Beating Ana: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder and Take Your Life Back

By Shannon Cutts

Imagine a World in which it is easy to find someone to turn to who understands your struggles, identifies with your wounds, and knows how lonely and scary it feels to live inside your skin. In this... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 075731385X
• ISBN13: 9780757313851
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Hci
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Important Tools for ED Recovery

In Beating Ana, Shannon Cutts shares experiences from her clients and gives readers glimpses into the lives of individuals who suffer with eating disorders. By sharing actual email exchanges with her clients she demonstrates the importance of having support for recovery. Shannon's Mentor Connect program provides the much needed support system by having individuals in recovery mentor others. By mentoring others, individuals further their own path to recovery. This book includes numerous workshops and processes individuals can use to gain more understanding about their eating disorder and how to overcome it. These processes are based on a 12-step approach. Beating Anna connects the reader with Shannon's loving, caring approach and offers hope an inspiration for a life beyond. Individuals need support both during and after treatment and Mentor Connect is a great way to get it! Lori Hanson, Award-Winning Author of It Started With Pop-Tarts... An Alternative Approach to Winning the Battle of Bulimia and It Started With Pop-Tarts 2.0, The Secrets to Surviving & THRIVING in Your Teens (2009)

A top pick for those fighting this disease or know someone who is

Food is not something to be feared. "Beating Ana: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder & Take Your Life Back" is a guide to battling what many women and some men face every day due to societal pressures - a crippling fear of food and getting fat due to the eating disorder known as Anorexia Nervosa. Shannon Cutts draws upon her own experience and hopes to inspire other readers to rise up and above and to not fear food. "Beating Ana" is a top pick for those fighting this disease or know someone who is.

You are not alone!

This looks like a simple book but the elements contained within the pages of "Beating Ana" are a support system to aid anyone with an eating disorder to break through to into health. The author says something so profound right on the first page of part one: "Quite possibly, the only experience tougher on a human body, mind, heart, and spirit than falling ill is getting better. It gets unnecessarily tougher, however, when we assume that we will have to heal the same way we got sick--alone. We don't." In this book you will find a companion to healing. Chapters begin with a letter to the author, Shannon Cutts, and her response. You know she understands because she's been there and healed. Next is a short piece on one of the elements for healing and the "recovery workshop" which is something the reader can really do to grow and process new feelings and thoughts. The workshop can be anything from watching a movie to making a list. Each chapter closes with a "Life Celebration Affirmation." The author writes with the voice of a very understanding mentor, someone who gets what's going on but who also sees through all the tricks that an eating disorder can bring up so you can get through even the hardest of times. There is a wonderful focus on empowering the reader (or participant!) to experience the beauty within. The book wraps up with guidelines for forming and being involved in a mentoring relationship. "Beating Ana" would be a great companion in a healing process. It is not about the dark side, it's about getting through the haunting darkness of eating disorders into freedom. I work with young women and this book will remain on my shelf as a wonderful resource.

How To Outsmart Your Eating Disorder - Recovery Is Possible!

In Beating Ana, Shannon takes the readers on a journey of self-discovery and self-healing that will leave them truly understanding that recovery is possible. I especially liked how each chapter included a "Life Celebration Exercise" and "Recovery Workshop." These action items engage the reader and compel them to take control of their situation and recover. I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling with an eating disorder and I plan to use some of the material in my own work. I just wish this book was around when I was overcoming my eating disorder - it would have made the process much easier. - Andrea Roe Author, Speaker, Eating Disorder Survivor

This Book is Unique!

Unlike any other book about eating disorders, Beating Ana uniquely illustrates the importance of people connecting with one another for support and encouragement along recovery road. I would never have recovered from my own eating disorder without the help of recovered women who held my hand along the way. Shannon's depth of passion and honesty will provide much-needed hope to all those touched by this insidious illness. -Jenni Schaefer, Author of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life (McGraw-Hill, September 2009) and Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too