Eating Disorders And The Executive Woman

For a growing number of professional women, food issues take center stage mid-life.

When coworkers would pop into Alison’s office at lunchtime to ask if she wanted take-out, the petite advertising executive would look up from the piles of papers on her desk and say sure, and ask for a turkey on rye. But instead of being eaten, the sandwich would be slipped away in a desk drawer until quitting time, and eventually make its way into the hands of her husband. “It’s extra,” she’d tell him nonchalantly. As if no one suspected a thing.

In reality, Alison wasn’t eating anything at all. The 49-year old married Chicagoan was in the thralls of an on-and-off lifelong battle with anorexia that she could trace back to middle school. And everyone around her knew she was self-destructing—everyone except herself.

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