Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women Can Transform Their Relationship with Food Through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling


Anita Johnston - 1999
    By weaving practical insights and exercises through a rich tapestry of multicultural myths, ancient legends, and folktales, Anita Johnston helps the millions of women preoccupied with their weight discover and address the issues behind their negative attitudes toward food.

Brain over Binge: Why I Was Bulimic, Why Conventional Therapy Didn't Work, and How I Recovered for Good


Kathryn Hansen - 2011
    The author, Kathryn Hansen, candidly shares her experience as a bulimic and her alternative approach to recovery. Brain over Binge is different than other eating disorder books which typically present binge eating and purging as symptoms of complex emotional and psychological problems. Kathryn disputes this mainstream idea and explains why traditional eating disorder therapy failed her and fails many. She explains how she came to understand her bulimia in a new way – as a function of her brain, and how she used the power of her brain to recover – quickly and permanently. Kathryn also sheds new light on eating disorder topics such as low self-esteem, poor body image, and dieting. Brain over Binge is a brave book that will help many by delivering an informed and inspiring message of free will, self-reliance, and self-control.

Appetites: Why Women Want


Caroline Knapp - 2003
    Caroline Knapp addresses the following question: How does a woman know, and then honour, what it is she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining and controlling women and their desires? She uses her own experiences as a powerful exploration of this issue.

Just Eat It: How intuitive eating can help you get your shit together around food


Laura Thomas - 2019
    It's part of a movement to give women power and control over our bodies. To free us from restrictive dieting, disordered eating and punishing exercise. To reject the guilt and anxiety associated with eating and, ultimately, to help us feel good about ourselves."Truly life-changing" Dolly Alderton, bestselling author of Everything I Know About LoveThis anti-diet guide from registered nutritionist Laura Thomas PhD can help you sort out your attitude to food and ditch punishing exercise routines. As a qualified practitioner of Intuitive Eating - a method that helps followers tune in to innate hunger and fullness cues - Thomas gives you the freedom to enjoy food on your own terms.There are no rules: only simple, practical tools and exercises including mindfulness techniques to help you recognise physiological and emotional hunger, sample conversations with friends and colleagues, and magazine and blog critiques that call out diet culture.So, have you ever been on a diet? Spent time worrying that you looked fat when you could have been doing something useful? Compared the size of your waistline to someone else's? Felt guilt, actual guilt, about the serious crime of . . . eating a doughnut? You're not alone. Just Eat It gives you everything you need to develop a more trusting, healthy relationship with food and your body.

The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy


Caroline Dooner - 2019
    In fact, our bodies are hardwired against it. But each time our diets fail, instead of considering that maybe our ridiculously low-carb diet is the problem, we wonder what’s wrong with us. Why can’t we stick to our simple plan of grapefruit and tuna fish??? Why are we so hungry? What is wrong with us??? We berate ourselves for being lazy and weak, double down on our belief that losing weight is the key to our everlasting happiness, and resolve to do better tomorrow. But it’s time we called a spade a spade: Constantly trying to eat the smallest amount possible is a miserable way to live, and it isn’t even working. So fuck eating like that. In The F*ck It Diet, Caroline Dooner tackles the inherent flaws of dieting and diet culture, and offers readers a counterintuitively simple path to healing their physical, emotional, and mental relationship with food. What’s the secret anti-diet? Eat. Whatever you want. Honor your appetite and listen to your hunger. Trust that your body knows what it is doing. Oh, and don’t forget to rest, breathe, and be kind to yourself while you’re at it.  Once you get yourself out of survival mode, it will become easier and easier to eat what your body really needs—a healthier relationship with food ultimately leads to a healthier you.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.Irreverent and empowering, The F*ck It Diet is call to arms for anyone who feels guilt or pain over food, weight, or their body. It’s time to give up the shame and start thriving. Welcome to the F*ck It Diet. Let’s Eat.

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works


Evelyn Tribole - 1995
    But the problem is not you, it's that dieting, with its emphasis on rules and regulations, has stopped you from listening to your body. Written by two prominent nutritionists, "Intuitive Eating" focuses on nurturing your body rather than starving it, encourages natural weight loss, and helps you find the weight you were meant to be. Learn: *How to reject diet mentality forever*How our three Eating Personalities define our eating difficulties*How to feel your feelings without using food*How to honor hunger and feel fullness*How to follow the ten principles of Intuitive Eating, step-by-step*How to achieve a new and safe relationship with food and, ultimately, your body With much more compassionate, thoughtful advice on satisfying, healthy living, this newly revised edition also includes a chapter on how the Intuitive Eating philosophy can be a safe and effective model on the path to recovery from an eating disorder.

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You


Elaine N. Aron - 1996
    In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.

Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating


Christy Harrison - 2019
    It will turn what you think you know about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it's infiltrated the health and wellness world, how to recognize it in all its sneaky forms, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health -- no matter their size. Drawing on scientific research, personal experience, and stories from patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture, and helps readers reclaim their bodies, minds, and lives so they can focus on the things that truly matter.

Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too


Jenni Schaefer - 2003
    He controlled Jenni’s life, distorted her self-image, and tried to physically harm her throughout their long affair. Then, in therapy, Jenni learned to treat her eating disorder as a relationship, not a condition. By thinking of her eating disorder as a unique personality separate from her own, Jenni was able to break up with Ed once and for all.Inspiring, compassionate, and filled with practical exercises to help you break up with your own personal E.D., "Life Without Ed" provides hope to the millions of people plagued by eating disorders. Beginning with Jenni’s “divorce” from Ed, this supportive, lifesaving book combines a patient’s insights and experiences with a therapist’s prescriptions for success to help you live a healthier, happier life without Ed.

Love Is Letting Go of Fear


Gerald G. Jampolsky - 1979
    To live without fear, we must stop analysing it, stop agonising over it, stop fighting with it, and let it go.

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships


Harriet Lerner - 1985
    Harriet Lerner, in her renowned classic that has transformed the lives of millions of readers. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of our anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol


Holly Whitaker - 2019
    Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEOWe live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

Brave Girl Eating: A Family's Struggle with Anorexia


Harriet Brown - 2010
    Brave Girl Eating is an intimate, shocking, compelling, and ultimately uplifting look at the ravages of a mental illness that affects more than 18 million Americans.

Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He'll Change


Robin Norwood - 1985
    Therapist Robin Norwood describes loving too much as a pattern of thoughts and behaviour which certain women develop as a response to problems from childhood.

Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out—and Never Say Diet Again


Rebecca Scritchfield - 2016
    One indicates happiness, the other tracks how you feel about your body. If you’re like millions of people, the lines do not intersect. But what if they did?This practical, inspirational, and visually lively book shows you how to create a healthier and happier life by treating yourself with compassion rather than shame. It shows the way to a sense of well-being attained by understanding how to love, connect, and care for yourself—and that includes your mind as well as your body.Body Kindness is based on four principles.WHAT YOU DO: the choices you make about food, exercise, sleep, and moreHOW YOU FEEL: befriending your emotions and standing up to the unhelpful voice in your headWHO YOU ARE: goal-setting based on your personal valuesWHERE YOU BELONG: body-loving support from people and communities that help you create a meaningful lifeWith mind and body exercises to keep your energy spiraling up and prompts to help you identify what YOU really want and care about, Body Kindness helps you let go of things you can't control and embrace the things you can by finding the workable, daily steps that fit you best. Think of it as the anti-diet book that leads to a more joyful and meaningful life!