<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" My sophomore year in high school, I was nominated for homecoming princess, and my mom bought me a red satin dress at a secondhand shop. I loved the sweetheart neckline, the spaghetti straps, and the very &amp;#039;90s rhinestones on the bodice. The dress fit but was a teeny bit snug around my belly. My mom could&amp;#039;ve taken it to the dry cleaners for alterations, but instead, she took me to the gym. I still remember one of the trainers looking at us like we were crazy when my mom said she just wanted me to lose three or four pounds before homecoming. My mother was naturally thin \u2014 in fact, she modeled bikinis when she was 21 \u2014 but I remember her going on salad-and-bread-only diets or drinking shakes to drop a few pounds before beach season when I was a kid. And we always had calorie-counting books in the silverware drawer. Once when I was 9, I decided to see how few calories I could eat in a day. I logged just 800, and when I excitedly told my mother about it, she said, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s good, Sunny!&amp;quot; I wasn&amp;#039;t overweight, but instead of my mom&amp;#039;s long, lean look, I had inherited more of the sturdy shape of the women on my dad&amp;#039;s side of the family. I also had a bigger-than-average appetite (as a toddler I happily put away three hot dogs with the works \u2014 see --&amp;amp;gt;). My mother was afraid I was going to get fat. One Christmas Eve when I was around 7, my mom didn&amp;#039;t feel well, so she sent me, my brother and sister, and my dad across the street to my grandparents&amp;#039; house for gift opening. This grandma is famous for her Christmas cookies \u2014 chocolate turtles, snickerdoodles, candy-cane twists. And I was famous for my appetite. Perhaps that&amp;#039;s why, on my way out the door, my mom said to me, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t eat too many cookies. Don&amp;#039;t blow it!&amp;quot; So what did I do? I ate 13 of them. I was keeping track because I wanted to go home and tell my mom how &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d been, but as the count increased, so did my shame, and there was no way I was going to tell her how much I&amp;#039;d packed in my little belly. My mother ran a pretty tight ship at our house, nutrition-wise. We were vegetarian for most of my childhood, and things like ice cream and cookies were rarities in our cupboard. The message I got was that certain foods were very bad. I now know \u2014 and research confirms \u2014 that thinking of foods in black-and-white terms like &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; adds more than just guilt to eating them: It adds excitement, making the &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; foods you&amp;#039;re trying to avoid even more attractive. Eating something &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; is also a convenient form of disobedience for a child. &amp;quot;Eating things you&amp;#039;re not &amp;#039;supposed to&amp;#039; can be a way to set yourself apart, to rebel against the rules and culture in your house,&amp;quot; says Beverly Hills, CA, psychiatrist Charles Sophy. &amp;quot;You get fat in a family that really cares about thinness, and it&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re flipping them off.&amp;quot;  Rebelling is something I definitely set about doing in my early teens, and at about 15, a puzzling pattern of eating emerged. I was &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; when my mom or other people were around, but at night I&amp;#039;d sneak into the kitchen and eat slice after slice of bread with butter, or pour maple syrup into a jar of peanut butter and eat it with a spoon. In an effort to numb a cyclone of hurt and anger whipped up by my parents&amp;#039; impending divorce (and to rebel against my mom&amp;#039;s food rules), I ate, secretly and uncontrollably. It was the start of a 15-year battle with binge eating disorder.  Eventually I started putting on weight. Meanwhile, the stress of her divorce was stripping pounds off my mother&amp;#039;s already slim frame. When I had to buy clothes a size bigger than my own mom&amp;#039;s, I hated myself for it; and, I admit, I hated her a little bit too. We started fighting, virulently. Once, after I yelled some insult at her, she slapped me across the face; the look in her eyes when I tried to hit her back was one of shock and horror.  One Sunday afternoon, sobbing, I threw a pair of too-tight jeans across my bedroom and screamed that I refused to wear anything larger. My mom (gingerly) stepped in and said she&amp;#039;d help \u2014 and asked a pharmacist friend to get me some diet pills. So there I was at 15 years old, 5-foot-6 and no more than 135 pounds, taking a prescription diet drug. The pills worked during the day but didn&amp;#039;t keep me from bingeing at night. I began to loathe myself for what I saw as my lack of willpower, and I got weirder and weirder about the foods I was trying to avoid.  Now, before you go condemning my mother, let me tell you a little bit about the way she grew up. She came from a long line of pretty women, and starting at age 5, her paternal grandmother would dress her up in hats, heels, furs, red lipstick, and a rhinestone cigarette holder (complete with lit ciggie) and take pictures. Her grandmother once even measured her features, explaining the dimensions of the &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; face. One of my aunts, Sunny Sherman, competed in beauty pageants \u2014 but because of her voluptuous shape, my grandmother Ruth (a former aquacade swimmer who used to date movie stars) would tell Sunny to suck in her tummy and called her a &amp;quot;Sherman tank.&amp;quot; Fat was unacceptable in my mother&amp;#039;s family, and the pressure didn&amp;#039;t end with childhood. I remember one holiday when I was a kid, my grandfather got a digital bathroom scale as a gift, and he started needling all the adults to get on it. In front of everyone. Then he said things like, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s my beautiful daughter!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Whoa, you&amp;#039;re packing on pounds.&amp;quot;  Knowing her backstory, I&amp;#039;m not angry with my mom for how she acted with me. In fact, I&amp;#039;m immensely grateful to her for starting me on my way to recovery. When I ate 80 candy bars in two months while selling them for a fund-raiser my junior year of high school, I knew something was terribly wrong with my relationship with food \u2014 and after I asked my mom for the money to pay for the candy, she did too. Thank God she sent me to a therapist. It took 15 years, but sure enough, through self-help, talk therapy, and support groups, I am now fully recovered from binge eating disorder, and my mother and I are very close. To me, now, foods aren&amp;#039;t good or evil \u2014 they&amp;#039;re just food. I&amp;#039;m able to eat when I&amp;#039;m hungry and stop when I&amp;#039;m full. I have a healthy appreciation for my body. And now this body is carrying and nourishing another life! My first baby is due August 8. I know that my mother&amp;#039;s focus on appearance and her fears about fat were part of the reason I ended up with an eating disorder \u2014 and I want to do things differently for my child. You don&amp;#039;t have to play the blame game to recognize the experiences that matter, says Ovidio Bermudez, M.D., medical director of child and adolescent services at the Eating Recovery Center in Denver, &amp;quot;but your children are going to have to deal with this too, so you want to conduct yourself in a way that won&amp;#039;t make it worse.&amp;quot; So here&amp;#039;s what I promise my future son or daughter: I will never critique your shape; I won&amp;#039;t demonize any foods; and, if you ever seem to need it, I&amp;#039;ll get you professional help \u2014 fast.  I can&amp;#039;t control the genes I&amp;#039;m passing down to my baby, or what kind of personality he or she will have. But what I and every other parent can control is the messages we send to our kids about weight and food. As I recovered from binge eating disorder, I was able to toss many of the passed-down beliefs that did more harm than good, and I&amp;#039;m hoping that what I&amp;#039;ve learned will help me raise a happier, saner next generation. Sunny Sea Gold is a deputy editor at REDBOOK and the founder of the support site HealthyGirl.org. Food: The Good Girl&amp;#039;s Drug is her first book.  The author&amp;#039;s mother, Melinda Schnarre, knows that her own hang-ups contributed to her daughter&amp;#039;s struggle with an eating disorder. But she also knows how to break the cycle. When my mother, Ruth, would go out on a date, she&amp;#039;d come to the door of my bedroom decked out in some gorgeous dress to say goodnight, and I would say, &amp;quot;Twirl for me, Mommy!&amp;quot; Man, she was beautiful and larger than life. I was taught that the only way to be acceptable was to be thin and beautiful \u2014 anything else and the world would be void of love. This way of thinking became part of me, as involuntary as breathing. My daughter Sunny was truly a blessing in my life. Her happiness meant everything to me. And part of &amp;quot;happiness&amp;quot; for me, unfortunately, meant being thin. She had a very big appetite \u2014 my other children weren&amp;#039;t like that, so naturally I taught her about nutrition and diets. I was afraid that she would suffer rejection and hurt if she were to get fat. I was clueless about eating disorders, and it wasn&amp;#039;t until Sunny was about 15 that there was any discussion between us about such things. Before then, I just knew that she was troubled and unhappy. I saw her life spinning out of control and felt utterly helpless; it was like watching her bleed to death and not being able to help. That&amp;#039;s when I sent her to a counselor.  Sunny and I have worked many years on our relationship, and we now have a very close, healthy connection. And I have learned from her journey about my own unhealthy body image. At age 60, I still have issues: When I thought we might need to have photos taken for this article, my first instinct was to go on a diet. But things are much better than they were. I know what to say to my son&amp;#039;s daughters, who are 7 and 10. When one told me recently that she thought she was getting &amp;quot;fat,&amp;quot; I reassured her that she was no such thing. Then we spoke seriously about what overweight truly means, how it affects your health, and how too much emphasis is put on looks. I explained to her about eating disorders, too. I now know how to be a positive influence in my grandchildren&amp;#039;s lives, and I have Sunny, in part, to thank for that. How to Help Your Kids Stay Normal About Food and Weight Parents do not cause eating or body image disorders; that&amp;#039;s one message eating disorders expert Ovidio Bermudez, M.D., wants to make clear. &amp;quot;Parents don&amp;#039;t have to be perfect,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But by looking at your own attitudes, you can reduce the potential that your behavior will send the wrong message to your kids.&amp;quot; His advice: 1. NIX TEASING Nicknames like &amp;quot;Butterball&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Our Big Girl&amp;quot; may be meant endearingly, &amp;quot;but even with the best of intentions, teasing isn&amp;#039;t always a benign experience,&amp;quot; Bermudez says. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t know how it may affect your child.&amp;quot; 2. STAY POSITIVE &amp;quot;Motivation by fear, like saying, &amp;#039;Honey, if you don&amp;#039;t lose some weight, no boys are going to like you,&amp;#039; doesn&amp;#039;t work,&amp;quot; Bermudez says. Your motivation for kids to eat healthy and be active has to be positive. &amp;quot;If the whole family is enjoying healthy foods and being active, that&amp;#039;s an example to follow,&amp;quot; he says.  3. DON&amp;#039;T ENCOURAGE DIETING, even if your child is overweight. Just like adults, when kids &amp;quot;diet,&amp;quot; they initially lose weight \u2014 but then gain it back, plus some, Bermudez says. Even worse, &amp;quot;if you study the development of eating disorders, many of them begin with diets.&amp;quot; So what do you do if your kid&amp;#039;s weight is truly unhealthy? Improve everyone&amp;#039;s diet at home. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t feed one child cottage cheese when the rest of the family is eating pizza,&amp;quot; Bermudez says. &amp;quot;Changes in lifestyle will lead the whole family to be healthier and help an overweight child stabilize their weight.&amp;quot; For more advice, go to healthygirl.org/resources/help-for-parents. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/friends-family/a11681/eating-disorder-story/>