Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

Not sure whether or not this was ghostwritten, but I hope not because it is so raw and vulnerable (and, hate to say it, not terribly well-written). Following the journey of the author's eating disorder shows you really don't know what's going on behind the scenes of your favorite tv shows. Side note: while it comes to a happy conclusion in recovery, I can see how the early parts of this book would be very triggering to those who have dealt with EDs.

I suspect this is a book that is going to stay with me for a long time. I laughed more than I expected, but then the next page would hit me with some horrible/painful revelation. Interspersing pictures with the doctor's diagnoses was extremely effective and her descriptions were vivid, particularly of the bath in her hotel room.
The parallels with anxiety and depression really got to me; I hadn't realised (suppose I'd never really thought about it) how integral they are to an eating disorder. There were too many things in this that I recognised and that's probably what is going to stick with me most.

OK... I'll start by warning that this review may contain topics that could trigger you, such as anorexia, diets, binging and purging, and being in the closet for many years. So, if any of this topics make you feel triggered I recommend you skip reading this review.

I've read books about anorexia, I've seen it in TV and in movies. I know it's a terrible illness and that is really hard to overcome. But this... being in the mind of an anorexic person, this deep into her mind... it's a totally different experience. It became harder and harder to read, so I could assure you it's not a pleasant read, not at all.

This book is, in all senses, brutal. It doesn't sugarcoat ANYTHING. Portia tells everything that she's been through, and sometimes it was painful to read, how this mental disease takes over your life and ruins you from the inside till it shows on the outside. We can see how an unhealthy diet full of restrictions can quickly develop into a food obsession ,and it's all you can think about.
This book show us little Portia at the age of twelve years old, entering the modeling world, and not feeling enough-not thin enough, not pretty enough-, and with her we see the illness inside her growing stronger and stronger, till her adult life, where she lives prisoner of anorexia.

What this woman suffered it's just unberable. The littlest of the things would make her anxious, she was worried all the time that she wasn't burning enough calories. She satrted lying to her family because things started getting complicated when she got too thin to notice something was wrong. I can't even begin to explain how exhausting this life must been. I leave a few quotes so you can understand what I'm talking about:

‘I just worked out a little harder in the hotel gym and stopped brushing my teeth with toothpaste. It wasn't that I was crazy thinking that I could get fat from accidentally swallowing toothpaste; I was just ensuring that I cut out those incidental calories wherever I could. I ate less chewing gum and I didn't use toothpaste. It was a compromise that worked for me.'‘I needed to stand anyway. Standing burns more calories than sitting.'''I'm not eating lunch today. I had a big meal already.” Why I had to tell her about having a big meal I don't know. I hate it when I do things like that.'‘Chopsticks were useful for obvious reasons. I'm not Asian, nor am I coordinated. They were unnatural and awkward for me and as a result, the food fell through the little obtuse triangles making me eat slower. If I ate slowly, I didn't eat as much.'‘My obsession with weight loss had made me neglectful of the things I cared about.'

So now let's get to the writing part of the review:
Though it was a well written book, there were a lot of chunks of descriptions of, for ex. people that were passing by, and that didn't add anything to the story Portia was telling, so there were parts of the book when I wasn't that compelled to keep reading.

Aside from that, I think this is a must read if you really wanna know how anorexia affects a life, and the struggles an anorexic person must front.

TW: eating disorders

I've always been fascinated by psychology — why people think the things they think and do the things they do. I don't always understand, but I'm always interested in the thought process. I also love reading celebrity memoirs. So when I heard that Portia de Rossi had written one, I wanted to read it. I think she's a fabulous actress; I loved her on Arrested Development and one of the best, most-underrated shows to ever get canceled too soon, Better Off Ted.

But everything in the book was before those two shows ever landed on her resume. “Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain” instead focuses on the time in the late 1990s when she got her first job as an actress on Ally McBeal.

As a teen model, Portia's youth was spent focused on being thin; she and her mother would work together to stay focused on their diets, her mother even going so far as to give her dieting tips at an age as young as 12. After years of her weight jumping up and down — starving herself before photo shoots then celebrating afterward by bingeing at McDonald's — Portia finds herself in her 20s, a closeted homosexual terrified of ruining her career by admitting her sexuality, and unsatisfied with the weight her body naturally wants to be. After an emotional moment on the set of Ally McBeal when she realizes the sample-size clothes won't fit over her thighs, she decides that she is going to win at dieting, and that she will never again have a costume designer call for larger sizes. In her mind, that will make people love her and will prevent anyone from knowing that she's gay.

Thus begins a year in which secrecy, lies and consuming as few calories as humanly possible are the friends she clings to. She refuses to eat anything but the few foods she has deemed acceptable — and in carefully measured and weighed portions. Even after consuming so little, she feels convinced she will gain weight if she doesn't work off every calorie. But she never admits that she has a problem. She claims she's “not skinny enough” to be an anorexic, even as she dips below 90 pounds.

Reading this book was heartbreaking. But it was wonderfully written. Every time Portia started to feel manic, anxious — I felt that right along with her. But it was so hard to see her punishing her body for being what it was, hating herself for perceived body flaws, and getting angry when others were concerned about her instead of being proud of her “hard work.”

When she finally accepts help, you can feel her calm. I hope she still feels that.