This Is Who I Am: Book Review

I wish I could remember how I discovered This is Who I Am: Our Beauty in All Shapes and Sizes. It is a book that I think every woman should read (and every man, for that matter). Not only is it a celebration of bodies in a sampling of their magnificent variations, but it is a book about the stories living within these bodies.

This is Who I Am is a coffee-table conversation-starter filled with beautiful photographs of women accompanied by stories of the women behind the images. The book is both thought-provoking and inspiring. The whole thing feels like a work of art, particularly for those interested in the development of one's body image.

I actually think This is Who I Am would make a wonderful gift for the right person in your life. I've had the book for well over a year and I still thumb through it now and then, in awe of the beauty and inspiration contained within. I look forward to sharing it with my daughter when she's older.

For more about the book, visit this website.

The French Don't Diet Plan: Book Review

The French Don’t Diet Plan is a book I happened upon years after reading Intuitive Eating. I discovered it when I was mostly an intuitive eater, but still feeling a bit bad/wrong for eating things with real fat in them, you know like cheese, butter and cream. My body told me those things were okay and in fact I felt pretty good eating these real foods, but my mind wasn’t entirely caught up. Until I read this book. 

I actually read The French Don’t Diet Plan soon after becoming engaged to my now-husband, which is a time that many women sadly (in my opinion) restrict what they eat. Not me. We used every kitchen appliance we received for our wedding including our brand-new ice-cream maker. I guess for me, this book removed any last inkling of fear I had of fat: the fear that fat would make me fat, that fat would ruin my health, that it would even look un-sexy or irresponsible to eat it. Imagine that. After reading this book, those fears disappeared and I felt fully healed from any eating issues still lingering in my psyche.

The book begins with the author taking you with him and his family on a trip to Lyon, France, and gives you a glimpse inside his psyche and physical body while there. The trepidation he felt lingering at hours-long lunches that all concluded with decadent cheese. The confusion he revealed in the grocery store when he couldn't find low-fat dairy products. And the utter delight he experienced in his body while eating this way. He lived the French paradox we’ve all read about: eating rich foods led to shedding of pounds that he’d put on in the states. (Disclaimer: you know I’m not saying he was supposed to lose weight or that all weight loss is good, please I hope you know that by now. I’m just saying he was delighted to find that a byproduct of indulging in rich, delicious food actually led to a 25-pound weight loss that he wasn't even trying to achieve.)

Reading about Dr. Will Clower's experiences somehow opened up an entirely new world of food for me. Sprinkled throughout the book are delightful recipes, and they are juxtaposed with ingredient lists for their packaged food versions. For example, a 4-ingredient alfredo sauce recipe sits atop a very long ingredient list for a frozen version of that very same dish. Somehow, full-fat cheese and cream don’t seem half as “bad” when sitting across the page from very long lists of ingredients that you can’t pronounce and certainly can’t describe to your kid without an advanced degree in chemistry. It sort of slaps you in the face (or gently pats you on the cheek) with the realization that one man’s poison is another man’s luxury. Does that make sense? I guess this book just made me embrace cream, butter, eggs, full-fat yogurt and so many other wonderful foods.  I discovered that eating them left me entirely more satisfied than I felt after consuming food-like-products.

I started ordering Caesar salads at lunch, and making biscuits on the weekends. My then-fiancé and I made homemade vanilla and strawberry ice-cream. We bought fresh fruit at the farmers market and I’d eat heaping bowls of it mixed with full-fat plain yogurt, with a little peanut butter mixed in (don’t knock it ‘til you try it). I ate my mother-in-law’s béchamel sauce with gusto and her strawberry-rhubarb pies joyfully. And…I was very in tune with my hunger and fullness signals. I only ate what tasted phenomenal and I naturally wanted to stop when satisfied because the entire experience was so, well, satisfying. I wasn’t trying to lose weight for my wedding, but my clothes did become a bit loser. I think I was also so excited for the big day that my appetite lessened a tad in those last days leading up to the big day.

This book, I think, solidified everything I learned in Intuitive Eating and then some. It also broadened my cooking repertoire, much to my husband’s delight.  I sometimes re-read portions of this book when I go astray from eating so well. I do have a toddler, after all, and packaged foods are indeed easy!  I’m a working mom, and thus I don’t always have time (or energy) to cook biscuits from scratch.  For that reason alone, I do have a great appreciation for good-quality packaged foods.  Hence, my occasional Favorite-Product-Of-The-Week posts. But I will say that this book carried within its pages very important messages that I’ll keep with me forever.

Oh, and don’t be misled by the word “plan” in the book title. I didn’t find the book to be diet-y at all. 

Happy eating, and happy reading…

Intuitive Eating: Book Review

I've been putting off writing a review of Inuitive Eating because I'm afraid my words won't do justice to it at all. Because this book made such an impact on me, I want this review to be extra special. I was lucky enough to find this book right after finishing Making Peace with Food, and let me tell you, I couldn't put it down.

The first chapter of Intuitive Eating is called Hitting Diet Bottom, and hit it I did. The second chapter looks at what kind of eater you are: the careful eater, the professional dieter, the unconscious eater, an on and on. There are then sub-categories under each of these. If you've ever struggled with eating and cannot find a description of yourself on these pages, you should probably write your own book because I felt so immensely understood by these authors in their picture-perfect descriptions of me and how I chose my food at the time.

The book then takes you through the 10 principles of intuitive eating, starting with Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality. This principle was hugely important to me. It lays out in a very clear and compelling way, all the reasons why diets don't work and, frankly, aren't good for you. Here's just one nugget, from page 49 of the second edition:

"A thirty-two-year study of more than 3,000 men and women in the Framingham Heart Study has shown that regardless of initial weight, people whose weight repeatedly goes up and down--known as weight cycling or yo-yo dieting -- have a higher overall death rate and twice the normal risk of dying from heart disease. These results were independent of cardiovascular risk factors, and held true regardless if a person was thin or obeses. The harm from yo-yo dieting may be equal to the risks of staying obese."

Even after I'd finished the book, I often came back to this chapter after overhearing someone in an elevator at work talking about needing to "go on a diet" or "spend an extra hour at the gym" because she ate a, gasp(!), brownie. It was my salvation to come back to this book for reassurance that the non-dieting path I was on was the right one for me.

Another one of my favorite quotes from the book can be found at the beginning of chapter 12. It says:

"Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect realistically to squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. Respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical of your body shape."

So rational, and yet so far from the reality of so many people. We're taught that our bodies are a constant project to be poked, prodded, evaluated and dieted down to the "perfect" size and shape, which of course doesn't exist.

Elyse Resch, who I'm lucky enough to know and study under, brings a spiritual approach to the book which I found particularly comforting and inspiring. Evelyn Tribole brings an entirely different energy (and she has lots of it!) that's focused on the facts and motivating her readers to give up dieting and trust their bodies.

The one chapter that was tough for me to swallow while in the midst of healing from my eating disorder, was the one dedicated to Principle 10: Honor Your Health -- Gentle Nutrition. Because I had such a fear of fat during my unhealthiest years, this chapter was difficult for me. I had to put this chapter on the back burner for years because I needed to focus on anything but nutrition. To focus on nutrition at the end of this otherwise life-saving book, felt to me like giving an alcoholic a glass of wine on new year's. So I had to ignore it.

That said, the book is written by two nutritionists, so they had to share their wisdom about nutrition, and their advice is solid. I would just recommend skipping this chapter until you are fully recovered from your issues with food. I also know for myself that when I don't worry about nutrition, I get it. Does that make sense? When I don't worry about nutrition, I'm free to eat a burger and fries, but I'm also free to eat an entire bowl of brocolli. So I'm quite confident that all in all my body is getting a wonderful array of nutritients, vitamins and minerals. I just can't "try to be nutritious" because it screws with my head.

I could go on about this book, but I'll wrap it up here. If you had only one book to read on the subject of recovering from disordered eating, this would be the one book I'd tell you to buy. So, if you haven't already....

Making Peace with Food: Book Review

Here it is. My first book review, and I've not written one before, so this is going to follow no particular format. I'm most excited to tell you about this book because it was the first book I ever read on the topic of non-dieting. I discovered it deep in the stacks of my college library and sat down on the library floor to start reading the book. I couldn't put it down at the time because I was in such desperate need for help. So without further adieu, my first book recommendation:

Making Peace with Food by Susan Kano

This book feels like a textbook and workbook all in one, and from the illustrations sprinkled through every chapter, you'll see right away that it was published in the 80s. But don't let that scare you. This book marked a turning point in my life, and I imagine in the lives of many other women and men struggling with eating disorders.

The cover of the book tells you exactly what you're getting. "OVERCOME YO-YO DIETING, BINGE EATING, FOOD ANXIETY, BODY ANXIETY, AND SELF-DEFEATING GUILT." Does the book accomplish this? Yes. Well, as much as a book can. The rest is up to the reader to dig deep and implement in his/her life.

Each chapter of Making Peace with Food includes a "Personal Questions" section at the end that asks the reader to answer questions that will usually illuminate themes from that chapter as they appear in his/her life. Many sections also include goals for the reader to strive towards on the journey of overcoming food anxiety.

One of the biggest takeaways for me in this entire book -- that I still talk about with clients today -- is the "setpoint theory."

Basically, the notion of setpoint theory is that our bodies each have a weight they are happiest at. This is the weight where we feel most energized, alive and frankly, comfortable. Our bodies want to be at this weight, so if we eat a little less than usual one day because we're in back-to-back meetings, our bodies aren't going to drop weight. They're going to fight to stay at their ideal setpoint weight. Likewise, if we eat a little more than usual one night, we're not going to bust out of our pants immediately. Our bodies will fight to stay at their ideal setpoint weight. Setpoint theory is very complex, and different things affect our bodies' setpoint weights throughout our lives including age, activity and genetics. The whole idea of setpoint theory spoke to me when I was going through my own process of recovery and I think the theory makes a lot of sense.

In general, I think Kano does an excellent job of relating her personal experience to readers and also imparting a hefty amount of information to the reader to convince them (if you've been dieting all your life, you need to be convinced that it doesn't work) that they can achieve freedom from food anxiety.

Great quote from the book, page 18:

"Some of us are meant to be very thin; some of us are meant to be very fat; and most of us are meant to be somewhere in between. We all deserve to be at peace with our bodies instead of in a constant state of tension and dissatisfaction. We all deserve to be proud of ourselves and our bodies no matter how fat or thin we are."

Making Peace with Food will help you understand that belief and so many more. It will also help you, especially if you're just starting out on this journey, to make peace with food and with yourself. Let me know if you've read this one and what you think.