Like most people in recovery from eating disorders, she stresses that the syndrome is not really about food. It's bingeing on life, on not being able to get enough of what you need. Food is used to fill emotional longings. She was depressed, living at home, able to work only at a local library where she wouldn't be terrified by the presence of food or embarrassed by the 70 pounds she couldn't seem to lose. Her problems with food, she says, began with messages she received while growing up.
Jewish people tend to calm and numb themselves with food.
It puts us in a terrible bind. We have our natural body that doesn't fit into magazines and this tendency to use food as nurturing. We have these fleshy soft bodies in a state of deprivation. We're hungry, physically and emotionally. Add to that a cultural drive toward perfectionism, and, the counselor says, the Jewish psyche is a fertile field for eating disorders.