none of them gave me what I needed: a sympathetic, articulate expert or parent who not only had been through this hell but also was insightful about food in our culture. This book is our effort to be that resource. Yes, eating disorders function like addictions, but no, you can’t just say no to food. At work, at home, on the street, America is a twenty-four-hour buffet. We’re never more than steps away from an endless stream of gastronomic options screaming: “Eat me!” Even gas stations have mini-marts serving groceries and hot food. (Pay no attention to the noxious fumes around the pumps.) No wonder we all flail around, from the eating disordered to the healthiest among us. Food overload makes me almost long for the rigid olden days of my youth, when families sat down for three meals a day, or at least dinner on weeknights, at specified times and places. In my parents’ house, it looked like this:3:30 p.m. After-school snack

  4 p.m. Kitchen closed

  6:30 p.m. Dinner

  7 p.m. Do dishes; kitchen closed

  When certain guests came over, we brought food into the living
room, but never our bedrooms. Grocery stores sold the raw materials to make a meal at home, not hot meals to go. Restaurants were for special occasions. There wasn’t a lot of room for individual expression, but the day had structure and families had control.

  Now, over forty percent of American adults eat out on a typical day and nearly fifty percent of the family food budget goes to food eaten out or pre-prepared, as cooking is considered a time-consuming craft. Economic necessity may give a boost to home cooking, but it will be a whole new world if we get reacquainted with the dinner table and regularly sit down to meals together, without iPhones, laptops, or TVs.

  Revered cookbook author and teacher Marion Cunningham lamented the loss of the family meal in 1998, when only thirty percent of the population cooked at home, even with skyrocketing interest in kitchen appliances. (Perhaps those were for the caterer.) “Home cooking in America has always been considered menial drudgery,” Cunningham told the Los Angeles Times. This despite all the food shows on TV and sales of celebrity cookbooks. In defense of the family meal, Cunningham wrote cookbooks for children and for adults who didn’t know what to do with their saucepans or spatulas.

  We like to watch, like Chance the gardener, the Peter Sellers character in the 1979 movie Being There, the man who never went anywhere. Everything he knew, he learned from television. On the bright side, a person like Chance could learn to cook from Julia Child, who took to television and books to simplify French home cooking for Americans, knowing “our readers wouldn’t have mortars and pestles for pounding lobster shells.” (And if the readers didn’t, the TV audience certainly didn’t.) Now many of us have the mortars and pestles, but they’re heavy and inconveniently stuffed way back in a kitchen cabinet because who has time, and who can afford lobster?