Customer Reviews

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

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

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! :)

Recently I ran into an acquaintance. When I asked how she was doing, she immediately began complaining about her body, her thighs, how fat she felt. I looked at her. She was probably around 5'6" and weighed about 120 dripping wet. She looked terrific, but felt miserable. So many of us bodybash. This book will help you free yourself from bodybashing. You can learn that no matter what your weight or how you look you can feel wonderful. Why focus on your negatives when you have so many positives. This book can empower you to go beyond obsession with food and weight and negative thinking to a place where you can appreciate and love yourself regardless of size. And many folks will find these tools help them become their natural size. This is an excellent book as is "Overcoming Overeating" by Hirschmann and Munter.

I am a recovering anorexic and reading this book has been the biggest help on my road to recovery. Not only that but I recommend this book to any woman who has ever dieted or has ever felt unhappy with her body. this book is empowering spiritually, mentally and physically. I read this book like I read the Bible and I want every woman out there to realize that fat is not bad, food is not the enemy and that there is nothing wrong with the way you are at this very moment. If you ever do anything for yourself and your mental state of mind, read this book, you will feel so much better after the first day !

This book will change your way of thinking about yourself and about your role in society. It explains in detail the way women associate many of their problems with food. It encourages you to change and to love yourself unconditionally, and to learn to be a gentle caretaker to yourself. It really is a rewarding experience to read and live by the philosophies explained. Living without unhealthy body obsessions, but instead with love, will lead you to a much happier existence. I encourage you to read this, even if you don't think you have an eating problem. The book really applies to all women. Learn to love yourself, and stop hating your body! I highly reccommend this, obviously...:)

This book was recommended to me by my dearest friend. Like many women, we've both spent years dieting like crazy and/or exercising obsessively -- and then giving it all up, eating obsessively, hating ourselves, hating our bodies...you know the cycle. If this sounds familiar, maybe you're ready to try a completely different approach. Yes? Then read this book. It's about creating a world in which your body size *does not matter* -- only your happiness, peacefulness, and well being are important. That society is not the society we live in, but it *was* the one our foremothers belonged to, and if enough of us are willing to change our attitudes, maybe someday it will be the one our daughters or granddaughters inhabit. If we want to create that world, we have to make some big changes. Learning to let go of your obsessions, focusing on your body's true rhythms and needs, accepting and *liking* what you see in the mirror today, this very minute -- that's hard. It's harder than any diet. But the rewards are far beyond what you get from losing 10 or 15 pounds (only to gain it back again and hate yourself in the long run). The rewards of learning to love yourself just as you are, to nurture yourself as lovingly as you nurture others -- that's beyond measure. It's something that, if you can do it, will be with you forever. No one will be able to take away your self-love, except yourself. Interested? Then please read this book. Join the growing number of women who no longer accept the unrealistic ideal of female perfection that is thrown at us daily. Become an instrument of change -- both for yourself and for the twisted, diet-crazed, unhealthy society we're presently a part of. Think ahead to the peace you can create -- both for others and especially for yourself

As a budding psychiatrist with a strong personal and professional interest in eating disorders, this book speaks to me every time I pick it up. It makes sense. These authors present their thesis for changing the focus of your life from food and weight in small carefully explained steps, and challenge your arguments and doubts in detail immediately thereafter. I must agree with the other reviewers in recommending that every woman in America read this book. If you are sick of dieting and tired of hating your body, and who isn't? This book will change your perspective and tempt you to take their advice and change your life. I've only just begun, but it's changing mine already.

This book is BRILLIANTLY conceived. It isn't about losing the weight first; it's about learning to love yourself first and unconditionally. What comes after that is your whole LIFE. The diet industry has convinced us that when you lose the weight, then you can/will love yourself.

So how come diets - 99 out of 100 times - lead to bingeing!! With odds such as that, do you honestly feel it's your own fault????

This book is about losing low self-esteem and self-criticism, assumptions, and judgements about yourself and others. How much do you believe those things weigh you down??? It's incalculable. Then you learn how to become your own caretaker who loves you unconditionally, is creative and so much stronger than you think. That's the stuff that lightens up you and your life. This takes time and effort to develop but don't be swayed by others who haven't gotten the concept and who even sound as though they haven't carefully read the book. You CAN TRUST yourself; you will NOT eat yourself into oblivion. You do deserve the time and self-exploration involved. This book is about living your life to the MAX which you will do once you get over obsessing about food. I LOVE the book; it's my BIBLE. Thank you to the authors from the bottom of my heart.

It's hard to be a woman, but this book makes it easier. This book is the only one I've found that sets up guidelines for learning to love your body--how to feel acceptance and peace. It's a radical notion (what would become of the diet/cosmetic/tanning/hair/orthodontic /fashion/cosmetic surgery industries if women decided they were beautiful in their own uniquenesses and they were just going to kick back and enjoy themselves?) This book sets out joyous and triumphant possibilities for the kind of lives we can choose to live.

I am a recovering anorexic and reading this book has been the biggest help on my road to recovery. Not only that but I recommend this book to any woman who has ever dieted or has ever felt unhappy with her body. this book is empowering spiritually, mentally and physically. I read this book like I read the Bible and I want every woman out there to realize that fat is not bad, food is not the enemy and that there is nothing wrong with the way you are at this very moment. If you ever do anything for yourself and your mental state of mind, read this book, you will feel so much better after the first day !

I had a severe eating disorder in high school. At my lowest I weighed below ninety pounds at 5'4". I wasn't an anorexic, per se; I put myself on a starvation diet at about one thousand calories and just never stopped. It got to the point where I was binge eating out of control because my body just couldn't take it any more and I felt like a prisoner in my own body.

I am in my senior year of college now, and all around me everything is the same. My relatives still complain about how "overweight" they are and how they eat "bad" foods, my female (and increasingly my male) friends talk about how "fat" they are or how much they fear becoming "fat", and the images in ads and in magazines certainly haven't changed. I have changed, though. I look in the mirror and I love what I see. I weigh much more now, but I haven't weighed myself since deciding to overcome my eating disorder so I don't know how much more. I am happy, though. This book was a major part of me realizing that my torturing myself over food wasn't really about food, but about my anxiety over my self-worth (to put it very simply).

Before I would cry to my mother about how we couldn't have any "bad" foods because I was afraid I would eat everything. Now I keep sweets and all kinds of stuff I like around, and they sometimes go bad before I finish them. Why? Because I only eat them when I want them. I'm very appreciative to all those who helped in publishing and creating this book for people like me who just needed some compassionate guidance to get them on the track to self-love.