When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession

I have to admit, this book had some scary concepts in it for me. I have a long history of dieting, weighing myself like my life depended on it and micromanaging every bite. I would hate myself when I was 'bad' and ate something forbidden (I had the usual list of foods that were forbidden). I hated my butt, my thighs and my belly and I felt so ashamed I couldn't control my eating better. I felt so fat.I went to see a therapist to see what my problem was that I couldn't find the discipline to lose weight. She shocked me by telling me right off that I didn't have a weight problem, I had a dieting problem. That people came in all different sizes and shapes and our culture was fat phobic. That our culture encouraged eating disorders by making women believe that they should all look like supermodels and the thinner the better. That everything would be better, if we could just be thinner. We were taught to hate our bodies.I almost ran out of her office. How dare she say that it was okay to be less than thin and that food wasn't my enemy? Or that I could learn to listen to my body and eat what my body needed? That once I learned not to fear food and how to trust my body I would go to my 'natural' weight. Didn't she know that if I didn't control my every bite of food that I would blow up to the size of a blimp? But something she said snagged me into listening. I was sick of hating my body. She told me about this book and I decided to read it. Thank God she had a support group for fellow body haters, or else I probably would have died of fright.Well, guess what. It's been years now since I had that first session and read the book. I eat what I want when I want now and I love my beautiful (now middle aged) less than thin body. It took a lot of bravery and hard work to learn how to give up my dieting, food obsessions, bad body thoughts and learn the real reasons for my body hatred. I don't think about food much anymore, unless I'm hungry. I know myself and my body very well now and I keep my home stocked up with things I know I love. I carry my food bag (full of things I might like) around with me when I'm going to be gone from the house for long enough for me to get hungry. I've discovered that I don't much like fast food, or even most food from any restaurant (except sushi occasionally), but if I get hungry enough I'll eat something that my body isn't going to appreciate, so I take care of myself by bringing along what I might want. Which happens to be what my body wants.If you take a look at what I generally eat over a period of a week, a nutritionist would say I eat a healthy diet with how much fruits, vegetables, lean protein, whole grains and legumes I take in. I don't eat much fat, my body doesn't like it. But if you see what I eat day to day, you might say that I eat pretty weird. If I feel like a huge green salad for breakfast, that's what I have. Raisin Bran for dinner? No problem. For three days in a row, only broccoli with mozzarella melted on it, apples from my tree and not much else, because I didn't want anything else? Sure. Then a few days later eating from a quart of strawberry ice cream until I didn't want anymore? That works too. (I actually didn't wind up eating much ice cream, but it made me happy to eat out of the quart container and know that I could eat the whole thing if I really wanted to)So, be a rebel and refuse to hate your body. Refuse to play the "My thighs are so fat" or "I just can't get the fat off my belly" or "I was bad and ate a donut last night" game that other women play all the time when they are together.We have better things to invest our energy in than obsessing over our weight and food.

I'd like to address the review below me by "Gym Goddess" before I get started. The plan they encourage about carrying around a food bag is part of their plan to overcome binge/compulsive eating, which is an eating disorder. It might not make sense to you, because it may not seem "healthy" or "listening to your body", but this just proves that attitudes like that are the result of buying into society's disordered eating and diet obsessed culture. In fact, the plan is the most compassionate, truthful, rational way to overcome eating disorders, which are NEVER about food.Let me give some background of where I am because I think this places the book in the proper scope of understanding. I am recovered from Binge eating disorder, which I have had for about 20 years. I see a therapist about once a month for a good venting session as well as perspective and I'm also on an antidepressant. EDs are never about food. Eds are the result of pushing down your problems by stuffing yourself with food (or not eating it, in the case of Anorexia). This way, you can superficially stay in "food mode".. you can blame the food, you can go on a diet, you can obsess about scales, points, calories, carbs and "being healthy" INSTEAD of dealing with the problems that you have no coping skills to deal with."Overcoming Overeating" and "When Women Stop hating their Bodies" are companion books that help set the stage that American society and their obsessions with diets are not only detrimental to women, through pushing women to diet to conform to society's definition of beautiful (for now, a man body with huge breast implants), American society pushes women into eating disorders.Bad body thoughts are a companion to food obsession that help you avoid your problems. Feeling "FAT" is an ED sufferer's way of trying to distract themselves from what is really going on with themselves by obsessing about their bodies.How do you escape bad body thoughts? You become your own caretaker.WWSHTB continues the plan given in "Overcoming Overeating" and takes you through not only unraveling your thought processes, which are twisted around food, but also shows you HOW to become your own caretaker by feeding yourself when hungry, carrying around food in case you get hungry (whichever food YOU crave) and how to deal with "mouth hunger" (which is eating when food calls to you).In addition to showing you how to initially become your own care taker by FEEDING yourself, "WWSHTB" picks up where 'Overcoming Overeating" left off, which is taking you past the plan to overcome bingeing and mouth hunger, by showing you how to face your problems by sitting with them and looking at the problem from a different perspective. At some point, when food is no longer a friend or a lover, you'll still need to address residual issues which will occassionally cause you to fall into your old coping skill of eating. They show you how to do that!This book has many gems in it. My favorite line is on pg. 203: "You do not need food when you have yourself." Wow! It is so simple, yet so profound. In other words, when you become your own caretaker by feeding yourself not only on demand, but also when you have mouth hunger, and when you give yourself unconditional permission to eat whatever it is you crave, and when you take all emotions away from food so that a peach is the emotional equivalent to fudge, THEN you can start to unravel the twisted logic that placed you in the path of an eating disorder. And when you develop new coping skills so that bingeing and mouth hunger go away, THEN you will have developed a new sense of self, a self that will always be there for you and where it wont' even occur to you to eat for reasons other than hunger.And it is through that process, one which our diet-obsessed culture cannot possibly understand, you will have trumped society's irrational standards because you won't buy into them any more!I would like to personally thank the authors for this book: I *get* it now! :)

What a fantastic book this is. I have struggled with my weight and body image since having my two children. With so much information out there about what we 'should' be doing to lose or maintain our weight and so much pressure to conform to our societies ideal size and shape I have nearly turned myself into knots trying to 'make' my body conform instead of just letting it dictate to me what it needs and wants and letting it do it all by itself.If you have been on the diet roller coaster, losing then gaining then losing then regaining and you have had enough and want a REAL solution then this book is for you.I won't even try to explain it's contents because I think EVERY woman should have this in her library. Finally I am free to live my life while my body normalises itself. I don't have to plan meals, count calories, deprive myself of the foods I love or spend endless hours on mindless exercise machines. Who would have thought that the answer to my problems was to STOP dieting and that I would naturally return to my healthy ideal weight not to mention the other health complications I was having that have cleared up as well.With so many cases of overeating, binge dieting, and unhealthy eating disorders, this book should be made compulsory reading for ALL high school age girls too. Enjoy and Free yourself for ever :)

This book is an eye opener. I have been trying to step off the diet ladder for a while now having been I have been a compulsive eater for years and struggled with (minor, if there is such a thing) bulimia. Even when I was an average size I was never thin enough.I have read a lot of books about stopping dieting and learning to accept yourself but none have been as comprehensive, nurturing and useful as this one. I hate the title (its not a book you can easily read in pubic without a cover!) but the book is a real gem. It covers lots of different issues that people face and gives useful tips on how to overcome them. Some will be more relevant to you than others. I previously read "overcoming overeating" by the same authors which was good (4 Stars) but I'd rate this one at 5 stars.

I'm on the fence about this one. On the one hand, there is a lot of helpful practical advice for people who suffer with binge eating. On the other hand, the authors talk a lot about weight and body issues being linked to childhood issues, but what about those who have suffered issues as an adult? It's not as easy as teaching yourself that as an adult you can now set your own boundaries and limits, when you have had those boundaries trangressed as an adult. The book didn't seem to deal with that aspect at all. I think overall it is showing its age somewhat.

This book saved my life in my struggle with an eating disorder. I highly recommend it. A lot of emotionally intense work, but it is worth it!

Ein sehr wertvolles Buch für Frauen ! Egal ob man Übergewicht hat oder nicht. Denn wenn Frauen endlich ihre Selbstzweifel ablegen können verändert es die Welt.