Anti-Diet - Christy Harrison

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"If you're like most people, you've dieted at some point in your life. You've had negative thoughts about your body, carefully counted your calories, and obsessed over the ever-changing rules of "healthy eating." But studies have shown that well over 90 percent of people who manage to lose weight regain it within five years. If dieting is so ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?

The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness with health and even moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means to attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It's sexist, racist, and classist, yet this approach to thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to identify. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming.

In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian nutritionist, takes on diet culture and the multibillion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, well-being, and happiness. It will turn what you believe about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it has infiltrated the world of health and wellness, all the sneaky forms it can take, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health - no matter their size. Based on scientific research, Harrison's personal experience, and stories from her patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture and will help you reclaim your body, mind, and life so you can focus on things that truly matter."

This book is life-changing. I couldn't stop underlining and taking notes as I read it, and I want to give a copy to everyone I know. As someone who has struggled since high school with disordered eating, yo-yo and bandwagon dieting, weight fluctuations, etc, every word Christy wrote resonated with me. When I reflect back on times I have lost weight, it has always been as a result of extreme dieting, it has never been sustainable, and sitting here reflecting on it, was it worth the effort and the misery of constantly being hungry, crabby, and tired? FUCK NO. Especially when I take into account that regardless of how high or low my weight was, my actual scientific measurements of health like cholesterol levels and blood pressure have been excellent and, more importantly, have never changed. If being fat or gaining weight is unhealthy, then at 30-40 pounds heavier than I was ten years ago shouldn't other indicators of health be getting worse?

Things that make you go "hmmm..."

I am so grateful that a friend of mine read this book and recommended it to me. In the last few months, I have been focusing my energy on mental health and self care, and part of that focus included tackling my body dysmorphia. What better way to untangle my issues with weight and body image that than by reading a book debunking the message fed to all of us that the only way to be healthy is to be thin and highlighting all the ways that diet culture messes with our lives while offering no real benefits? There were moments as I read that I literally wanted to yell or cheer out loud, it was so inspiring, and there were just as many moments where I was in tears because what I was reading resonated so deeply with my experience. Also, we need to talk more about how racist, classist, and misogynist diet culture is, because I had no idea, and reading about the ways in which diet culture and fatphobia try to force everyone into essentially a rich white standard of beauty, I just...if you don't walk away from this book furious at diet culture and legitimately ready to burn it to the ground, good god, what is going on with you?

One of my favorite inspiring moments is when Christy notes in chapter one that "it's hard to smash the patriarchy on an empty stomach." I mean.............yeah! It is, you guys. Can we please eat some fucking carbs and get smashing? And just think, that was chapter one. There are eleven chapters, folx, all just as empowering. Whether you have struggled with diet culture or not, read, be inspired, and share the message. Let's burn diet culture to the ground together!