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. 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 honestly only made it about half way through this book - I RARELY don’t finish a book through once I begin. While I think the overall message of the book is well intentioned and there are some good pieces of information there are definitely parts that I found problematic.

This was definitely a fun, well-researched book. A little repetitive, but with a topic like this you often have to pound ideas into people’s brains. This book could be a little vague and too all encompassing, it could have almost been two separate books with different topics. But I guess, two for the price of one? I liked the myth busting about diet culture and the relation between health and weigh. I also liked that it was not only an anti-diet book, but a life style book.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 learned a lot of from intuitive eating and from this book and I will make my own rules with the best of both worlds and everything else I can learn about this subject from all the sources provides to me from these books... and that's what you can do too. Or, maybe you have had similar expletive sentiments towards diets and food phobias and weight obsession. I definitely did not agree with the author's "this works for everyone" approach. What I've learned in my 35 year weight battle is that everybody is different and there is no magic bullet for every person. The author was able to reintroduce sugar and eat it intuitively without binging, cravings, etc. That is not my experience with sugar, even when I ate sugar/carbs whenever I wanted them, I always always always wanted more. If I didn't reach some kind of equilibrium in 6 years, when was it going to happen for me?

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. 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 elseSo 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. 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. 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. 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.