When writing Lying in Weight, I listened to many stories of devastation and hope. I heard about relapses and slips, hard work and ultimate triumph. As I compiled each chapter, I imagined how readers would receive the stories, as I interpreted them.

My book tour, which ended a short while ago, left little to the imagination. I met people from all walks of life, gasping at horrific statistics, laughing at ridiculous thoughts, crying as they told me about their daughters, mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, sisters, friends -- and themselves.

I met a 40-something mother in Boston who is, for the first time, getting help for anorexia; a teen from a therapeutic boarding school In New Manchester, Vermont who cried as she told me about her mother and sister (both have anorexia) and her fears of going down the same eating-disordered path; a young woman in Milwaukee who whispered to her boyfriend -- after I explained the five categories of men who partner up with women who have eating disorders. "You’re the rescuer kind," she said. And he grinned in recognition.

The Freshman 10? Freshman 15? As 1.5 million students pack up their lives and enter college this fall, weight will be an issue. But is the concern more about pounds on or pounds off?

We all know the message of weight gain, as mythologized by "The Freshman 10" (or 15, these days), referring to the alleged propensity of students to pack on 10-15 pounds as they first enter the world of dorms and frat parties. The myth has been debunked. But that doesn’t stop public health officials from aggressively counseling students about how not to get fat at school.

In their zeal, anti-obesity campaigners have overlooked a startling proportion of students losing 15 pounds, and more, and getting eating disorders. A startling poll commissioned by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) showed that 20 percent of students admitted to having an eating disorder at some point in their lives. More frightening, 75 percent of surveyed students claimed that they never got any treatment.

They do it because their brains are wired to.

Girls with anorexia nervosa starve due to neural processing problems -- much like those associated with Asperger’s disorder, a mild form of autism.

That’s the latest theory of eating disorders, proffered in The Times (U.K.) by Janet Treasure, head of the Eating Disorders Unit at the South London and Maudsley Hospital NHS Trust. In essence, faulty circuitry in the brain causes the restrictive, repetitive and obsessive behaviors of both disorders. Those with anorexia target the abnormal patterning toward food. Those with Asperger’s focus intensely on other areas of interest.

Treasure’s controversial thesis is based, in part, on commonalities that the two disorders share.

"Thin," a documentary about contemporary eating disorders, just came out on DVD in July 2007. In the film, director and photographer Lauren Greenfield lets the camera roll on four women at The Renfrew Center's Coconut Creek, Florida residential treatment facility for eating disorders. Her fly-on-the wall approach is unmatched in unveiling the untold horror of anorexia and bulimia nervosa --and how they seduce their victims with promises of thinness.

Still, the film leaves the reader longing for something more satisfying.

The four stories roll on, occasionally intersecting, but more often following their own trajectories. The lack of a cohesive narrative leaves the average viewer rightfully shocked but nonetheless adrift in a sea of seemingly meaningless suffering.