Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight

When I heard about Linda Bacon's book Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight I'll admit I was curious. As someone who has struggled with my own weight I was intrigued by the idea of health at every size. I've known plenty of people who are skinny as a twig, but eat junk food and never exercise. Heck, I've been more than a little jealous of these people. But, I've also known individuals who are quite large but eat mainly healthy foods and exercise frequently. I, myself, tend to fall somewhere in between those two groups. And honestly, the larger individuals are probably healthier than those skinny minnies who never exercise because there's a lot more to health than how you look.

So what is this book that "throws away the scale" all about? Bacon, a nutrition professor in the Biology Department at City College of San Francisco as well as associate nutritionist at the University of California, Davis, goes beyond the diets and myths surrounding weight to bring readers a greater understanding of health.

She deals with issues of accepting a wide variety of body types and sizes. We're not a one-size fits all society, why are we pushing ourselves to be something we're not naturally meant to be? She helps you understand your internal cues of hunger as well as teaches you about food. From our instinctual triggers and tastes to how to change what we crave. She gives hints and helps to get you moving your body towards one of health.

Nothing she teaches is to help you lose weight. It's to help you find your healthy size, to help you learn to enjoy food and stop punishing yourself for being something you don't see as ideal.

I'll admit, after reading this I still don't feel okay being the size I am. I think it will take a long time before I can really throw away the scale and feel okay. But I am okay with who I am, I do enjoy what I eat (most of the time). The points she discusses make sense, I definitely found them interesting. But as I run on the treadmill, do strength training exercises and take my walks I'll still hold onto the hope of shrinking my waistline. I'm not doing it to be like the supermodels. I'll never look like that and don't think they look healthy anyway. But I'll keep that hope of being a size or two smaller alive for me, it keeps me motivated to keep moving. And, after all, moving is important and should be fun.

Book info:

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Benbella Books (November 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933771585
ISBN-13: 978-1933771588