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kiwiwonder 's review for:
The F*ck It Diet: Stop Dieting and Start Taking Up Space
by Caroline Dooner
I initially heard about the F*ck-It diet from recommendations from various sources - Audible recommended it based on my current library, and an Anti-Diet Facebook group I’m in speaks strongly about it.
However - honestly I avoided the book for longer than I would have otherwise, because of the “diet” in the title. By this time I’d already broken up with diets, and this sounded like one of those “not a diet” diet books. “Eat all you want, never feel hungry, and still lose weight!”
This is not that book.
Instead, this book is all about the harm that diets do and looks at healing from that harm from a holistic perspective, including physical, emotional, and mental. The F*ck-It Diet book provides scientific evidence behind the claims that diets don’t work, a breakdown of how long we know this, and why diet culture is still SO pervasive. (Hint: follow the money.)
Much of the information included in the F*ck-It Diet, I already knew… as I said, this wasn’t my first foray into anti-diet culture. However, there was still some that was new to me, and so I’m appreciative of that. What I hadn’t expected was the inclusion of tools under each section, to help you work through your food issues, the ‘tapes’ in your head (that are really hard to break!) and some of the psychology around binging (spoiler: it comes from restriction). Again, I found some of these tools I was already using along my own journey (such as writing / “brain dumps”, and in which I’ve already started investigating my own associations and history and feelings around diet culture, fat-shaming, and the like).
Honestly, I think every woman needs this book. There are very, very few women that diet culture hasn’t touched, and I think to some extent we all feel the struggle. Dooner isn’t a fat woman herself but does cover that - her inherent thin privilege, as well as the importance of recognising your own privilege and the effects that has on you - as well as the importance of breaking down some of our deep-set biases by actively changing our exposure. She also mentions the “hijacking” of the “body positivity” term, as there are some groups/companies out there trying to use that for their own diet culture.
Overall I probably haven’t learned as much as someone completely new to the topic… but it was still well worth the read (or listen, as mine was an audiobook). I’ve already ordered a hard-copy so I can more easily refer to the tools, and have them in front of me to help me work through them.
I still have a lot of work to do within myself… but as Dooner points out, this isn’t a quick fix, nor is it a secret recipe to “not feeling hungry”. There is no such thing. We are human, and we need to eat to survive. *That* is the purpose of hunger - it’s not the nasty temptress devised only to sabotage us, as diet culture would have us believe.
However - honestly I avoided the book for longer than I would have otherwise, because of the “diet” in the title. By this time I’d already broken up with diets, and this sounded like one of those “not a diet” diet books. “Eat all you want, never feel hungry, and still lose weight!”
This is not that book.
Instead, this book is all about the harm that diets do and looks at healing from that harm from a holistic perspective, including physical, emotional, and mental. The F*ck-It Diet book provides scientific evidence behind the claims that diets don’t work, a breakdown of how long we know this, and why diet culture is still SO pervasive. (Hint: follow the money.)
Much of the information included in the F*ck-It Diet, I already knew… as I said, this wasn’t my first foray into anti-diet culture. However, there was still some that was new to me, and so I’m appreciative of that. What I hadn’t expected was the inclusion of tools under each section, to help you work through your food issues, the ‘tapes’ in your head (that are really hard to break!) and some of the psychology around binging (spoiler: it comes from restriction). Again, I found some of these tools I was already using along my own journey (such as writing / “brain dumps”, and in which I’ve already started investigating my own associations and history and feelings around diet culture, fat-shaming, and the like).
Honestly, I think every woman needs this book. There are very, very few women that diet culture hasn’t touched, and I think to some extent we all feel the struggle. Dooner isn’t a fat woman herself but does cover that - her inherent thin privilege, as well as the importance of recognising your own privilege and the effects that has on you - as well as the importance of breaking down some of our deep-set biases by actively changing our exposure. She also mentions the “hijacking” of the “body positivity” term, as there are some groups/companies out there trying to use that for their own diet culture.
Overall I probably haven’t learned as much as someone completely new to the topic… but it was still well worth the read (or listen, as mine was an audiobook). I’ve already ordered a hard-copy so I can more easily refer to the tools, and have them in front of me to help me work through them.
I still have a lot of work to do within myself… but as Dooner points out, this isn’t a quick fix, nor is it a secret recipe to “not feeling hungry”. There is no such thing. We are human, and we need to eat to survive. *That* is the purpose of hunger - it’s not the nasty temptress devised only to sabotage us, as diet culture would have us believe.