As a result of her fear of facing herself, however, Marya lies about being molested as a child and sabotages her own recovery.Īfter her release from Lowe House, Marya's anorexia begins to resurface slowly. This time Marya is sent to Lowe House, a residential treatment center where Marya comes closest to being healed. Within one week, Marya loses twelve more pounds and is readmitted to the hospital on emergency status. Marya is once again hospitalized, but discharged when her vital signs stabilize and insurance stops paying for her treatment. During the short while she stays in California, she manages to lose weight to a point that she is lighter than when she first enters the hospital for treatment. Once in California, Marya begins binging and purging again. She convinces her parents to let her go to California and live with her stepmother when she is released from treatment. Marya writes that instead of getting better while in treatment, she gets worse. Immediately following this school year, she is hospitalized the first time for her disorder.

It is in her tenth-grade year when Marya attends a boarding school when she decides to make the transition to anorexia. Throughout her high school years, Marya suffers with bulimia.

No one has even talked to Marya about bulimia she discovers on her own that there is a way to get rid of any food she has eaten. She has her first experience with bulimia when she is nine years old. Finally, Marya describes the circumstances that finally convince her to check herself into a hospital for treatment.Įven as an infant and child, Marya writes that she has strange eating habits. Marya describes her plummet to her lowest point in her struggle with anorexia, a time when she is eating almost nothing and weighs only 52 pounds. She also writes about the progression of her bulimia and her transition to anorexia.

In the story, Marya details childhood and personality factors that may have had a role in the development of her disorder. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia recalls Marya Hornbacher's personal nine-year battle with anorexia and bulimia.

Wasted book chapter summary