
An Apple a Day
A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.18
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Emma Woolf
-
By:
-
Emma Woolf
About this listen
I haven't tasted chocolate for over ten years and now I'm walking down the street unwrapping a Kit Kat. Remember when Kate Moss said, 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'? She's wrong: chocolate does.
At the age of 32, after ten years of hiding from the truth, Emma Woolf finally decided it was time to face the biggest challenge of her life. Addicted to hunger, exercise and control, she was juggling a full-blown eating disorder with a successful career, functioning on an apple a day. Having met the man of her dreams (and wanting a future and a baby together), she embarked on the hardest struggle of all: to beat anorexia. It was time to start eating again, to regain her fertility and her curves, to throw out the size-zero clothes and face her food fears. And, as if that wasn’t enough pressure, Emma took the decision to write about her progress in a weekly column for The Times.
Honest, hard hitting and yet romantic, An Apple a Day is a manifesto for the modern generation to stop starving and start living. This compelling, life-affirming true story is essential reading for anyone affected by eating disorders (whether as a sufferer or carer), anyone interested in health and social issues – and for medical and health professionals.
©2012 Emma Woolf (P)2012 Audible LtdListeners also enjoyed...
-
Size Zero
- My Life as a Disappearing Model
- By: Victoire Dauxerre
- Narrated by: Emily Lucienne
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
memoir of a brief career as a top model - and a brutally honest account of what goes on behind the scenes in a fascinating closed industry. Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre's story started like a teenager's dream: within months she was on the catwalks of New York's major fashion shows and part of the most select circle of in-demand supermodels in the world.
-
-
Self-indulgent twaddle
- By Adeliese Baumann on 05-19-17
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- By: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
Eaten from Within
- By Susie on 09-16-15
By: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Pick another book
- By A. I. Keller on 07-18-20
By: Susan Burton
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Has potential, but missed the mark.
- By Ian N. on 02-11-24
By: Hadley Freeman
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Dying to Be Thin
- The True Story of My Lifelong Battle Against Anorexia
- By: Nikki Grahame
- Narrated by: Yaz Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The figure looking back at me was little more than a skeleton with just a thin layer of tissue paper for skin, drawn over the stick-like bones. I stood staring for a good couple of minutes, considering what I'd become. And my verdict? Brilliant, I thought. It's been worth every moment of all that hard work". Say the name Nikki Grahame and most people will remember the bubbly, highly strung and hugely entertaining Big Brother 7 contestant.
-
-
Not What You Might Think
- By ro_runner on 11-07-15
By: Nikki Grahame
-
Size Zero
- My Life as a Disappearing Model
- By: Victoire Dauxerre
- Narrated by: Emily Lucienne
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
memoir of a brief career as a top model - and a brutally honest account of what goes on behind the scenes in a fascinating closed industry. Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre's story started like a teenager's dream: within months she was on the catwalks of New York's major fashion shows and part of the most select circle of in-demand supermodels in the world.
-
-
Self-indulgent twaddle
- By Adeliese Baumann on 05-19-17
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- By: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
Eaten from Within
- By Susie on 09-16-15
By: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Pick another book
- By A. I. Keller on 07-18-20
By: Susan Burton
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Has potential, but missed the mark.
- By Ian N. on 02-11-24
By: Hadley Freeman
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Dying to Be Thin
- The True Story of My Lifelong Battle Against Anorexia
- By: Nikki Grahame
- Narrated by: Yaz Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The figure looking back at me was little more than a skeleton with just a thin layer of tissue paper for skin, drawn over the stick-like bones. I stood staring for a good couple of minutes, considering what I'd become. And my verdict? Brilliant, I thought. It's been worth every moment of all that hard work". Say the name Nikki Grahame and most people will remember the bubbly, highly strung and hugely entertaining Big Brother 7 contestant.
-
-
Not What You Might Think
- By ro_runner on 11-07-15
By: Nikki Grahame
-
Unbearable Lightness
- A Story of Loss and Gain
- By: Portia de Rossi
- Narrated by: Portia de Rossi
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
-
-
For All Dieters, not just Anorexic Girls
- By Coghan on 02-20-13
By: Portia de Rossi
-
The Weight of Beautiful
- By: Jackie Goldschneider
- Narrated by: Jackie Goldschneider
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All Jackie Goldschneider ever wanted was to be thin. As a child, she’d stand in front of the mirror, sucking in her stomach and arching her back to feel her ribs, praying to see a model-like figure looking back. As an obese teen, lonely and tormented by her weight, her doctor encouraged her to start dieting, ultimately leading to a prolonged battle with anorexia that nearly took her life. After decades of hiding her eating disorder from friends, family, and the world, Jackie is ready to expose the realities of her devastating struggle.
-
-
Such a great book
- By Chelsea Sylva on 03-16-25
-
Letting Ana Go
- Anonymous Diaries
- By: Anonymous
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She was a good girl from a good family, with everything she could want or need. But below the surface, she felt like she could never be good enough. Like she could never live up to the expectations that surrounded her. Like she couldn't do anything to make a change. But there was one thing she could control completely: how much she ate. The less she ate, the better - stronger - she felt. But it's a dangerous game, and there is such a thing as going too far.... Her innermost thoughts and feelings are chronicled in the diary she left behind.
-
-
Love
- By Theodore Lopez on 06-15-21
By: Anonymous
-
The Girls at 17 Swann Street
- By: Yara Zgheib
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears - imperfection, failure, loneliness - she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere 88 pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
-
-
Wonderful
- By JoelleW on 02-25-19
By: Yara Zgheib
-
Before We Were Blue
- By: E.J. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Chloe Dolandis, Gail Shalan
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At Recovery and Relief, a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, the first thing Shoshana Winnick does is attach herself to vibrant but troubled Rowan Parish. Shoshana — a cheerleader on a hit reality TV show — was admitted for starving herself to ensure her growth spurt didn’t ruin her infamous tumbling skills. Rowan, on the other hand, has known anorexia her entire life, thanks to her mother’s “chew and spit” guidance.
-
-
Meh
- By Pink Amy on 01-03-25
By: E.J. Schwartz
-
Thin Girls
- A Novel
- By: Diana Clarke
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the bond implies; they feel each other’s emotions, taste what the other is feeling. Like most young women, they’ve struggled with their bodies and food since childhood, and high school finds them turning to food - or not - to battle the waves of insecurity and the yearning for popularity. But their connection can be as destructive as it is supportive, a yin to yang. When Rose stops eating, Lily starts - consuming everything Rose won’t or can’t.
-
-
nothing special
- By Drine on 10-11-20
By: Diana Clarke
-
Wintergirls
- By: Laurie Halse Anderson
- Narrated by: Phoebe Strole
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss - her life - and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her.
-
-
entertaining
- By Mora Barrientos on 11-03-19
-
Hunger
- A Memoir of (My) Body
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrated by: Roxane Gay
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined", Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.
-
-
Dark, thought provoking, sometimes frustrating
- By River Holmes-miller on 06-21-17
By: Roxane Gay
-
Paperweight
- By: Meg Haston
- Narrated by: Mandy Siegfried
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she's worked so hard to avoid.
-
-
The Fake Southern Accent? Yeeeeesh!
- By Daryl on 06-30-17
By: Meg Haston
-
thinandbeautiful.com
- By: Liane Shaw
- Narrated by: Miranda Millar
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Maddie has always felt a hole in her life, but she has finally found a way to fill it with her quest to mold her body into her ideal, thinnest shape. When she comes across the world of “thinspiration” websites, where young people encourage each other in their mission to lose weight, she quickly becomes addicted. Finally, she has found a place where she is understood and where she can belong.
-
-
actually written by an anorexic
- By Dorain Shmlorian on 02-28-24
By: Liane Shaw
-
Emilee
- The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia
- By: Linda Mazur, John Mazur, Emilee Mazur
- Narrated by: Linda Mazur, John Mazur, Abbey Fitzgerald, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of a beautiful, young woman — a talented athlete and musician, raised in a loving home, surrounded by friends — undermined by a ruthless inner voice that claimed her body and her spirit. Emilee: The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia reveals the cracks in our health care system, the institutions we are taught to trust, as well as our own prejudices and misinformation about eating disorders, mental illness, and addiction.
-
-
Editing aside, heart wrenching and important story
- By Brittany Hyatt on 11-21-24
By: Linda Mazur, and others
-
It Was Me All Along
- A Memoir
- By: Andie Mitchell
- Narrated by: Andie Mitchell
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All her life, Andie Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her confidant, and it provided a refuge from her fractured family. But when she stepped on the scale on her 20th birthday and it registered a shocking 268 pounds, she knew she had to change the way she thought about food and herself; that her life was at stake.
-
-
Wanted to love this...
- By AndreaJane on 01-16-15
By: Andie Mitchell
Editorial reviews
'In An Apple a Day Emma comes across as brave, real and determined. I'm sure that in sharing her story many others will be encouraged to speak out from the stigma of this horrible illness and realise that there is a life worth living beyond calorie counts and scales. It is a battle worth fighting.' (Grace Bowman, author of 'Thin' )
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Pick another book
- By A. I. Keller on 07-18-20
By: Susan Burton
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- By: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
Eaten from Within
- By Susie on 09-16-15
By: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Has potential, but missed the mark.
- By Ian N. on 02-11-24
By: Hadley Freeman
-
The Girls at 17 Swann Street
- By: Yara Zgheib
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears - imperfection, failure, loneliness - she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere 88 pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
-
-
Wonderful
- By JoelleW on 02-25-19
By: Yara Zgheib
-
Unbearable Lightness
- A Story of Loss and Gain
- By: Portia de Rossi
- Narrated by: Portia de Rossi
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
-
-
For All Dieters, not just Anorexic Girls
- By Coghan on 02-20-13
By: Portia de Rossi
-
Empty
- A Memoir
- By: Susan Burton
- Narrated by: Susan Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost 30 years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.
-
-
Pick another book
- By A. I. Keller on 07-18-20
By: Susan Burton
-
Elena Vanishing
- A Memoir
- By: Elena Dunkle, Clare B. Dunkle
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.
-
-
Eaten from Within
- By Susie on 09-16-15
By: Elena Dunkle, and others
-
Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
-
-
Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
-
Good Girls
- A Study and Story of Anorexia
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of 14 to 17, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted.
-
-
Has potential, but missed the mark.
- By Ian N. on 02-11-24
By: Hadley Freeman
-
The Girls at 17 Swann Street
- By: Yara Zgheib
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears - imperfection, failure, loneliness - she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere 88 pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
-
-
Wonderful
- By JoelleW on 02-25-19
By: Yara Zgheib
-
Unbearable Lightness
- A Story of Loss and Gain
- By: Portia de Rossi
- Narrated by: Portia de Rossi
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
-
-
For All Dieters, not just Anorexic Girls
- By Coghan on 02-20-13
By: Portia de Rossi
-
Size Zero
- My Life as a Disappearing Model
- By: Victoire Dauxerre
- Narrated by: Emily Lucienne
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
memoir of a brief career as a top model - and a brutally honest account of what goes on behind the scenes in a fascinating closed industry. Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre's story started like a teenager's dream: within months she was on the catwalks of New York's major fashion shows and part of the most select circle of in-demand supermodels in the world.
-
-
Self-indulgent twaddle
- By Adeliese Baumann on 05-19-17
-
The Skinny
- My Messy, Hopeful Fight for Full Recovery from Anorexia
- By: Sheri Segal Glick
- Narrated by: Sheri Segal Glick
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this powerful memoir, Sheri Segal Glick explores her rough, rocky, rutted road to being in recovery. As a young teenager, Sheri developed anorexia, and has battled the illness for decades. The Skinny explores her journey, from her tumultuous time as a teenager to the disease rearing its ugly head as an adult, with her signature wit, wry humour, and absolute honesty.
-
-
Loved the audible!! Great narration
- By ef on 05-18-24
-
More than a Number
- By: Tia Souders
- Narrated by: Sarah Brands
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
My sophomore year changed everything. I dropped 40 pounds after a stint in fat camp. Prior to losing weight, most of my time was spent comparing myself to my twin sister and trying to hide my cankles. But losing weight made all things seem possible. Now I'm popular, vying for the hottest guy in school and competing for a prom queen nomination. Finally, I'm getting noticed, and it's all because I dropped the pounds.
-
-
Skinny vs fat
- By Val on 05-28-20
By: Tia Souders
-
Brave Girl Eating
- A Family's Struggle with Anorexia
- By: Harriet Brown
- Narrated by: Harriet Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Millions of families are affected by eating disorders, which usually strike young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty. But current medical practice ties these families' hands when it comes to helping their children recover. Conventional medical wisdom dictates separating the patient from the family and insists that 'it's not about the food', even as a family watches a child waste away before their eyes.
-
-
Very good but...
- By Michael on 02-22-20
By: Harriet Brown
-
Bones
- Anorexia, Anxiety and My Path to Self-Love
- By: Robyn Shumer, Natasha Stoynoff
- Narrated by: Robyn Shumer
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bones is the tragicomic, roller coaster story of Robyn Shumer’s lifelong battle with—and triumph over—a crippling eating disorder. It’s an honest, first-person account that takes the listener inside the emotional, mental, physical, and social world of an anorexic from childhood to adulthood, through four decades of a changing society whose message to girls and women remained stubbornly the same: “thinner is the winner.”
-
-
The journey of an eating disorder.
- By YW on 01-22-25
By: Robyn Shumer, and others
-
Thin Girls
- A Novel
- By: Diana Clarke
- Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the bond implies; they feel each other’s emotions, taste what the other is feeling. Like most young women, they’ve struggled with their bodies and food since childhood, and high school finds them turning to food - or not - to battle the waves of insecurity and the yearning for popularity. But their connection can be as destructive as it is supportive, a yin to yang. When Rose stops eating, Lily starts - consuming everything Rose won’t or can’t.
-
-
nothing special
- By Drine on 10-11-20
By: Diana Clarke
-
The Weight of Beautiful
- By: Jackie Goldschneider
- Narrated by: Jackie Goldschneider
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All Jackie Goldschneider ever wanted was to be thin. As a child, she’d stand in front of the mirror, sucking in her stomach and arching her back to feel her ribs, praying to see a model-like figure looking back. As an obese teen, lonely and tormented by her weight, her doctor encouraged her to start dieting, ultimately leading to a prolonged battle with anorexia that nearly took her life. After decades of hiding her eating disorder from friends, family, and the world, Jackie is ready to expose the realities of her devastating struggle.
-
-
Such a great book
- By Chelsea Sylva on 03-16-25
-
The Art of Starving
- By: Sam J. Miller
- Narrated by: Tom Phelan
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Matt hasn't eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won't give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp - and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he's going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away. Matt's hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have...powers.
-
-
Transformative book!
- By Uno Person on 01-01-20
By: Sam J. Miller
-
Hungry for Life
- A Memoir Unlocking the Truth Inside an Anorexic Mind
- By: Rachel Richards
- Narrated by: Rachel Richards
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.
-
-
A Gripping Account of Anorexia and Recovery
- By Nephi Ferguson on 10-12-17
By: Rachel Richards
-
Before We Were Blue
- By: E.J. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Chloe Dolandis, Gail Shalan
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At Recovery and Relief, a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, the first thing Shoshana Winnick does is attach herself to vibrant but troubled Rowan Parish. Shoshana — a cheerleader on a hit reality TV show — was admitted for starving herself to ensure her growth spurt didn’t ruin her infamous tumbling skills. Rowan, on the other hand, has known anorexia her entire life, thanks to her mother’s “chew and spit” guidance.
-
-
Meh
- By Pink Amy on 01-03-25
By: E.J. Schwartz
-
Emilee
- The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia
- By: Linda Mazur, John Mazur, Emilee Mazur
- Narrated by: Linda Mazur, John Mazur, Abbey Fitzgerald, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of a beautiful, young woman — a talented athlete and musician, raised in a loving home, surrounded by friends — undermined by a ruthless inner voice that claimed her body and her spirit. Emilee: The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia reveals the cracks in our health care system, the institutions we are taught to trust, as well as our own prejudices and misinformation about eating disorders, mental illness, and addiction.
-
-
Editing aside, heart wrenching and important story
- By Brittany Hyatt on 11-21-24
By: Linda Mazur, and others
-
Dying to Be Thin
- The True Story of My Lifelong Battle Against Anorexia
- By: Nikki Grahame
- Narrated by: Yaz Shah
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The figure looking back at me was little more than a skeleton with just a thin layer of tissue paper for skin, drawn over the stick-like bones. I stood staring for a good couple of minutes, considering what I'd become. And my verdict? Brilliant, I thought. It's been worth every moment of all that hard work". Say the name Nikki Grahame and most people will remember the bubbly, highly strung and hugely entertaining Big Brother 7 contestant.
-
-
Not What You Might Think
- By ro_runner on 11-07-15
By: Nikki Grahame
Didn’t feel finished
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
to lean into those obsessions. This gave me the insight to chill out on my restrictive eating. I really just want to say thank you to Emma for an amazing piece. I loved every minute of it. The relationship she shares with Tom is aspirational to say the least! I will be googling to see how everything ended up!
A phenomenal read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Eloquent Insight
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The open and honest voice.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Would you consider the audio edition of An Apple a Day to be better than the print version?
I didn't read the print, but did find it refreshing to have it read by the actual author.What was one of the most memorable moments of An Apple a Day?
Having the points in the story where I knew just what certain feelings felt like or just how the brain works when having a ED.Have you listened to any of Emma Woolf’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
NoWas there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The Idea of not being able to just have a baby because of an illness that needs to be fixed was moving. Luckily for myself I never had issues with getting pregnant, or not able to because of my on and off ED issues.Can relate in many ways and yet lucky I couldn't
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What did you love best about An Apple a Day?
How honest the author is. I enjoyed her voice as well, though it does have a "sticky" quality that grates after a while.What other book might you compare An Apple a Day to and why?
Biting Anorexia - they are both candid diary type stories about the struggle back to health.Which scene was your favorite?
When she was describing her own fascination with Posh spice. Who wouldn't identify with her thoughts on the glamorous supermom persona Posh has adopted. Also, how she describes her and Tom's trip across the western states of the US. To see America from the point of view of an an eating disordered English woman was interesting.Any additional comments?
It is obvious from the author's point of view that she was still firmly in the grips of anorexia while writing this. Some of her interpretations of situations or other people's advise show a deep need to hang on to her disease. I came to really root for her though, and will surely listen to it again.Triggering
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hungry for more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Surprisingly Offensive
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved this
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.