I’m obsessed with the connections between Buddhist philosophy, meditation, Intuitive Eating, eating disorder and addiction recovery, body liberation, and intersectional social justice work. These connections are everywhere! It may not seem like it, but how we relate to food and our bodies reflects how we feel about all bodies. How we speak to ourselves reflects how we feel about difference, difficulty, and interdependence. Challenging our entrenched beliefs about health, eating, food, and body helps us to ultimately recognize the inherent worthiness of all bodies. This is how we both come to know ourselves authentically and how we change the world for the better.
I wrote...
Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice
Intuitive eating is a great way to get off the diet roller coaster, stay healthy, build confidence in your body, and take the guesswork out of mealtime. But if you're like many people, you may have trouble staying on track. Enter mindfulness! Based on the popular anti-diet book program, Intuitive Eating, renowned nutrition therapist and meditation teacher Jenna Hollenstein provides powerful mindfulness tools to help you find stability, discover self-awareness, and self-regulate--so you can respect your body and honor your health.
I love how Sonya Renee Taylor positions radical self love as the only reasonable (and compassionate) response to having a body, no matter how difficult that body feels to be in at times.
Her unique take on body image breaks through the entrenched, systemic nature of body hatred and self-improvement to reveal how the diet culture distracts us from reality and our purpose in life: to love and be loved.
"To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves...'The body is not an apology' is the mantra we should all embrace." --Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum
"Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well." --Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic…
Jessica Wilson, an eating disorder dietitian and storyteller, makes the undeniable case for how the diet culture has preyed on and harmed Black women in particular.
I appreciate her excavation of diet culture, revealing how it is rooted in white supremacy and therefore needs to be systematically dismantled through intentional expressions of body love, joyful expression of Black culture, and embracing your food lineage.
WE WILL REWRITE THE NARARTIVE OF BLACKNESS THAT CENTERS AND CELEBRATES OUR JOY.
In It’s Always Been Ours eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink what having a "good" body means in contemporary society. By centering the bodies of Black women in her cultural discussions of body image, food, health, and wellness, Wilson argues that we can interrogate white supremacy’s hold on us and reimagine the ways we think about, discuss, and tend to our bodies.
A narrative that spans the year of racial reckoning (that wasn't), It’s Always Been Ours is an incisive blend of…
Written by a powerful eating disorder-dietitian and -therapist duo.
This book encourages us to get our hands deep into the soil of our messy imperfectness by intentionally and compassionately working with our grief, our pleasure, and the emotional and practical aspects of our relationship with food and body.
I love their radical and holistic approach to working with our whole selves.
A holistic and powerful framework for accepting and liberating our bodies, and ourselves.
Have you ever felt uncomfortable or not “at home” in your body? In this book, the founders of Body Trust, licensed therapist Hilary Kinavey and registered dietician Dana Sturtevant, invite readers to break free from the status quo and reject a diet culture that has taken advantage and profited from trauma, stigma, and disembodiment, and fully reclaim and embrace their bodies.
Informed by the personal body stories of the hundreds of people they have worked with, Reclaiming Body Trust delineates an intersectional, social justice−orientated path to healing…
Dr. Sabrina Strings painstakingly tracks the historical evolution of the relatively recent prizing of the white, thin body, rightfully identifying the origins of the diet culture as a form of literal and figurative distancing from Black bodies.
This book was a wakeup call that made my anti-diet work even more urgent because it’s more than simply a health intervention, it’s a form of social justice and body liberation work.
Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association
Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association
How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years
There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as "diseased" and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago.
Strings weaves together an eye-opening…
Few people – perhaps even those of us in the eating disorders field – really appreciate just how common eating disorders and disordered eating are.
In this book, an eating disorder physician calls into question the cognitive distortion that someone isn’t “sick enough” to warrant intervention and eating disorder recovery.
I love how Dr. Gaudiani not only covers the reddest flags of eating disorders, but acknowledges what many of us have come to regard as “normal” but in reality is disordered, dangerous, and harmful.
Patients with eating disorders frequently feel that they aren't "sick enough" to merit treatment, despite medical problems that are both measurable and unmeasurable. They may struggle to accept rest, nutrition, and a team to help them move towards recovery. Sick Enough offers patients, their families, and clinicians a comprehensive, accessible review of the medical issues that arise from eating disorders by bringing relatable case presentations and a scientifically sound, engaging style to the topic. Using metaphor and patient-centered language, Dr. Gaudiani aims to improve medical diagnosis and treatment, motivate recovery, and validate the lived experiences of individuals of all body…
As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career.
Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love. More than a gay love story, Acquaintance is a deep dive into gay and lesbian history based on extensive period research of the 1920s.
As a young surgeon, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the loss of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the war, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career. Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love. Acquaintance is a…
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