December Book Club: Anti-Diet
If you know me, you know how much I love books (reading them, buying them, talking about them, wandering amongst them at any used book store I can find.) Book Club is a monthly post about a book I’ve read–and recommend–because books can be one of our greatest therapeutic tools.
It feels like diet talk becomes extra pervasive between November and January.
While the holiday season is branded as a time to come together and enjoy festive meals with loved ones, it’s also the perfect breeding ground for guilt around food. Gyms host “Turkey Burn” classes as motivators to work off Thanksgiving calories, family members make comments about how many latkes or Christmas cookies they can eat, and friends may include some kind of weight-loss goal in their New Year's resolutions.
But when does focus on food and “health” overtake the joy of the holiday season, of being present with the people we love, of seeing our own worth as unrelated to our size?
Anti-Diet was written by journalist-turned-dietician Christy Harrison. Using her own disordered relationship with food as a basis, Harrison writes about how much time and brainpower it takes to be constantly thinking about food or weight and how many of the things we believe about weight and health are actually wrong. She nicknames diet culture the Life Thief and shares countless accounts of people who have suffered losses because of the billion dollar diet industry. It’s an informative and relatable read for anyone who has thought about what they can and cannot eat because of its impact on their body size.
Who’s this book for? Those who are hoping to learn more and understand the components of Diet Culture in order to gain awareness and make some lifestyle shifts away from the pursuit of weight loss.
What this book is not: This book only skims the surface of intuitive eating and how to put an anti-diet mindset into practice. For that, I’d recommend Intuitive Eating and the Intuitive Eating Workbook by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. And for more on radical self-love, check out The Body Is Not An Apology, our June book club pick!
Favorite part: “That’s why one of the key tenets of intuitive eating is that there’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ food. This thinking flies into the face of everything diet culture teaches us about food. Yet when you destigmatize foods and look at them all as equally worth options, it takes away the irresistible pull toward “forbidden” foods (don’t those always taste the sweetest?). Instead, you’re able to choose what you truly want and need in any given moment.”
