Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight

Since starting to read the book a little over a month ago I lost 14 lbs without even thinking about it. Just by getting rid of the scale and not stepping on it everyday spiraling if I was up or down. It has been extremely helpful for my mental and physical health.

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.

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.

I struggle with the whole "health at every size" concept because we know weighing less can be helpful. But this book really digs in to fight the concept that you must diet and be tiny in order to experience health. It's definitely a must read when it comes to unlearning diet culture. Did it totally convince me? No. Did it remind me that health isn't always about pounds on a scale? Yes.

I broke many myths about health and weight. It gave me the information I was missing to guide my patients into body acceptance and embrace diversity. Forever thankful.

Este libro ofrece estudios y pruebas de lo que tenemos que saber cuando queremos controlar nuestro peso a costa de controlar nuestra dieta. Muy interesante

Useful information

Acho importantíssimo as pessoas se darem conta de que é possível ser saudável sendo gordo, magro, alto, baixo. Não estamos falando de pessoas com anorexia nem com obesidade mórbida. Mas, de pessoas normais. Este livro ajuda a entender que é importante ouvir a si mesma.