Customer Reviews

Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight

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As an eating disorders specialist, I see the problems caused by our culture's myths about weight and worth. Dr. Bacon has written a well-cited and persuasive book that teaches us that the real prize is health and well-being, at any size. How can you love the body you have? How can you focus on caring for yourself in your daily decisions and in the way you choose to live in the world? Many of us healthcare providers who understand that diets don't work, and that healthy people come in a range of sizes, now have this terrific book to recommend to our patients. And for the healthcare providers who don't yet know the research about the possibility of health across the broad range of body sizes, the book can educate and guide them in how to provide supportive, collaborative, and weight-neutral healthcare. I'd recommend you have this book in hand next time you go see a new healthcare provider!

This book is the BEST researched book about obesity and weight management I have EVER read. It is extremely well cited and quite eye opening about what science REALLY says about obesity. Very comprehensive, the author covers the history (and politics) of the so called "obesity epidemic", as well as the risks (and non risks) of obesity. She straight talks in the book, and I love that. Finally she presents a plan for being healthy and fit which is doable for anyone regardless of size. This is such a fascinating book, I couldn't put it down. I have read many books on this subject but Health at Every Size is DEFINITELY the best of all the books I've ever read. It's a must read for anyone who is interested in the science of obesity and also in a healthy lifestyle (without having to "lose weight") and a must have as a reference in your library.

This week, when we were in Las Vegas, I finished reading Dr. Linda Bacon's book Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight.

Bacon didn't coin the term Health at Every Size (HAES), as she points out in the book. It was a movement before her involvement. But she has written a book that spells it out in a very readable, understandable way.

Health at Every Size starts with a discussion about the social and cultural myths surrounding weight. She talks about how at different times in the last century, women's magazines have had articles about how to GAIN weight, instead of how to lose it. Maybe the most important lesson in the book is how the weight loss industry, which includes government agencies, lies and manipulates statistics in order to make us believe that if we are fat, we are going to die.

1.) We're all going to die. Skinny does not equal immortal. (In case you were wondering.)

2.) The Center for Disease Control helped to design the `obesity crisis' with false statistics.

3.) The act of trying to obtain a `perfect' weight causes far more health problems than the act of trying to be as healthy as possible at your current weight, whatever that may be.

The first part of this book, for me anyway, felt like a battle cry.

The next part of the book talks about Health at Every Size and how to implement it into your life.

I'll admit something here. I skipped ahead to section two. And I was confused. Because I was looking for menu plans and concrete steps to follow. I've read a lot of diet and `life style change' books, starting with Susan Powter and ending right here. They all have steps to follow.

This book doesn't break HAES down that way, and at first I was confused. Because-well, how am I supposed to do this if you don't tell me how? Where are the charts? What about a training schedule or a list of HAES friendly snacks?

Then I went back and read from the beginning. (This was one of those times that my penchant for reading books backwards didn't work out for me.)

Turns out that HAES isn't a diet. I was a little slow integrating that information, because I actually knew that going in. It isn't a fitness plan. It isn't anything other than a validation, permission to treat yourself well right this minute. So Bacon's section two talks more about easing yourself out of what may well be a decades long addiction to dieting. It gives you permission to exercise because it's fun and feels good, or even as training, rather than as a punishment for the sin of being fat. To enjoy whatever food you want to eat-literally, whatever food-without putting a moral judgment on it.

HAES breaks down like this:

1. Love yourself. Yourself today, not yourself 10 or 50 or 150 pounds from now. Your body is just your body, it is neutral morally.

2. Eat good food, eat what you want and enough of it, and stop when you're full.

3. Move because it feels good, it is good for your health (yes, even if you never lose a pound) and it's fun.

Deceptively simple, right?

Bacon does talk some about set points and how you may be keeping your body above its comfortable weight by eating past when you're full and avoiding exercise. I was impressed, however, that she didn't turn this into a weight loss book.

Eating well and moving your body moderately will improve your fitness and your health-even if your body never gives up a single pound.

If you're anything like me, you have so many years of `accepting' that your health and your weight are intricately tied, that turning that off is really difficult. It's one thing to say "I can be fat and still fit" and another to believe it deep down. Even in the face of evidence that it's true. Even knowing that feeling like you have to thin before you earn being fit is a response to cultural conditioning.

You can buy this book on Amazon for about $10. You might be able to get it from your library. However you get it, prepare to have your ideas about your body, you culture and yourself be challenged.

Anyone who wants to change his or her life for the better and do him/herself a huge favor should read Dr. Linda Bacon's book, Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight.

This book is counter-culture and earth-shattering in scope and quality. Bacon, a revered researcher of weight and related issues, single-handedly takes on the misguided and erroneous notions that pervade our society about weight loss, dieting and health. This book is well-researched and excellently cited - two huge criteria for me when reading anything of this nature - and actually breaks down and explains why and how America has been made to believe that fat kills and weight is ugly.

Well fat doesn't kill and big is just as beautiful as anything else. We've been lied to by health professionals, researchers, our government and nearly everybody else.

What makes this woman - who apparently few people agrees with - right, you ask? That I can hardly tell you in this brief post. I can only beseech you to go on Amazon.com or wherever you prefer to order your books and buy this one. It will change your life.

It you're fat, it will be the beginning of a whole new life of feeling good without dieting and hating your body. If you're thin, it will make you understand an oppressed segment of our population and hopefully it will also change your relationship with food and your weight for the better. I'm not a big guy but I will never understand food or weight the same again - and I mean that in a good way.

I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I have dieted over the years, and after each "successful" weight loss, I have gained back twice as much as the original loss. I discovered the size-acceptance movement in the early '90s and embraced my weight, maintaining it for 10 years, until my doctor discovered sugar in my urine. What followed was a seven-year nightmare of doctors, endocronologists, orders to lose weight, prescriptions of drugs I didn't want to take and a reunion with body hatred and the battle of the bulge. I became obsessed and tortured by my struggle to keep the weight off that I had lost during this time. What started out as a quest for good health resulted in a diet roller coaster like none other I had ridden.

I returned to therapy, met with a nutritionist, consulted my medical doctor, none of whom could give me answers as to why I couldn't lose weight. The harder I tried, the easier it was to gain. I panicked as my weight began to creep closer to the original starting point, which was the highest it had ever been, when the supposed health problems began.

I began to become suspicious of the common prescription of diet and exercise. I read books and spent endless hours on the internet searching for answers. I created a Meetup group for support. It was through one of the members of that group that I was introduced to Linda Bacon's book "Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight."

I finished the book in a couple of days. It was such a good read, and I related to everything she talked about. I soaked up all the information, including the all-important message of size acceptance, something I'd lived and forgotten. The transformation of a diet mentality to self-acceptance, though, began long before I completed the book. I could feel the peace from within, peace I had been seeking for nearly a decade. It isn't my fault. Nobody had every said that before. It had always been my fault. Failure was all I knew when it came to weight, body image, and dieting (despite great success in all other areas of my life). For the first time since the diabetes diagnosis, I feel an enormous freedom from guilt, shame, and failure.

By the way, I controlled my sugar with a change in diet, and it came down after only losing 5 pounds. Back then I (and my doctor) attributed the normal sugar readings with the weight loss, not the change in foods I was eating. Now looking back, after reading this book, I realize it wasn't the weight loss that "cured" my diabetes (for which my doctors claim there is no cure) just as it wasn't the weight gain that caused my diabetes. One of the biggest (failed) motivators of losing weight and keeping it off was the diabetes. I no longer fear gaining weight, and ironically since changing my thinking, the gaining has ceased. For the first time in 7 years, I am maintaining my weight. And the most powerful observation is, by listening to my own body for cues as discussed in the book, I have been eating less, even during Thanksgiving. For the first time in my whole life, I did not stuff myself on Thanksgiving. And it wasn't because I was dieting or trying not to. It was a very natural feeling to stop before that point.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who struggles with a healthy relationship with food, everyone who diets, everyone who has several sizes of clothes on hand, and everyone who wants to be healthy.

You know this in your heart-of-hearts as truth: every time you diet, you always gain more weight back than you lost, your skinny friend eats more than you but remains thin, you exercise regularly and feel fit, but you still don't lose weight, and that sometimes the craving for food seems completely irrational and irresistible, despite all your will power. But heart-of-heart knowing does not carry the same weight (sorry!) as facts, research, and data.
Dr. Linda Bacon uses scientific research to explain, in easy to understand conversational language, the physical mechanisms that cause rebound weight gain after dieting and that work to preserve fat rather than lose fat. She exposes the sources of the inability to recognize natural feelings of hunger and satiety. She explains what 20th Century food additives have done to our ability to process the food we eat. Once you gain this understanding of the science of how your body works, all of your intuitive knowledge about your weight makes perfect sense.
Dr. Bacon outlines a do-able plan for replacing artificial dieting with techniques for re-learning to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. She emphasizes making healthful food choices, bringing movement into your life, and allowing your body to stabilize at its own unique set point. "Diet" is rescued from being a hateful verb, full of punishing calorie counting, and returned to meaning simply what you choose to eat. Dr. Bacon's "non-diet" encourages healthful, satisfying choices, in order to honor your own unique body, no matter what size you are.
I love this book!

This book changed my life. Before HAES, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I ate healthy food, listened to my body, ate mindfully, and exercised. The weight didn't come off, so I thought I must be overeating. I got perpetually caught on the starvation diet train - on again, off again. Self-hate was the name of the game. When I finally discovered this book, I felt like finally someone made sense, and validated my experiences with dieting making me worse, not better. I actually like myself now, and practice REALLY taking good care of myself! Read this book! You will not be disappointed.

I ditched dieting many years ago so I could accomplish more in life than taking up less room on the planet. Although I consider myself enlightened about body acceptance, reading Health At Every Size was like going to a size-positive finishing school. I read. I wrote in the margins, I screamed in frustration, I read some more. I bought extra copies to share with others.

Dr. Bacon shines a bright light on commonly held (and untrue) beliefs about fat people. Health at Every Size is a master class in fighting the sick cultural idea that fat people are defective, and that thinner is always better. I highly recommend reading it, no matter what your size.

I thought I knew a lot about weight and dieting, about science and politics. What I didn't know could be put in a book - this book. It is an exceptional book. Well researched. Powerful but not propaganda. It really has the capacity to be life changing, and culture changing if enough people read it. You might think it's subversive, but only if actual science is subversive. It's disturbing that this is an "underground" movement and this knowledge is so well hidden. Everything in here is evidenced by years of medical research. What's subversive is what has been hidden from us because of cultural and economic priorities. You don't have to be fat to read this book and learn a great deal you need to know.

I've been overweight my entire life and have dealt with the stigma that goes along with that. After years of unsuccessful dieting, I began to notice some trends with my body which made me realize that something was off with all the info and advice that I had been receiving. I recently watched "Food Inc" which got me thinking about processed foods and I began doing a lot of research on the subject. That research led me to "Health at Every Size" and I can honestly say that this book has changed my life! My issues with food and dieting were finally explained in a way that made sense. You see, while I have always been heavy, I've never been in poor health. Every time I'd have a check-up, all my stats (blood pressure, sugar levels, cholesterol) would be normal and even optimal. And every time, my doctors would always say that while those numbers were good, they would never last and that my health would deteriorate b/c of my weight. Ten years of hearing this and being consistantly put down by the medical community, and my health still has not deteriorated (you'd think it would due to the stress of all that). I even had a doctor tell me that bariatric surgery was my best option even though I wasn't heavy enough to qualify for that. This shows how out of touch the medical community is regarding weight and how detrimental that is to society. This book explains everything and backs it with hard science, not just assumptions. Reading this book helped me to finally accept myself, and to view food as a pleasurable part of life, not as the enemy. And after all that, I actually lost some weight - go figure! But as the book stresses, that wasn't the point - the point is maintaining good health and self-acceptance. Please, if you've ever hated you body or felt bad about yourself, please please read this book! Give up the fight and start living your life!