Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight -- and What We Can Do about It Paperback – March 22, 2016

I loved this book. So, alert: This is going to read like a shameless testimonial ad for it (unpaid, however).Body of Truth is an important tie breaker. For the past ten years, actually more, I have been reading (obsessing?) about diet, exercise blah blah blah. This is what a lot of women do in first-world cultures, regardless of their weight and BMI classification. I read both mainstream media (women's magazines, fitness magazines, my local paper, etc.) and lay-friendly science publications (Science Daily, the Weight Maven Blog, Psychology Today, New York Times Well section, etc.). I have noticed a split happening between the two. The popular media continue to report the same tired stories that I used to read back in the 1970s: Eat less! Exercise more! When you want to eat, distract yourself by taking a walk or brushing your teeth. (Yeesh!) And let's not even talk about the ads in these magazines and the photoshopped pictures. How much can a brain take? The science publications have meanwhile been reporting that it's infinitely more complicated. Our hormones, genetics, metabolisms and multitudinous bodily systems are much more persuasive than Gillian Michaels, even when she's screeching at us, and they miraculously help us maintain our weights, even when they are higher than we want them to be, and no matter how determined we are to lower them, at least in the long run. (Anyone can lose weight. The problem has always been the near impossibility of maintaining losses.)Brown's message gives permission to write off the lazy journalism of the popular press. It's an important shot of superglue for the spine, to stand up against messages we might logically know are stupid. Brown points out, with copious footnotes, that we are driven to obsession by a diet culture, fueled by commercial interests and marketing, as well as some bad science (follow the money!) and doctors who are as steeped in our diet culture as anyone (and who learn little about obesity in medical school other than disdain for fat patients who they think will only complicate their practice of medicine). It's a stinking mess. Harriet Brown is a voice of sanity and her advice is gentle and wonderful.The book is an easy read and quick. Depending on your age, you'll feel like your smarter sister or your aunt has written you a lengthy letter, lovingly kicking you in the butt for listening to the wrong people. (If you want a less gentle read, then feel free to go to her footnotes and Google away at the scientific studies that she pored through so you don't have to.) If you've struggle with this issue, it'll make you feel better about your body just the way it is . . . at least until next winter when the diet industry launches its New Year's ad campaign to make you feel bad again.

September is turning into literary bo-po heaven, and it’s fantastic. Harriet Brown knocked it out of the park with this one. Her work is admirably well-researched, facilitates some crazy good critical thinking about our cultural blind spots, and promotes a shift in perspective that would benefit us all.Did you know that it’s possible to be fat AND healthy? If you didn’t, that’s not surprising. It’s probably also fair to assume that you actually find yourself in immediate, defensive recoil; calling to mind a whole slew of reasons why that can’t be true. I know I am guilty of that response at times. And it’s no wonder! Our society has become inextricably invested in and obsessed with thinness. Insanely, devastatingly obsessed.The average person grows up bombarded with bazillions of messages telling them on a daily basis that fat is bad. The worst. Worse than death, even. (Not kidding. Research shows that many people would rather die than be fat. WTF.) If you’re fat– or even slightly ‘overweight’– there’s no way on earth you can be anything but miserable, unhealthy, and on death’s very doorstep. And, further, if we care about people, we need to shame them into demonizing fat as much as we do so they can be thin ‘healthy.’As usual, it behooves us to challenge our biases.Because, turns out, these things are just not true! ‘Health’ is individual, and only sometimes related to weight. As Brown points out, our collective fat phobia has led to some seriously destructive phenomena including yo-yo dieting (ultra bad for you, FYI), the mega-monster weight-loss industry, body shaming/bullying, eating disorders, immobilizing self-hatred, and some seriously wounded bodies and psyches.Even if you can’t bring yourself to suspend your belief that fat automatically equals death and worthlessness (seriously, it doesn’t), given that less than 5% of people are able to maintain long-term weight loss within the confines of our current diet-centric tyranny, it seems odd and unfortunate that we wouldn’t even be open to re-thinking how we’re talking about weight and health.Amazon could probably hold all my thoughts about this book, but it would take me an infinite amount of time to write them all down. Do me a favor: open your mind, read the book, and if nothing else remember that humans (including yourself) are unique like snowflakes and need love, not shame.Five stars.

I am glad that the author took the time to research the issue of weight. It was enlightening and in some ways freeing to read some of the research. It certainly offers a new perspective on dieting and diets in the United States. I wish it had been available to read when I was in college.

Excellent review of research around obesity and 'cures' for it, as well as an interesting juxtaposition of past and present's cultural view of obesity. Well done. This book is long overdue.

..auf Gesundheit, Gewicht und unsere allgemeine Einstellung gegenüber unserem Körper.Durchgehend durch Studien und Referenzen gestützt, hat es mich doch wirklich sehr überzeugt. Für mich definitiv eines der überzeugendsten Bücher im Bereich Körperselbstwertgefühl/Essstörungen/Gesundheit/Abnehmversuche/die Art, wie unsere Gesellschaftt über all dies denkt.Man sollte auf jedem Fall offen für Neues sein, wenn man sich entscheidet, dieses Buch zu lesen.

Arrived in good condition and reasonably quick delivery all things considered.

loved this book. Some of it blew my mind, some of it validated what I already believed.