As an only child who moved around a lot, Emma Specter learned to comfort herself, as a lot of kids do, with familiar foods — whether it was the Dunkin Donuts she sought out in Rome or the candy bars she stock-piled from Manhattan bodegas. By the time she entered high school, she’d begun using food as more than just a source of soothing, but as a kind of numbing agent she’d administer in secret. Mindlessly eating cookie dough to the point of physical discomfort, she discovered, could help ease the pain of life’s most unpleasant moments — that is, until the shame set in, followed by an urge to count calories.

Specter eventually came to identify this behavior as bingeing, an eating disorder she describes viscerally in her memoir, “More Pease: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for ‘Enough’” (HarperCollins). Bingeing can look different for different people, but for Specter, it involves “shoving food furtively into my mouth as quickly and passively” as possible, she writes. Her debut book, which pairs a deeply personal (and often humorous) narrative with academic research and journalistic inquiry, explores the origins of her disordered eating while also searching for a motive: “Why do I do this?” Specter said in an interview.

The Los Angeles-based Vogue culture writer is still trying to answer that question. In addition to lots of therapy and introspective writing, her process so far has been to interview writers, scholars and fat activists about diet culture and its societal underpinnings.

The Times spoke to Specter about how she realized she had an eating disorder, why she decided to ditch dieting and what happened when she began to reframe her thinking about her body.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

In your book, you describe how any sort of event in your life — no matter how big or small — could trigger a binge. What did this pattern look like for you and how did you recognize that it was part of a disorder?

I definitely was and still am more likely to binge on a bad day than a good one, but sometimes something very minor would go wrong and I would react by bingeing. When I’m in a bad mood or bored or lonely or tired, it’s hard for me to self-regulate without food. I think a lot of us use food for comfort and that doesn’t have to look like a disordered attachment. But for me, it was very much about shutting out the world with food.

I think that’s the tricky thing, too, is that obviously everyone eats food for survival, for comfort, for all of these things. Was there a moment where you recognized, ‘Oh, what I’m doing is maybe a little bit destructive,’ if that’s how you see it?

Absolutely, that is how I see it. When I was in my early to mid-20s, I started to recognize that something was off. A lot of things that I had desperately wanted came to fruition. I had jobs in media, I had a big group of friends, I came out [as queer], dating was better and more exciting, or at least existent. But I felt like there was this real disconnect where I started bingeing almost more once I had more in my life. I was more fulfilled and happy, but still bingeing and then realizing, ‘What function is this playing for me? And is it an escape when I’m feeling overwhelmed or scared or stressed about the stakes of my new life?’

Right. How do you work toward not relying on food so much as an escape from your feelings?

I’ve found a lot of beauty in communal meal-making and eating together with my partner and their roommates and my friends and just reminding myself that food can absolutely be this huge source of comfort when I’m feeling overwhelmed, and it doesn’t have to go along with solitude and hiding.

When I was in the diet-binge cycle that I was in for so long, I was very concerned about ‘How am I going to have a group dinner with friends and still stick to my Weight Watchers points?’ I’m thrilled to say that I haven’t dieted in a long time, but that lizard brain mentality is still with me sometimes telling me what I should and shouldn’t be eating or enjoying. The more that I can come together with other people around food, the less I feel like it has to be this solitary kind of respite that I only engage in in a disordered way.

So the journey you describe in the book is twofold: You’re recognizing that you’re bingeing and figuring out what’s behind it and how to manage it, but you’re also learning to abandon diet culture. Do you feel like those two things go hand in hand?

Absolutely. I do think giving up dieting was really crucial to getting to a place where I can just accept myself as a fat person. It was truly one of the most ingrained habits of my life to the point where — I think as so many people, and especially women — do, I still know the caloric value for foods and I’m trying to chase that out of my brain. It doesn’t hurt to know what’s in your food, but I’m trying to chase away the sense of “Oh, my god, this banana has so-and-so calories, I can’t have it.” I think saying goodbye to dieting has really been crucial in just accepting the body that I have now and not the body that I could have if I cut out carbs and worked out for two hours every day.

I was a little disappointed that quitting dieting didn’t fix my bingeing, which maybe should have been obvious to me because bingeing is a very ingrained habit that I’ve been engaging in over the course of my life. But part of me thought that if I’m not dieting anymore then I won’t ever have the urge to overindulge. It can be demoralizing to feel like I’m doing all this work [toward having a positive relationship with food] and still I find myself bingeing, but I think that’s just part of the balance — especially in the place that I’m at in my recovery, which centers very much around harm reduction. I’ve made a tenuous peace with the idea that bingeing is going to be a part of my life.

You write about your bingeing as a form of self-harm, about the way it caused you shame and embarrassment, nausea and indigestion. Could you talk about some of the other ways it affected and still affects your life?

Something I want to highlight is just the amount of money that I spent on binge food. Obviously it was not a ton — an individual binge could be a thing of ice cream, which costs $7, but that stuff adds up — and it’s not my favorite use of money. It’s not my favorite use of how to engage with the world and the economy, especially through the use of food delivery apps. Being dependent on somebody else’s precarious labor to bring you food you don’t even want doesn’t feel great and it isn’t the way that I want to engage with my community.

I also think for a long time, I felt like my consequences, for lack of a better word, were fatness. I remember at a certain point catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror after I gained weight and thinking, ‘Look what you’ve done to yourself.’ You know, just really unkind self thoughts that I try really hard not to harbor anymore, but they sneak in ‘cause we live in a fat-phobic society. But I do think it has been a really beautiful reframe to just be like, my body is not a negative outcome and it’s not a consequence of anything. It’s just my body and it can do a lot of incredible things.

Reading your book, it’s obvious that you didn’t arrive at body acceptance overnight, and that it’s still a work-in-progress. Can you talk about what has helped you become kinder to yourself along the way?

I can’t think of something that has had a bigger impact on me than having fat friends. Just being surrounded by fat people who love each other and are loved — which sounds so corny — but I just think it gives me a script every day for my own self-acceptance. I can’t overstate the importance of having fat community in my life, and I really hope that for every fat person.

I know that being fat can be tricky because it can often feel like it’s your rest stop on the road to thinness, but I have felt so deeply that if I want to live in my body happily as it is, I need to surround myself with other people who do that and who accept themselves and who still have difficult moments and who have journeys that I might not necessarily even know about because every single person is going through their own world and journey in their own meat suit.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start re-evaluating their relationship with food or with their body?

Try not to be alone with it. “It” being your fear and your anxiety over what you’re eating or not eating or what your body looks like or doesn’t look like. Sometimes that means talking to people in your life, but I think people dealing with disordered eating and binge eating in particular can often feel so much shame that it’s really hard to start that conversation. In your Notes app or your Google Docs is as good as any place to start a conversation, even just with yourself while you’re figuring out what another level of help might look like for you.

I just hope, as corny as this sounds, that you’re as nice to yourself as you can summon the ability to be in the process of finding your version of therapy, or writing about your issues, or talking to your loved ones about what’s going on with you. None of that is possible without this little glimmer of self-compassion, and the self-compassion has to be first.

(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)

Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life. Want to pitch us? Email alyssa.bereznak@latimes.com.

This is a recap of the most recent episode of HBO’s House of the Dragon. It contains spoilers. That’s what a recap is.

Credits! And a pretty sizable amount of thread is newly devoted to the Red Sowing – last week’s dragonrider recruitment drive. (Red Sewing joke goes here.)

On behalf of Team Green, Tyland Lannister meets with representatives of the Triarchy (sing along with me: the Free Cities of Myr, Lys and Tyrosh, which lie on, or just off, the continent of Essos across the Narrow Sea). They agree to give him an armada of 100 warships to break Rhaenyra’s blockade of the bay in exchange for control of the Stepstones – the same place they fought Daemon and Corlys for control over, back in season one. But they will only do so if Tyland can best their admiral, Sharako Lohar, in a mud fight. High stakes diplomacy meets Stripes.

On an overlook above the town of Sharp Point, Aemond regards its burning ruins, which he’s just had Vhagar flick her Bic at. Sharp Point lies at the tip of a peninsula sticking up into Blackwater Bay, not too far from the islands of Driftmark and Dragonstone. Which is important, because, as predicted, Aemond didn’t deal well with getting chased away by Rhaenyra’s new dragons last week and has immediately taken it out on the nearest thing he could, which in this case is the entire populace of the Westerosi equivalent of Provincetown. Aemond looks upon his handiwork with smug satisfaction, although in fairness that’s kind of just his face.

Larys, whose official title is Master of Whisperers but could easily be Guy Who Can Read The Writing on the Damn Wall or Dude Whose Like Entire Gig is Knowing Which Way the Wind’s Blowing, tells a bedridden King Aegon that they need to leave King’s Landing yesterday. There’s a fun bit of back and forth between them, as Larys tries to sell Aegon on running away to Essos and waiting it all out, only to one day return in glory. But Aegon, always a creature of carnal appetites, can’t see past the damage that’s been done to his body, which he describes in such detail it’ll put you off sausage breakfast sandwiches for a week.

Larys (Matthew Needham) tells Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) to put his best foot forward.

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Let’s check in on Rhaena for an update: Desperately seeking dragon. Still. Again. Some more.

On Dragonstone, Jacaerys happens upon Ulf and Hugh. Ulf behaves like the Shakesperian comic character he’s written to be, and gets a little overfamiliar with the Prince, lumping himself in with him overtheir shared ability to ride dragons and have brown hair. Hugh, who’s used to being looked down upon by royals, attempts to smooth things over.

We’re all born naked; the rest is dragon

Over on Driftmark, Rhaenyra asks Corlys for any intel on Addam, but he’s not forthcoming. “I’ve had little to do with him,” he says, speaking truthfully. We get a helpful new dragoncount, if you need to update your Dance of the Dragons Scorecard. Rhaenyra’s got six. Aemond has only Vhagar, and two others: The dragon Tessarion, belonging to the oft-mentioned-but-not-yet-seen Daeron Targaryen off in Oldtown, on the other side of the continent. But Tessarion is very young and untested. There’s also Dreamfyre – she’s fierce, and almost 100 years old. But she belongs to Queen Helaena, who doesn’t ride her often.

Rhaenyra makes some noises about hoping her dragon advantage will act as a deterrent, so she won’t have to go to war. Still, she says this. After everything that’s happened, if you can believe it. Because I’m not certain I can.

Over at Harrenhal, the Riverlords armies are mustering, and Daemon is doing a West(eros) Wing walk-and-talk with Ser Alfred Broome. You remember him – he was the pouty jamoke on Rhaenyra’s Small Council who was always second-guessing her, so she sent him off to check in on Daemon.

In the weirwood courtyard, Ser Alfred tells Daemon that he has the support he needs to overthrow Rhaenyra and declare himself king. Which, if you haven’t been following SIX! EPISODES! worth of frustratingly repetitive dream-visions, is something that Daemon wants. Or does he? Daemon’s reaction is unreadable. This whole exchange was witnessed, Polonius-behind-the-arras-like, by a lurking Ser Simon Strong.

Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) don’t see eye to eye.

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Alicent has returned from last week’s aimless (pointless?) touch-grass walkabout to talk soothingly and motherly to Helaena. Just then, Aemond swoops in to demand Helaena mount up Dreamfyre and head to the front. Alicent attempts to shame him for turning Sharp Point into Smoky Stub in a fit of pique. She tells him they’re better than that, though I’d be surprised if she still manages to believe it.

Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) mopes like his s’more fell into the fire.

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On the road from King’s Landing to Harrenhal, Criston Cole is even mopier and moonier than baseline. He’s told Ser Gwayne that he’s slept with his sister the Queen, and Gwayne’s anger causes Criston to wax faux-poetic about honor and desire and dragons. “We march towards our annihilation,” he says. And millions of TV viewers whisper “From your mouth…” in unison.

On Dragonstone, Rhaenyra hosts a dinner party for her dragonriders, both old (Jacaerys and Baela) and new (Addam, Hugh and Ulf). Ulf has the table manners of the Steward of Gondor. She informs them that they will attack the Green strongholds of Oldtown (seat of House Hightower) and Lannisport (seat of House Lannister) in two days’ time.

But just as Ulf is ramming still another squab down his gullet, a raven from our precious, precious jewel Ser Simon Strong informs Rhaenyra that Daemon might be turning on her.

“I would like to propose a toast!” Rhaenyra (Emma D’arcy) launches into “Ladies Who Lunch” as her dragonriders look on.

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Daemon come and me wanna go home

At Harrenhal, Daemon follows Alys Rivers to the godswood, where he places his hand on a weirwood tree, which proceeds to weep sap all over him. He gets a series of visions very like what ol’ Bran McGuffin Stark used to get on Game of Thones. Greensight, it’s called, if you need to check the wiki.

The visions are familiar to GoT watchers: The three-eyed raven, the red comet, Daenerys and her three dragons, the White Walkers. But there’s a new bit: Rhaenyra, sitting on the Iron Throne. Queen Helaena, who as we know is given to prophetic visions herself, is here, too. She tells him that it’s all just a story, and he’s only a part of it. Which: Way to go meta, girl! And also, that’s a dangerous thing to tell someone who’s bringing as much delusional Main Character energy as Daemon is. “You know what you must do,” she tells him.

At the Red Keep, Aemond once again tries to convince Helaena to mount up. She refuses, and tells him that she saw him turn Aegon into a charcoal briquette over Rook’s Rest. He denies it, but she goes on – Aegon will be king again, on a wooden throne, while Aemond will be dead – lost in the God’s Eye (the mysterious lake on which Harrenhal sits). He takes this about as well as you’d imagine, which is not very well at all.

Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) and Helaena (Phia Saban) discuss hey wait never mind check out that cool sconce guys!

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Rhaenyra and Addam fly to Harrenhal. Rhaenyra lands, but Addam stays on Seasmoke and just sort of circles the block like he’s looking for parking. Ser Simon Strong greets her and leads her inside, where the armies are gathered. Daemon approaches her, and the show does a good bit of faffing around, trying to keep us in suspense over what he will do. Ultimately, he bends the knee, but not before telling her, in re: The Prophecy of The Prince Who Was Promised, Girl, I get it now. 

Everyone kneels, even that grumpiest of Gus-es, Ser Alfred Broome.

In what I dearly hope is our final scene at the Driftmark docks set, Alyn finally confronts Corlys about abandoning him, his brother and their mother. It’s a well-written, well-delivered monologue that neatly articulates that Alyn wants nothing to do with any noble favors that Corlys might bestow out of a sense of guilt. Corlys looks chastened, or at least sad, which makes sense for a guy who’s lost a son, a daughter and a wife.

Either Corlys (Steve Toussaint) feels regretful over neglecting his children for decades or the tuna salad’s repeating on him.

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Rhaena: Still looking. Spots a dragon in the distance, yes, but: Still looking, looking still.

Rhaenyra is back on Dragonstone, watching Ulf and Hugh LARP-ing How to Train Your Dragon.

She frets to Mysaria about what she will be unleashing when the dragons go to war, which is the one note that her character has been hammering away at all season long. Could have sworn she was done with all this hand-wringing after her wildly improbable meet up with Alicent earlier in the season, or else what was all that for?

Alicent, her aim is true

Speaking of! Guess who’s come knock-knock-knocking on Dragonstone’s door! Why, it’s Alicent, of course! Because the show has built itself around the characters of Alicent and Rhaenyra, it has to keep finding excuses for them to get together, regardless of any minor distractions like, for example, reality. And logic. And storytelling.

“Why are you here?” asks Rhaenyra, not once but twice, because Alicent spends a lot of time whingeing about her life of duty, her desire to be free. The upshot of it all is this: She tells Rhaenyra that Aemond is taking Vhagar to Harrenhal to attack Daemon, which will leave King’s Landing undefended. Rhaenyra can seize King’s Landing in three days’ time: Alicent and Helaena will order the soldiers to stand down, and throw the gates of the city open to her so Rhaenyra can take the throne.

She attempts to wheedle a promise out of Rhaenyra to spare Aegon’s life, but Rhaenyra is having none of it. Atta girl.

All that’s missing is some hair-metal on the soundtrack

We get a “Dragonriders Suiting Up” montage straight out of a Schwarzenegger movie – tight shots of jerkins and greaves and pauldrons and whatnot.

We see the Hightower army on the march, as Tessarion(!) flies overhead. He’s being ridden by Daeron, one assumes, though they haven’t cast an actor for that role yet, so for now we get a teeny CGI rider. Team Green One standing by.

We see the Stark army marching across the Twins. (Remember the season premiere? When Cregan Stark pledged a handful of graybeards to Jacaerys? Well, they’re here now, and those beards are very, very gray indeed.) (They say an army travels on its stomach – this one travels on its orthopedic inserts.) Team Green Two standing by.

We see the Lannister army, in their fancy golden armor, nearing Harrenhal. Team Green Three standing by.

We see Tyland Lannister and Sharako Lohar’s fleet sailing toward Rhaenyra’s blockade. Team Green Four standing by.

We see Aegon and Larys sneaking out of King’s Landing in a raven wagon. (Look, I don’t know what you call it. It’s a wagon, and it’s filled with ravens.) Team Green Five, ducking out.

We also see Daemon stepping out of Harrenhal and surveying his troops. Team Black One, standing by.

Corlys and Alyn sail out to their fleet’s newly rechristened flagship, The Queen Who Never Was. Team Black Two, standing by.

Interspersed with all that, a quick shot of Otto Hightower, waking up in what looks to be a prison cell?

And, yes, finally, Rhaena. Finding her dragon. What a twist. Never saw it coming. I’m sure you were all on tenterhooks.

Parting Thoughts

• Well that was a strangely muted, talky episode for a season finale, wasn’t it? Sure, it resolved some of the season’s central conflicts – Daemon’s ambition, Alicent’s aimlessness – but after last week’s barn-burner (and serf-burner) of an episode, this season climax qualifies as anti-.
• I should just steel myself for many, many more scenes of Alicent and Rhaenyra getting together, shouldn’t I? Even when circumstances, not to mention all laws of God and Man, would logically prevent it? Like at the height of some battle, Rhaenyra looks down from raining fire on a brace of hapless soldiers only to see Alicent waving at her from behind a tree all “Psst! Rhae-Rhae! Can I steal you away for a minute?”
• Jefferson Hall, who plays both Tyland and Jason Lannister, has solid comic timing, and the show’s happy to lean into it. Which is why we got all that putatively funny business with Sharako – the mud-wrestling, the indecent proposal, all of it. He’s great at looking uncomfortable.
• My sweet babboo Ser Simon Strong made it through the whole season with his head! Good for him! And it was his tattle-tale nature that brought Daemon and Rhaenyra together for their rapprochement. Just when you couldn’t love the guy any more, he goes and ties up a plot thread that’s been dangling all season long.
• Thanks for reading along, everyone. And please thank my editor Clare Lombardo, who corrected my countless misspelling of these ridiculous names and spent her valuable time poring over Targaryen family trees to fact-check me. 
• See you in, I’m guessing, 2026!