A review by rachelsidwell
You Are Not a Before Picture: How to Finally Make Peace with Your Body, for Good by Alex Light

5.0

Oh my word, where do I start with this book? Best book I’ve read all year? Yes. Most inspiring book I’ve read for a while? Yes. No. No, wait, most inspiring book I’ve maybe ever read? Yes. This book will change lives. Everyone needs to read it and I am already compiling a long list of people I want to personally send it to. Alex Light has first hand experience of eating disorders and our strange societal obsession with food and fat, and this is truly a guide to break the obsessions we have with both and find peace with our bodies. As a person who has always had a strange relationship with food, and my first memory of being called chunky in year one, at the age of, get this, 6?! This is a book I wish I had had when I was younger, maybe when I slim fasted at age 13 (effing hell!). A brilliant journey through the harmful world of diets, our relationships with food and exercise, our body image, and much much more. I honestly think this is such an inspiring, honest, and eye opening book and I really can’t recommend it enough to, well, everyone. Go and buy it (Waterstones plz)! Spread it far and wide, follow her immediately, make it part of the curriculum, live and breathe it. Go go go. Thank you Alex! X