17 Best Books About Eating Disorders

Eating disorders affect 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S., according to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA). They can cause dangerous health concerns and can be deadly in serious cases. These books on eating disorders are for those who are struggling with either anorexia, bulimia, or another eating disorder, as well as their loved ones.

General Books About Eating Disorders

Whether you’re a loved one looking for ways to support someone with an eating disorder or you’re dealing with one yourself, these handbooks, guides, and informative reads provide all you need to know.

1. Eating Disorder Sourcebook

Therapist Carolyn Costin provides the groundwork for understanding eating disorders, including identifying triggering behaviors, understanding underlying causes, and considering the right treatment for you.

This book includes Costin’s 30 years of research as well as the newest information to provide thorough and meticulous information for loved ones and those with an eating disorder.

2. Surviving an Eating Disorder: Strategies for Family & Friends

This book addresses the “silent sufferers:” those who are often directly affected by a loved one’s eating disorder and the havoc it can cause in relationships, families, and life. It uses a clinical perspective to help loved ones understand what someone with an eating disorder is going through while recognizing the emotional effects for everyone involved.

Change is hard for everyone, and this book combats the common pitfalls and challenges a family may face when addressing a loved one’s eating disorder.

3. Talking to Eating Disorders: Simple Ways to Support Someone With Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating, Or Body Image Issues

The best intentions, especially when talking to someone with an eating disorder, can still leave unintentional damage on someone’s body image and even lead to body dysmorphia. Understanding how language can affect someone in recovery or add to ongoing problems is one step towards supporting them in the way they need.

This book provides real-world exercises for tough questions like, “Am I too fat?” and even includes a section for talking to children about body image.

4. When Your Teen Has an Eating Disorder: Practical Strategies to Help Your Teen Recover from Anorexia, Bulimia, & Binge Eating

Teenagers are especially susceptible to harmful messages about body image, weight, and their looks, especially through social media. Puberty and societal expectations can deal a hefty blow against a teenager’s confidence, and they may turn to unhealthy habits as a result.

If that’s your teen, this book provides real techniques rooted in family-based treatment (FBT) that empowers families to support their teen with nutritional rehabilitation, normalize eating behaviors, and teach intuitive eating habits, all with compassion and confidence.

5. The Longest Match: Rallying to Defeat an Eating Disorder In Midlife

As a mentor with the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, author Besty Brenner is a source of knowledge, experience, and support. In The Longest Match, she breaks the stereotypical idea that eating disorders only affect teenage or college aged girls. In reality, over 15% of women at midlife and beyond deal with eating disorders. This actually surpasses the number affected by breast cancer. It’s a story that needs to be told and explored, and Brenner does just that.

6. Beauty Sick: How to the Cultural Obsession With Appearance Hurts Girls and Women

Author and award-winning psychology professor Renee Engeln, Ph.D, uses this book to reveal the many ways that our culture’s obsession with women’s bodies and appearances in general is an epidemic. Beauty Sick acknowledges that girls and women must face a bewildering set of standards, expectations, and contradictions in society today. There are far-reaching consequences, including depression, eating disorders, disrupted cognitive processing, physical concerns, and lost time and money.

Combining scientific research and anecdotes from real women, EngeIn paints a far-reaching, accurate depiction of the kind of cultural forces that lead to negative body-image, fat shaming, denigrating commentary, and the destructive desire to be smaller or less. She also provides solutions and inspiration to help girls and women transform their lives for the better.

7. Loving Someone with an Eating Disorder: Understanding, Supporting, and Connecting with Your Partner

Author and eating disorder expert Dana Harron created this “compassionate guide” as a way to help the partners of people with eating disorders. If that is you, consider digging into Loving Someone With an Eating Disorder to learn ways to communicate with understanding and empathy. Just as important as being able to support your partner, you will also discover ways to protect yourself, practice self-care, and set boundaries.

Specific topics covered include parenting, sex and intimacy, running a household, diagnosis, and treatment. One reader, a professional counselor, said this about the book: “I like being reminded that it’s not about the food; it’s about emotions and our relationship with our bodies.”

Books on Self-Love for Those With Disordered Eating

Eating disorders are often rooted in the feeling of not being good enough: Either not being skinny enough, or pretty enough, or having been shamed for your size and weight. Cultivating body acceptance as a form of self-love can be part of eating disorder recovery.

8. The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance, & Self-Care

Diet culture has a massive role in eating disorders, so it’s worth mentioning—diets typically don’t work. Not only do they not work, but they are hazardous to your health and can cause your body to yo-yo between weight gain and weight loss. This can be devastating to someone struggling with an eating disorder and cause them to relapse. This handbook, with lessons in self-care, acceptance, and mindful eating, can be one part of a treatment plan to address the root of eating disorders.

9. Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, & Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight

It is impossible to talk about eating disorders without talking about the very real societal effects they stem from. The fear of obesity is real, from a health perspective as well as a beauty standard, and the resulting anxiety leans heavily into eating disorders.

Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor argue that the common myth “fat is bad” could be harmful to overall health and that it’s time to take a serious look at health, obesity, fat shaming, and the damage dieting culture has done to society.

10. Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out–& Never Say Diet Again

Treating your body with compassion is not an easy skill for some; if you struggle with an eating disorder, it likely feels impossible. Learn how to love your body by recognizing the impact your mind and emotions have on your well-being, as well as creating healthy, mindful habits that let you grow love and acceptance for the body you have.

Memoirs About Those With Eating Disorders

Sometimes, you need to know you’re not alone. These memoirs provide stories of hope, healing, and the comforting knowledge of knowing exactly what it’s like to live with an eating disorder.

11. Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia

There is a common, and inaccurate, stereotype that eating disorders mostly happen in privileged white women. Stephanie Covington Armstrong’s powerful memoir proves that is not the case.

In a deeply personal and moving book, Armstrong outlines how poverty and childhood trauma impacted her confidence to the point where she had none. As she sought help for her eating disorder, the heavily-white spaces created didn’t seem to have room for her. Armstrong wrote this for every Black woman who felt like they couldn’t find the mental health care they needed.

12. Positively Caroline: How I beat bulimia for good… & found real happiness

This memoir stands out for not just the inspiring story of a woman who recovered from bulimia once but continues to thrive and survive in the face of relapse. Caroline Adams Miller outlines how she continues to establish healthy, mindful habits in regards to her eating during tough stages in her life, such as in pregnancy or when trying to model healthy behavior for her kids.

13. Brave Girl Eating: A Family’s Struggle with Anorexia

This family memoir illustrates the devastating effects of anorexia on a family, particularly in the author’s daughter. It catalogs all the terrifying details of seeing a loved one driven to near-starvation as well as the hopeful resolution of health renewed.

14. How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia

Kelsey Osgood wasn’t dealing with anorexia herself, but she actively sought it out, scouring memoirs and stories of those who did, documenting their extreme eating habits and rigorous exercise regimes. Here, she unpacks the trauma and harrowing experience of being a young person with an eating disorder with painfully honest storytelling.

15. Hope For Recovery: Stories of Healing From Eating Disorders

Do you know the statistics surrounding eating disorders in the United States? In this country, 30 million people suffer from eating disorders; every 62 minutes, someone dies as a direct result of an eating disorder. There is actually a higher mortality rate from eating disorders vs. any other mental illness. In this collection of essays by women and men who have recovered from eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorders, the reader will have a front row seat to vulnerability, healing, and life-saving information.

Co-editors Catherine Brown and Christina Tinker, both of whom have had their own journey with eating disorders, have organized and contributed to this diverse collection that offers its readers hope and community.

16. This Mean Disease: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Mother’s Anorexia Nervosa

Mean Disease is one of the first explorations of an eating disorder from the perspective of a child whose mother died of anorexia. Author Daniel Becker details the painful truths of growing up alongside his mother’s obsession with food restriction and her inability to nourish herself. This intimate portrayal is, in part, a cautionary tale, and a description of how eating disorders can affect an entire family unit.

17. Good Enough

This pick is actually a novel and not a memoir or guide; however, sometimes the truth is best expressed in fiction. In this book from novelist Jen Petro-Roy, we follow the story of a twelve-year-old girl with an eating disorder. As a moving coming-of-age tale written by an actual eating disorder survivor and activist, Good Enough accurately depicts influences of eating disorders, treatment, recovery, and relapse. One review says, “Every library needs Good Enough on its shelves. Lyrical, funny, honest, and brave, this is a book that will save lives.”

When to See a Therapist for an Eating Disorder

This is important: if left untreated, an eating disorder can cause lasting physical and emotional damage, and in extreme cases, death. If you’re suffering from an eating disorder, consider seeing a therapist. A qualified, trained professional can help you heal your relationship with your body and find healthy ways to move forward. If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a directory for therapists in your area.