What's Eating Us

Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety

By: Cole Kazdin

Narrated by: Cole Kazdin

This program is read by the author.

Blending personal narrative and investigative reporting, Emmy Award-winning journalist Cole Kazdin reveals that disordered eating is an epidemic crisis killing millions of women.

Women of all ages struggle with disordered eating, preoccupation with food, and body anxiety. Journalist Cole Kazdin was one such woman, and she set out to see if the impossibility of her own full recovery from an eating disorder was all in her head. Interviewing women across the country as well as the world’s most renowned researchers, she discovered that most people with eating disorders never receive treatment—the fact that she did made her one of the lucky ones.

Kazdin takes us to the doorstep of the diet industry and research community, exposing the flawed systems that claim to be helping us, and revealing disordered eating for the crisis that it is: a mental illness with the second highest mortality rate (after opioid-related deaths) that no one wants to talk about. Along the way, she identifies new treatments not yet available to the general public, grass roots movements to correct racial disparities in care, and strategies for navigating true health while still living in a dysfunctional world.

What would it feel like to be free? To feel gorgeous in your body, not ruminate about food, feel ease at meals, exercise with no regard for calories-burned? To never making a disparaging comment about your body again, even silently to yourself. Who can help us with this? We can.

What's Eating Us is an urgent battle cry coupled with stories and strategies about what works and how to finally heal—for real.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Essentials.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Cole Kazdin (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"As much a personal story as an examination of body anxiety...Kazdin’s painful honesty is leavened with humor and irony." ––Kirkus (starred review)

"A must read. Kazdin recounts her own struggle, and surrounds it with robust research and stories on the incredible prevalence and toll of body dissatisfaction, preoccupation with food, and eating disorders. She beautifully and tragically encapsulates how almost all of us are negatively affected by the toxic diet culture that we live in, how that makes full recovery so elusive to most, and how we can start to fight back." ––Kristina Saffran, co-founder and CEO of Equip Health and co-founder of Project HEAL

"What's Eating Us takes seriously the lethality of eating disorders, a fact that is distressingly absent from most of the discourse on the subject. With disarming honesty and sparkling wit, Kazdin shares her own history with disordered eating, setting it alongside the experience of women she interviewed across the country. What the stories collectively demonstrate is that while the billion dollar diet industry will never have our backs, there is hope in new treatments and in stories like Kazdin's. What's Eating Us is a vital contribution to the literature on disordered eating, and a must-read for anyone hungry for real data and hard-boiled hope on the subject of eating, diets, and wellness." ––Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author of Group

Spot on!

As an eating disorder specialist, I appreciated Cole’s sharing of her experience and the very real problems in diet culture and the eating disorder treatment world. I hope this book will nudge readers to get help and create more safe and accessible treatment options.

Required reading for 21st century America

Well written, well read, and heart-breaking Ky relevant. As someone battling their own eating disorder, I found it both enlightening and soothing to hear someone else share their story.

helpful, funny, maddening, empowering

Very sobering book about eating disorders and the diet industry as it stands. Unexpectedly so much more as Kazdin speaks to her own struggles and those of others. Helpful, funny, empowering. A book for all

Every Generation Needs to Hear It Again

There's nothing much new here, and the emphasis is very heavily on the disordered eating side of things, and the authorial voice shifts abruptly in the epilogue. But all of this is worth hearing again for the truth of it.

Entertaining and informative

A great personal account of someone with an ED history, and also an informative and up to date resource on the current status of EDs and their treatment in the US. Highly recommend

Transformative Read

As someone who has struggled with eating disorders and disordered eating for almost my entire life, I found this to be such a powerful work. Kazdin's descriptions of her purging episodes and those intrusive thoughts we constantly try to drown out were raw.For those of us who have struggled or continue to struggle, the accounts can be difficult to read. I took my time, sometimes, revisiting when I felt ready. The personal narratives added so much beyond being an indictment of the diet industry and lack of resources for treatment and research. Eating disorders are a lonely and terrifying place. Reading about Kazdin's challenges made me validated and less alone. With a 50/50 shot at being "cured" at best (less if you didn't receive early treatment), EDs are a chronic condition. You take one day at a time. 24/7 messaging from the diet industry and even one comment can lead to a tailspin of intrusive thoughts. Kazdin's criticism of the multi-billion dollar dieting and "wellness" industry is compelling. For those of us who struggle every day, tracking points or green and red foods, steps, etc. can be a significant trigger to obsessing over calories, our bodies, meal skipping/fasting. What;s Eating Us should be required reading for anyone who works with patients who might be struggling with an ED or disordered eating.