When Walnut Springs asked me to blog review a nonfiction book this time around, one entitled Love Your Body, my immediate reply was "I would love to love my body." Then when I saw the subtitle, A Diet-Free Approach to Balanced Eating I was totally on board.
Diet-free is my favorite phrase. Ever.
If it's your favorite phrase, too, you will want to read this book.
If you have issues with your body and what you put into it, you will want to read this book.
(Okay, I think that's everyone)
I've never been on a diet except for the kind that dictated I eat whatever I want, so I found many things helpful to me. Like in the very first chapter (p 16) there's a hunger/fullness scale. Learn to eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, but don't keep going till you're stuffed. (Makes perfect sense, in theory.)
I love in chapter three where the author tells us how to make peace with food. We are told to look at a brownie the same way we look at an apple (p 37). I kid you not!
...each type of food has an important place in our lives. An apple can taste so refreshing. It is sweet, juicy, crunchy all at the same time. A brownie is rich, smooth, and very filling. It also does things to my taste buds that nothing else can. So, how can I call a brownie bad and an apple good, when both taste great in different ways...
You gotta love that!
The point of this chapter is that deprivation doesn't work, it only makes us want it more and that can lead to bingeing.
There's so much in this 160-page book, too much to even tell you about. It also includes exercises (no, not those kind of exercises--but the kind where you write down stuff and examine your inner self--that person inside that just wants to be happy and wishes you would quit doing so many crazy things in the name of body image and diet? Yeah.)
I guess my disclaimer in all this is that while I do have issues with my body, they generally hide well in a decent pair of jeans and not-too-fitted shirt. Well, and sometimes a baggy jacket is required. And I'm a writer. I sit at my keyboard in my sweats and fuzzy sox and have to apologize for my hair if someone comes to the front door, so I'm the last person to look to as someone that cares terribly about what she looks like. But I totally get all of it. Women subject themselves to crazy things because of body image and food.
Crazy, crazy things.
+Please note my last post for details of the blog tour and how to win your own copy of Love My Body by Brooke Parker, R.D. (that means she's a registered dietition!)
++To purchase the book, go here.
8 comments:
I read Love Your Body. It has so many good things we can all learn. It is a re-read book.
Sounds like a lot of great information all in one place which is nice because we get bombarded with lots of inaccurate and inappropriate info. Thanks for the post.
It makes my husband crazy as a family doc, when he sees women come in complaining about their bodies when they are perfectly normal and their BMI is fine. He says todays supermodel image has got women thinking that they have to be super skinny when most husbands prefer their wives just the way they are. A few curves here and there aren't a bad thing.
Women would be better off if they could learn to love their bodies in a healthy way.
I hope we women finally can separate "healthy" from "skinny." I appreciate information that addresses the idea of being healthy, active, happy, energetic and content. This sounds like a book that fits that bill.
A good friend of mine is using this book as a guideline to help her get over her body image issues, and she loves it. When she's done, I'm going to borrow it. I write YA, and I'm a big believer in letting teens know (subtly, of course) that they can be happy with their bodies and not feel they need to punish themselves in order to reach unrealistic weight goals. What some teens do to themselves is just scary...
I agree, Tabitha. This is a great book to use as research for a YA novel.
I love a book that tells me to look at a brownie the same way I look at an apple! I'm following you, too!
The thing about this book that helped me the most when I read it, was about how "deprivation doesn't work". It's so true!
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