My dieting has been a placeholder, a distraction, from the things I truly want to do. Oh, you’d like to write a book? Ha! You’ve gotta study up on recipes and go shopping for your meal prep. And then you’ve gotta spend your whole weekend prepping meals that are gonna taste like shit by Tuesday. No wonder I always felt so depressed. I always wondered why I had such dark and dismal feelings simply over food. Probably because my body knew it was about to starve - again - and was gearing up. I was tired of scouring a menu for one thing I could eat. And when I found it, it didn’t even sound food. Why even go out to eat? I can cook myself shitty food. Or, maybe you have had similar expletive sentiments towards diets and food phobias and weight obsession. Another biblical group has more grace but also rules. No more than a fist-sized portion of food as that’s how big your stomach is after all. Great. What happens though when you eat one bite past the portion? Immense guilt. Guilt which leads to bingeing. I got part way through the Physical Part section when I came across a sentence that sent shivers down my spine. The author explains that to help you break the yo-yo dieting and to become a happier, healthier you, you need to eat and this means that you need to resist putting on weight. At this point, I will admit I kind of said ‘hell no’ and closed the book. I can’t afford to put on weight, truly I can’t afford a new wardrobe of clothes. I did have a bit of a hard time at first opening up to everything this book had to teach me, I've read it once and I'm planning on reading it again and doing all of the exercises since I didn't go as deep on all of them cause I was a bit afraid at first.

Let me start this review by saying that I started my journey of leaving my tumultuous past with diets in December last year when I discovered the book of Intuitive Eating which the author is not particularly fond of to what I could gather from this book haha however let me just tell you if that book changed my life, this one finished giving me the tools I needed. An ex-yo-yo dieter herself, Dooner knows how terrifying it can be to break free of the vicious cycle, but with her signature sharp humor and compassion, she shows readers that a sustainable, easy relationship with food is possible. I’ve had body image issues my whole life for reasons I won’t go into here. But I’m taking control now. I still want to be thin because that’s how I like to see myself, but not because that’s what others want or expect of me. And I’m willing now to trust my body and give it what it wants and let it do its thing. I ride my Peloton bike because I feel stronger each time. Not because I must to lose weight. This book talks about how damaging yo-yo dieting is. It quotes studies that have been done on what not eating properly does to your body and highlights that being overweight does not mean you are not healthy and the same the other way around, there are some people who are slim and look healthy, yet they are not.So, I’m giving this book half a star, because it is a book, that someone took time to write. I’m giving it a second half a star, for the first half of the chapter entitled, “The Mental Part”, for having some decent advice and talk about self love. Randomly mentions eating probiotics, fermented food, and adrenal support supplements (what?) on a list of “ways to improve your health with no weight loss or gyms”, without mentioning this anywhere else Recommends eating 3,200 calories a day, and states that eating 1,600 a day will put yourself in starvation mode, mentioning that the study was done on people who “walk 22 miles a week”, but failing to mention that **they were in work camps**.

I definitely agreed with a few things. I feel the human body is still a "caveman" body - doing anything possible to survive possible famine. I believe that if you overly restrict intake, your body will eventually binge, because it thinks it's starving. Add to this two biblical-based weight loss programs, one of which I lost a lot of weight because I was waiting for hunger and eating only until satisfied, and never eating if my stomach didn’t growl. If I ever wanted food outside of physiological hunger, I was to pray to God to fill the void I was looking to food for. It worked for a while until I would want to eat birthday cake at a party but I wasn’t truly hungry. When I didn’t want to be rude, I’d eat it and then feel tremendous guilt and shame. I’d disclose it to people in my group and be further shamed for still living in “my sin.” If I had truly laid my sin down, I wouldn’t have eaten that cake. I’m pretty sure there’s no earthly way anyone would ever lose weight eating this way, so I’m not sure why they even bother calling it a diet. Actually, I’m fairly certain eating this way is a great way to ensure an early grave.

So far, this seems like an excellent book for people who fit into normal size clothing who torture themselves with diets and other food restrictions. It seems like a great book for people who strive to constantly look like photo shopped magazine models, or buy into the lie that we all need to be a tight size 4 to be happy. Will this work for me, I doubt it as the damage to my body is done. For over 20 years I’ve eaten so little that I don’t know when I’m hungry. What I have done is to try to eat more. Sounds daft but it is hard work trying to force yourself to eat when you don’t want to but if I am to get my body out of the starvation mode that it has been in for many, many years then this is what I need to do. My blood pressure would climb to dangerous levels from dill potato chips and BBQ Pringles. I'd get fat from bagels and Nutella and in all likelihood develop type 2 diabetes. I did them all. I’m not kidding. Starvation, cabbage soup, Atkins’, South Beach, Weight Watchers x4 (because each time I was sure that this time I’ll be able to keep within my points and not starve and agonize over how I’d eaten all my points and would be having water popsicles for dinner) Nutrisystem x3 (because each time I was sure the food was better), LA Weightloss, 21-Day Fix, several rounds of the hcg diet (the worst thing I ever did to my body but 50 lbs lost in two months was worth it then), Ideal Protein, countless diet pills, and finally, keto. And these are the more mainstream diets. So let me tell you, this book is priceless just read it with an open mind and just take into account that YOU decide in the end what is the best for YOU I don't believe there is a cookie cutter way to fix everyone's problems with food.