Welcome to Is This Real Life, a Bravo podcast that relates our favorite shows to our own lives in the world around us.

I'm your host, Mandy Slutsker. Let's get to it.

Hi, everyone. I hope you're having a good week. Well, this week's episode is really special. It's what I've

been talking about for quite some time since we've all been watching this season of the

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and watching how Crystal is navigating her eating disorder

with these other women and how they've reacted and responded to her.

And I've said for a while, I really want to talk to someone who is an eating disorder expert

and be able to ask some of these questions about language to use and how to be a good friend

to someone who's experiencing something like this.

And I found the perfect person, Alyssa Mass, is a licensed therapist and she specializes

in eating disorders. And so today's episode is a conversation with her. A few quick notes

about the episode. The first is I did have

COVID while I was recording it. So apologies if my voice was a little off. It's still off. I don't

know how long it's going to take to return to normal, but I'm trying to rest it as much as possible.

Also, just like the housewives, I sometimes say the wrong

things too. And I believe that in recording this episode and some of the things I said,

I, without intention, you know, perpetuated stereotypes about people with eating disorders.

Specifically, comments I made about Lisa Rina and her being very thin.

And, you know, that's sort of what I viewed eating disorders sort of to look like.

But Alyssa very kindly sort of called me in on this and sort of let me know that there really

isn't a look to people who are experiencing, you know, these illnesses. And I think that that is

kind of a common misconception and why I think maybe some of these women are sort of overlooking

...