The most recommended books on obesity

I track instances on Instagram of dress-coding—when girls and women are disciplined for wearing clothes considered “too” revealing. This occurs in schools with rules, for example, forbidding tank tops or crop tops, and on airplanes (for some reason, the sight of a woman wearing comfortable clothes is a trigger for many travelers). Black women are singled out as sexualized most often.

To find out why, I turned to this eye-opening book. Strings demonstrates a connection between racism and anxiety over fatness. She traces how Black and white women’s bodies came to be seen as essentially different from each other. Fatness became stigmatized to make the case that white women’s bodies were superior.

This book showed me how to regard health concerns from a racial and gendered lens. 

Hikers come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. Kara proves that the summit does not belong to people who look like Patagonia models, but to anyone who is willing to carry their weight and offload their burdens. An inspiring read for anyone who wants to climb Kilimanjaro and individuals who have dealt with eating disorders.

I picked up this book because I loved Niven’s beautiful novel All The Bright Places, and she did not disappoint. The way Libby, once known as “America’s Fattest Teen,” deals with her unwelcome notoriety, as well as the death of her mother and her grieving father, is genuine and honest. As is her desire to make a new life and identify for herself as she enters high school. Her relationship with the handsome and popular Jack, and her ability to see through his façade, happens because she takes the time to be curious about what’s beyond the surface.

Each of the five books in my list either stars or co-stars a young woman, and The Complete Claudine, as the title would suggest, is not an exception. Colette’s Claudine is a mesmerizing character—sensual, passionate, fierce, and tender by turns. The ordinary twists and turns of Claudine’s turn-of-the-century life in the French countryside and Paris are made extraordinary by her uncommon self-possession and power of observance. Claudine fairly blisters off the page.

My best friend recommended this book, and then when I hadn’t read it sent it to me. Obvs she knows me well; I love it!

I always thought I didn’t like horror, but it turns out I didn’t know what it was. The stories in The Changed Man felt like something I could write. They were weird and sometimes poignant. They are a slice of life that left me feeling uncomfortable but also curious and inspired to write, read, and think outside the box.

"Fat Farm" is one of the most brilliant short stories I’ve ever read. It so perfectly illustrates how short-sighted our thinking is around beauty, how our hedonism and values are a betrayal of ourselves. It’s so yummy! 

This book is a knockout, one that pushed me to see through our dangerous diet culture (and got me all fired up). After years of being judged and mocked as a fat woman, Plum is fixated on weight-loss surgery as the way to live a better life. But when she catches a young woman following her, Plum discovers an entire underground community of women living lives out of bounds, and a guerrilla group terrorizing predatory men. The story is propulsive and exciting, and it’s all fueled by righteous anger. The women Plum meet are full of rage at our broken world but also infused with beautiful compassion. Both can be true; both are often true.  The book has stuck with me for years, and I often return to it as a template for writing a killer story that centers and celebrates angry women.

I read the book twice from cover to cover.

We have been told for decades to eat a low-fat diet and to limit saturated fat, especially animal fat and tropical oils, to try to prevent coronary artery disease. We now have epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and dementia, and I personally struggled for years with constant carb craving and yo-yo dieting.

The author of The Big Fat Surprise, Nina Teicholz, is an investigative journalist who spent ten years trying to understand how the low-fat guidelines came about and discovered that the evidence just doesn’t support this advice. Teicholz discusses which fats are healthy and which are not.

Author Aubrey Gordon (Your Fat Friend, co-host of kickass podcast Maintenance Phase, and all-around-delightful-human-being) breaks down and debunks all of the (still) socially acceptable, pervasive, and oppressive myths about body size and fatness.

Her writing is deeply researched, as well as rooted in her experience in social justice advocacy work – she somehow writes and speaks with an amazing mix of no-B.S. and compassion, a balance that is rare and also, I believe, such an effective communication approach when advocating for human beings to be valued and treated with basic care and respect.

Bonus: When you “read” this book as an audiobook, you get to listen to Aubrey’s voice, which, when you’ve run out of Maintenance Phase, is like coming across a stream in the desert. 

This book is written by the founder of the very successful weight loss food program, Susan Peirce Thompson. She covers the science and clinical picture of food addiction. Which she believes is essential for long-term successful weight loss.

This book is very public/reader-friendly. She is also a food addict in recovery and is very open about her trials and tribulations. I find her very engaging and personable.

This classic is actually a very good guide to maintaining you sanity and for helping you through those first few month. My parents read this when they had me, and so did probably yours. Get one of the older editions though, none of this wishy-washy modern parenting for us.