As the number of individuals who struggle with anorexia grows, so too does the number who walk the very fine line — the “almost anorexia” line.

You may not have heard of “almost anorexia,” as it’s no where to be found in the DSM-5, but you’ve almost certainly come face to face with it. It’s the pattern of disordered eating that cannot be officially diagnosed, but still presents serious and, potentially, even life-altering consequences.

It’s a condition that Dr. Jenny Thomas, Harvard clinical researcher and eating disorder expert, has seen all too often. It’s one that Jenni Thomas, best-selling author and eating disorder survivor, has battled herself.

Jenni and Jenny came together to explore this phenomenon and the result is Almost Anorexic:  Is My (or My Loved One’s) Relationship with Food a Problem?, there book that will be released in just a few weeks.

I was fortunate to get a chance to read the book, and I can tell you that it should be required reading for anyone questioning their own or a loved one’s food issues. Written in a tone that’s smart yet accessible, the authors offer their years of collective wisdom to help navigate the gray waters of disordered eating.

On behalf of the Academy for Eating Disorders, I’ll be hosting a twitter chat with the authors tomorrow, where we’ll talk about what “almost anorexia” really means. I hope you’ll join me, Jenni, and Jenny this Tuesday, June 18th at 7pm EST for a twitter chat exploring these topics.

If you’ve never participated in a twitter chat before, it’s simple! An easy-to-use service is OneQube, a twitter chat platform. Check out the AED’s page on how to participate. All you need is online access, a twitter handle (name), and the hashtag ”#AEDchat“.

After the chat, there will be another awesome opportunity to connect with the authors and delve even further into subclinical eating disorders at the National Eating Disorder Association’s webinar on June 25th at 6:00pm EST.

Hope to see you at both of these great online events!

I just started reading Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s new political commentary/memior/feminist manifesto Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. And by started, I mean I read the introduction. But it’s already got me thinking and eager to delve into the rest of the book. So that’s a good thing.

Unlike a lot of the conversation out there, Sandberg focuses less on the institutional barriers out there (damn men keeping us down! rarrrr!) and more on the internal barriers that prevent women from rising to the top. As a psychologist and someone with lots of internal barriers, this really resonates with me. Or at least I think it will, once I read more.

Sandberg points to some of the statistics out there — like the fact that only 14% of business executives are women and just over 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are female. What’s most interesting about these numbers is that they start out looking much different. Entry-level business jobs are pretty evenly dispersed among men and women. But as time marches on, women fail to climb the ladder as quickly as men. Or they jump off.

As I was thinking about this, I recognized that there are a myriad of factors contributing to it. There’s the self-confidence and self-determination that are required to move ahead — qualities that are not always made priority in raising girls and women. There’s the fact that new motherhood often occurs at a pivotal point in the career trajectory, leaving many women who try to balance multiple roles in the dust.

But there’s also something else. And that’s the fact that as women, we’re acculturated to make other people happy. I don’t want to paint the female sex with such broad strokes, but I feel pretty safe in stating that most women don’t like to be the bad guy. We are often raised to consider the needs and wants of others, and, in some cases, to be a primary caretaker of those needs and wants. We are taught to keep things tidy and in order. We are taught to make others feel gooooood about themselves. In fact, not doing so can have damaging effects on our careers, relationships, and sense of self, says some research.

I’m going to even go out on a limb here and say that it’s not just a matter of acculturation and gender stereotyping, but maybe… even… evolutionary biology? Since the dawn of (wo)man, we have been relied upon to keep families and communities together. We do this in multiple more modern ways — organizing playdates, preparing meals, and championing safer communities — but the fact remains that part of our biological legacy is in fostering connection. It’s that connection that has kept our world thriving, in my humble opinion.

Business isn’t necessarily anti-community, but it requires some mess-making. It requires being willing to rock the boat and upset Dave in accounts. It sometimes requires laying people off and doing arguably ruthless things to move a company ahead. Okay, so maybe they’re not ruthless things. Perhaps just unpopular. But still.

I’m not for a moment arguing that women are not designed to get ahead in business. Rather, I would argue that: women have to recognize and consider thoughtfully their perhaps instinctual nature. I believe whole-heartedly that women have the capacity to make tough, unpopular decisions. I just think that it’s worth considering that it may be tough, given our biology and acculturation. Women do tough stuff all the time (hello, childbirth!), so I have no doubt that we can (and do, all the time!) this.

The other factor is that perhaps it’s not that women’s psyches struggle to mesh with business, but that business is somehow fundamentally flawed in its philosophy. If we had more women in leadership positions, I venture to say that the nature of business would change dramatically. Companies — and the world — might be run more from a place of cooperation than competition. You know how this line of thinking goes — less war, less famine, more unicorns dancing in the skies. But I think it’s true. Women have an important place at the table — the dinner one and the conference one.

I’ll have to give this all some more thought. And getting past the introduction of Sandberg’s book might be wise too. But for now, I have a load of laundry to finish and 46 emails to read.

What do you think? Have you ever experienced the impact of your sex on your work or career? 

My favorite question gets a fabulous “facelift”…

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How are you feeling today?

What if I told you that there was a simple thing that you could do for yourself to help boost your social life, increase your positive feelings, improve your relationships? What if I told you that you wouldn’t really be doing something for yourself at all? At least not directly…

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Research is emerging demonstrating that random acts of kindness – those sweet gestures you do for the guy passing by, just because – not only benefit the recipient, but also the doer. Maybe it’s intuitive. I know I personally feel a surge of positive feelings when I help someone out and expect nothing in return. But now we have some solid evidence to back up the idea that spreading kindness changes us all.

In one recent study, University of British Columbia researchers asked socially anxious participants to complete “kind acts” on two days per week for a month. Simple enough, right? It could be anything from saying thank you to someone who normally doesn’t get acknowledged to buying someone a cup of coffee. They found that this group, as compared to a “neutral” group, demonstrated an increase in positive affect and better social functioning.

It makes sense, right? Performing random acts of kindness puts us out there and gives us reason to engage and pay attention to others. It’s these things factors exactly that make me believe that this could have really helpful effects for individuals struggling with eating concerns.

So often, disordered eating evolves into an angry little monster who keeps those struggling from truly engaging with others and the world. People start to hide away because of guilt, shame, and negative feelings about their bodies and themselves. Even when they are physically “out there,” they might not truly be engaged and present.

Doing small kind acts for others could totally shift that. It gets us out of our own heads — dangerous places to be sometimes — and back into connecting with others. It also gives us a surge of pride and satisfaction to know that we’ve brought a moment of joy into someone else’s life.

So, in that spirit, I’m committing to making June a month of random acts of kindness. My goal will be, like the researchers suggested, to perform acts on at least two days per week. If I do more, great! If anyone else would like to commit, I’d love to know about it in the comments below. It would also be great to hear about what kinds of acts of which you’ve been the doer/giver or the recipient. I need some ideas for the next thirty days!

So, what do you think?

let’s generate a list of random of acts of kindness that we might be willing to try.