Reader’s Lounge

by Susan Erhardt

It’s June, and that means a spate of articles on “getting a beach body.” Well, guess what?  e way to get a beach body is to go to the beach with your body.  e end. If you need a little help believing that, here are some of the best books to help you make peace with food and your body.

by Christy Harrison

 is was a fantastic read. I highlighted passages to revisit on almost every page.  e author delves into the racist, classist roots of dieting, explaining how our cultural weight bias and desire for thinness started a long time before any proclamations about body size and its relation to health. One of the most surprising things she explains is the impact that weight stigma has on our health.  e weight stigma we are subject to is worse for our health than living in a large body! She backs up her statements with many good quality studies, all footnoted in the back of the book.

by Evelyn Tribole

After you’ve read Christy Harrison’s book and you’ve realized that dieting is a waste of your time, Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole will guide you through the steps of making peace with food and returning to the natural, intuitive eater you once were, before dieting came into your life. You will learn step by step to honor your hunger, challenge the food police, cope with emotions without using food, move your body in a way that feels good, and more. You can become a person who says “no” to a cookie and doesn’t feel deprived – or eats a cookie and doesn’t feel guilty.

by Rebecca Scritch eld

Body Kindness by Rebecca Scritch eld is built on the idea that good health comes from being good to yourself.  is book has a lot of great information concerning improved health, including food, sleep, exercise, and relationships. She gives the reader information needed to make healthy choices without the goal of weight loss. She explains research showing that you can be  t even if you are fat, since inactivity is what is linked to heart disease and other issues, rather than simply being fat. Scritch eld even advises taking a hammer to your scale, which sounds rather fun.

by Sonya Renee Taylor

Sonya Renee Taylor reminds us that there was a time in our lives when we didn’t judge ourselves for our appearance. She examines the origins of the shame most of us feel about our bodies, and tells us we don’t need to apologize for the way our bodies exist in the world. We need to not only stop hating our own bodies, but also need to understand how we perpetuate body shaming against others. She o ers insight on how to change what we tell ourselves, see things from a new vantage point, and start living in the present, with the bodies we have. In her words, “radical self-love demands that we see

Susan Erhardt has been a youth librarian at Kent District Library since 1992. When she’s not at work she loves to walk, travel with her family, read, and scrapbook.