Anonymous is a powerful descriptor. For people with eating disorders, anonymous becomes a lifestyle. Twenty million American women and ten million American men suffer from eating disorders, and Letting Ana Go is an anonymous journal that tells the story of one sufferer.
“Ana” ran cross-country for her high school team, she had good friends, and a maybe-boyfriend. But when her coach came into the locker room one day carrying journals, “Ana’s” life changed. They were asked to write down their thoughts and feelings about weight and body image as a way to prevent them from developing eating disorders (members of another team had problems with eating disorders).
What started out as a preventative measure became the opposite. “Ana” was dealing with her parent’s divorce; her father left her mother because of her weight, and her best friend Jill was training to win the role of Clara in The Nutcracker, cutting her meals substantially.
“Ana” and Jill banded together to watch their weight and cut calories from their diet. At the start of each entry, she records her weight and the calories she ate, getting closer and closer to only 1000 per day. They join online chat rooms, posting pictures of themselves with “problem” areas circled on their body, and giving “thinspiration” to other users.
But with this new lifestyle, she becomes isolated from her team members. They worry about her, and know what kind of downward spiral she is on. No matter what they say, “Ana” is running on a path straight to destruction. And destruction is what she meets at the end of the road.
The novel isn’t only about eating disorders and anorexia, it touches on divorce, staying in shape, and teenage drinking, concerns that impact a lot of teenagers. “Ana’s” parents got divorced, and she her mom worry over her own weight and stressing about the fact that they got divorced because of her weight. Bot “Ana” and Jill are athletes, and there is an inherent pressure on them to stay fit or in shape.
The journal so accurately depicts what it’s like living with an eating disorder, the feelings of not being good enough, the lengths people will go to to be beautiful. It talks about the need to be in control, saying, “I feel like I am my best friend. When I’m able to get through a meal without eating too much, there’s thing I feel inside of me – this strength. It’s like a place of power, and when I don’t eat too much, or when I exercise enough, it makes me feel invincible. It keeps me company.”
There are arguments over whether or not readers suffering from an eating disorder should read this novel. Those against say that there are triggers throughout the novel that could set someone recovering back. However, the ending is the biggest deterrent for those suffering. It’s the realization “this could be me in X number of days, weeks, months, years. I don’t want to end up like her.”
But the novel also brings up important political discussion around anorexia nervosa: should health insurance cover medical bills incurred because of an eating disorder? When “Ana” is admitted to a hospital for recovery, her insurance won’t cover her stay, negatively impacting her ability to recover from the disease that has so greatly impacted her life.
The novel is one of the few to depict eating disorders and the negative impact they have on people’s lives. For those suffering from an eating disorder, the novel’s ending can help give them the push they need to recover, and for those who don’t suffer, it tells the story of those who do and warns people against the dangers associated with eating disorders.
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