Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace with Food and Transform Your Life

I'm over page 50 and still waiting to learn how to have a great relationship with my body and food. What I got so far was indoctrination that the reason people deal with body issues and weight problem is because of white men. They are the ones to blame and the reason we are all in this mess.I hope this book turns around... Not impressed yet.This book is about women VS men so far....

Alissa writes in an easy-to-read style. She breaks down how our culture has become diet and shape conscious and calls our attention to the ways we have “bought in” to it and used it both with ourselves and those we interact with.She calls into question our beliefs about food and helps us to recognize and change our behaviors around food.Let’s toss out those fad diets and restrictions and find the balance to be healthy for the benefit of our systems (cardiovascular, brain, etc) but not necessarily our looks.A must read if you are ready to stop the yo-yo dieting and learn how to trust yourself.

I sat down with Alissa’s book and read through the intro and into the first chapter before bed. I have a notoriously bad habit of falling asleep with books. WelI, I didn’t with this one, despite how tired I was. That’s the sign of great, engaging and conversational writing. I like the inclusion of terms at the outset & the acknowledgment that this stuff may be very tough to hear as it challenges long-held notions. Some of which I’m still trying to wrap my head around and make an informed decision as a healthcare professional myself. I have no doubts I’ll be equally impressed as I continued to turn the pages of this book.

I have read a few intuitive eating books over the years. I was familiar with the many of the concepts presented in the earlier chapters—diet culture, colonialist roots, sexist roots, whiteness, etc. but I loved how it was presented in this book. And although my mind was aware of the soul-crushing effect dieting was having on me, my heart was not ready to give up on diet culture, until now.My favorite question from the book: “…if no one else was around, would you still be doing what you are doing right now?” Would I still eat that muffin if I didn’t care that my pants didn’t fit? Would I still go to the gym? Does it really make me feel better or does it exhaust me and am I going to impress others?There are many topics, ideas, and thought starters in this book. It took me a lot of time to absorb and process. I took a lot of notes that I hope will turn into action…and benefit myself and others around me.

This is the book I’ve been waiting for on this topic! Truly inspirational to an extent that is mind-boggling. I could not put it down. I have read many books on all of the topics regarding eating over decades. There has never been a book like this! Treat yourself to this book and you will not regret it! Best purchase I have made in a very very long time! Thank you Alyssa Ramsey!!!

As I sat beside my 89-year-old mother in her final days on earth, she turned to me and said, "If I could only lose ten pounds." I knew in that moment that I needed to find a way to break the cycle of diet mentality in order to raise my children free of the shackles I had grown up with.Having spent most of my young adult life as an anorexic, I was addicted to the praise and adoration I received any time I lost weight. I had no idea how to navigate life without a laser-focus on every calorie consumed and spent. Although I had been introduced to the concept of intuitive eating in my eating disorder recovery, it still was with the emphasis on weight loss. This book is groundbreaking in that it reframes everything we, as women, are taught to value in ourselves and others. And it does so by giving the reader the historical background of diet culture and fat phobia in our country and its patriarchal roots.It is both liberating and rebellious to begin to shun the messages we constantly receive about what a woman should look like, act like and eat. Although I still sometimes struggle with my relationship with food and my body, I am happy to report that I raised two children to adulthood without either of them thinking they needed to diet or restrict in order to "be enough." That is my proudest accomplishment.I will keep this book with me as support and guidance as I continue to do the work of freeing myself from the constraints of diet culture. As a yoga teacher and a writer, it is my greatest hope that I can go on to help others do the same. Walking this path is not easy--the pushback I get when talking about this with my girlfriends and others is intense and only illustrates how ingrained it is in our society. Thank you, Allisa Rumsey, for your tireless effort and important work. You are changing lives.

I wish everyone could see the world (and themselves) through the lens of this book. We could all stop labeling food “good” and “bad,” we could recognize diet culture messages all around us, and there would be a whole lot more self-love and trust around food. This book is a total journey - it’s both disrupting and comforting, inspiring and frustrating when I think about how our society wrongs women around food. Great read.

This book blew me away with its in-depth research, approachable writing, and the many tools and exercises incorporated into each chapter that helped me implement the concepts shared into my own life in a practical way. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is ready to be kinder to themselves, reconnect with their bodies and their intuition, eat in a way that nourishes themselves physically and mentally, and ultimately show up more fully in the world.

Absolutely fantastic book, I am 56 yrs old and been in the diet trauma since I was 16, I have been trying to let go of dieting for many years, . Nothing I have ever read has given me this hope, there is such compassion, entwined in ever word. I feel that I am on a new adventure, to really be myself, I never imagined I would feel this way, at my age. This is a life changing book , if you ever struggled with food , weight, body image this book is for you.

Such an amazing book, it covers not just diet mentality / societal structure and oppression but also how to manage mindfully as you navigate through intuitive eating but also improving self worth. Really great advice, examples and the author is clearly very knowledgable on the subject. 100/10. Will be one of those books that gets read and re-read over abs over again.

If eating unapologetically AND living a satisfying life in alignment with your values and not ones imposed by others, sounds too good to be true, then this book is for you!By rejecting diet culture which creates our insecurities, feeds off of and exacerbates them, exploits us and then makes billions doing so, we will then be free to discover what truly and deeply fills us.This book is not only packed with information and practical suggestions, Alissa Rumsey's extremely well considered approach to inclusivity, and writing, is such a gift. Not only is the reader being provided with one revelation after another respecting diet culture’s insidious effect, her respectful treatment and consideration towards all beings, sets a wonderful example of how important it is that we treat eachother in this way.Time is up. Let’s own our worth. And let no one else define it but ourselves. And, in doing so, we can respectively support each other for doing the same.