Recommended Resources

Eating Concerns & Body Image

Books

• Health at Every Size by Lindo Bacon: “Fat isn't the problem. Dieting is the problem. A society that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn't match an impossible ideal is the problem. A medical establishment that equates ‘thin’ with ‘healthy’ is the problem. The solution? Health at Every Size. Tune in to your body's expert guidance. Find the joy in movement. Eat what you want, when you want, choosing pleasurable foods that help you to feel good. You too can feel great in your body right now—and Health at Every Size will show you how. Health at Every Size has been scientifically proven to boost health and self-esteem. The program was evaluated in a government-funded academic study, its data published in well-respected scientific journals. Updated with the latest scientific research and even more powerful messages, Health at Every Size is not a diet book, and after reading it, you will be convinced the best way to win the war against fat is to give up the fight.”

• Body Respect by Lindo Bacon & Lucy Aphramor: “Weight loss is not the key to health, diet and exercise are not effective weight-loss strategies and fatness is not a death sentence. You've heard it before: there's a global health crisis, and, unless we make some changes, we're in trouble. That much is true—but the epidemic is NOT obesity. The real crisis lies in the toxic stigma placed on certain bodies and the impact of living with inequality—not the numbers on a scale. In a mad dash to shrink our bodies, many of us get so caught up in searching for the perfect diet, exercise program, or surgical technique that we lose sight of our original goal: improved health and well-being. Popular methods for weight loss don't get us there and lead many people to feel like failures when they can't match unattainable body standards. It's time for a cease-fire in the war against obesity. Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor's Body Respect debunks common myths about weight, including the misconceptions that BMI can accurately measure health, that fatness necessarily leads to disease, and that dieting will improve health. They also help make sense of how poverty and oppression—such as racism, homophobia, and classism—affect life opportunity, self-worth, and even influence metabolism. Body insecurity is rampant, and it doesn't have to be. It's time to overcome our culture's shame and distress about weight, to get real about inequalities and health, and to show every body respect.”

• Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison: “Reclaim your time, money, health, and happiness from our toxic diet culture with groundbreaking strategies from a registered dietitian, journalist, and host of the Food Psych podcast. 68 percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90% of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66% of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it? The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It's sexist, racist, and classist, yet this way of thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to recognize. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming. In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison takes on diet culture and the multi-billion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, health, and happiness. It will turn what you think you know about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it's infiltrated the health and wellness world, how to recognize it in all its sneaky forms, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat ‘perfectly’ actually helps to improve people's health—no matter their size. Drawing on scientific research, personal experience, and stories from patients and colleagues ,Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture, and helps readers reclaim their bodies, minds, and lives so they can focus on the things that truly matter.”

• The Wellness Trap by Christy Harrison: “‘It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle.’ You've probably heard this phrase from any number of people in the wellness space. But as Christy Harrison reveals in her latest book, wellness culture promotes a standard of health that is often both unattainable and deeply harmful. Many people with chronic illness understandably feel dismissed or abandoned by the healthcare system and find solace in alternative medicine, as Harrison once did. Yet the wellness industry promotes practices that often cause even more damage than the conventional approaches they’re meant to replace. From the lack of pre-market safety testing on herbal and dietary supplements, to the unfounded claims made by many wellness influencers and functional-medicine providers, to the social-media algorithms driving users down rabbit holes of wellness mis- and disinformation, it can often feel like no one is looking out for us in the face of the $4.4 trillion global wellness industry. The Wellness Trap delves into the persistent, systemic problems with that industry, offering insight into its troubling pattern of cultural appropriation and its destructive views on mental health, and shedding light on how a growing distrust of conventional medicine has led ordinary people to turn their backs on science. Weaving together history, memoir, reporting, and practical advice, Harrison illuminates the harms of wellness culture while re-imagining our society’s relationship with well-being.”

• Belly of the Beast by Da’Shaun L. Harrison: “Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing. To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. Da’Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated. Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of ‘health’ and ‘healthiness’ for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us ‘fat is bad,’ and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.”

• What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon: “Anti-fatness is everywhere. In What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, ‘I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.’ By sharing her experiences as well as those of others—from smaller fat to very fat people—she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as ‘awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant’; and in 48 states, it’s legal—even routine—to deny employment because of an applicant’s size. Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.”

• “You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon: “The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance ‘glorifies obesity.’ The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive. In ‘You Just Need to Lose Weight,’ Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people. Bringing her dozen years of community organizing and training to bear, Gordon shares the rhetorical approaches she and other organizers employ to not only counter these pernicious myths, but to dismantle the anti-fat bias that so often underpin them. As conversations about fat acceptance and fat justice continue to grow, ‘You Just Need to Lose Weight’ will be essential to ensure that those conversations are informed, effective, and grounded in both research and history.”

• Reclaiming Body Trust by Hillary Kinavey & Dana Sturtevant: “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 in three phases: The Rupture, The Reckoning, and The Reclamation. Throughout, readers will be anchored by the authors’ innovative and revolutionary Body Trust framework to discover a pathway out of a rigid, mechanistic way of thinking about the body and into a more authentic, sustainable way to occupy and nurture our bodies.”

• More Than a Body by Lindsay & Lexie Kite: “Positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks. How do you feel about your body? Have you ever stayed home from a social activity or other opportunity because of concern about how you looked? Have you ever passed judgment on someone because of how they looked or dressed? Have you ever had difficulty concentrating on a task because you were self-conscious about your appearance? Our beauty-obsessed world perpetuates the idea that happiness, health, and ability to be loved are dependent on how we look, but authors Lindsay and Lexie Kite offer an alternative vision. With insights drawn from their extensive body image research, Lindsay and Lexie—PhDs and founders of the nonprofit Beauty Redefined (and also twin sisters!)—lay out an action plan that arms you with the skills you need to reconnect with your whole self and free yourself from the constraints of self-objectification. From media consumption to health and fitness to self-reflection and self-compassion, Lindsay and Lexie share powerful and practical advice that goes beyond “body positivity” to help readers develop body image resilience—all while cutting through the empty promises sold by media, advertisers, and the beauty and weight-loss industries. In the process, they show how facing your feelings of body shame or embarrassment can become a catalyst for personal growth.”

• The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride: “In The Wisdom of Your Body, clinical therapist and award-winning researcher Dr. Hillary McBride offers a pathway from disconnection to embodied living by making peace with the living, breathing story of who you are. Packed with illuminating research and stories from her work and her deeply personal journey of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a car wreck EMTs thought she wouldn’t walk away from and chronic pain, McBride offers meaningful insights about why our relationship with our bodies matters for the quality of our whole lives. A specialist in embodiment practices, McBride shares truths and tools to help you embrace the whole of yourself and, in turn, experience your life to the fullest. This book will show you: how to unlearn the lies about your body that hold you back from the life you were meant to live; practices for reclaiming your body—and your life—from stress, trauma, appearance ideals and the expectations of others; how to access the healing that is written into your DNA; and tools for regulating your emotions through physical awareness. For anyone who has ever felt unsafe, unloved or insufficient in their own skin, McBride offers a better path toward health and true acceptance. This is an invitation to live a better story with your body and to come home to the gift of yourself and the wholeness that has been there all along.”

• Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings: “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 historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals—where fat bodies were once praised—showing that fat phobia, as it relates to Black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of ‘savagery’ and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.”

• The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor: “Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world—for us all.”

• Intuitive Eating by Elyse Resch & Evelyn Tribole: “Make peace with food. Free yourself from chronic dieting forever. Rediscover the pleasures of eating. The go-to resource for building a healthy body image and making peace with food, once and for all. When it was first published, Intuitive Eating was revolutionary in its anti-dieting approach. The authors, both prominent health professionals in the field of nutrition and eating disorders, urge readers to embrace the goal of developing body positivity and reconnecting with one’s internal wisdom about eating―to unlearn everything they were taught about calorie-counting and other aspects of diet culture and to learn about the harm of weight stigma. Today, their message is more relevant and pressing than ever. With this updated edition of the classic bestseller, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch teach readers how to:
  • Follow the ten principles of Intuitive Eating to achieve a new and trusting relationship with food
  • Fight against diet culture and reject diet mentality forever
  • Find satisfaction in their food choices
  • Exercise kindness toward their feelings, their bodies, and themselves
  • Prevent or heal the wounds of an eating disorder
  • Respect their bodies and make peace with food―at any age, weight, or stage of development
  • Follow body positive feeds for inspiration and validation
  . . . and more easy-to-follow suggestions that can lead readers to integrate Intuitive Eating into their everyday lives and feel the freedom that comes with trusting their inner wisdom―for life.”

Podcasts

• Maintenance Phase: “Debunking the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams and nonsensical nutrition advice.”

• Food Psych: “Food Psych is a podcast dedicated to critiquing diet and wellness culture. Tune in for weekly conversations about making peace with food, healing from disordered eating and dieting, (re)learning intuitive eating, and more.”

• Rethinking Wellness: “Rethinking Wellness is a podcast exploring the diet culture, disinformation, dubious diagnoses, and disordered eating at the heart of contemporary wellness culture—and how to break free and find true well-being.”

Highly Sensitive People & Empaths

Books

• The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron: “Do you have a keen imagination and vivid dreams? Is time alone each day as essential to you as food and water? Are you noted for your empathy?  Your conscientiousness? Do noise and confusion quickly overwhelm you? If your answers are yes, you may be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and Dr. Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person is the life-changing guide you’ll want in your toolbox. Over twenty percent of people have this amazing, innate trait.  Maybe you are one of them.  A similar percentage is found in over 100 species, because high sensitivity is a survival strategy.  It is also a way of life for HSPs. In this 25th anniversary edition of the groundbreaking classic, Dr. Elaine Aron, a research and clinical psychologist as well as an HSP herself, helps you grasp the reality of your wonderful trait, understand your past in the light of it, and make the most of it in your future. Drawing on her many years of study and face-to-face time spent with thousands of HSPs, she explains the changes you will need to make in order to lead a fuller, richer life. Along with a new Author’s Note, the latest scientific research, and a fresh discussion of anti-depressants, this edition of The Highly Sensitive Person is more essential than ever for creating the sense of self-worth and empowerment every HSP deserves and our planet needs.”

• The Empath’s Survival Guide by Judith Orloff: “What is the difference between having empathy and being an empath? ‘Having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain,’ says Judith Orloff, MD. ‘But for empaths it goes much further. We actually feel others’ emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies, without the usual defenses that most people have.’ With The Empath’s Survival Guide, Dr. Orloff offers a practical tool set to help sensitive people develop healthy coping mechanisms in our high-stimulus world―while fully embracing the empath’s gifts of intuition, compassion, creativity, and spiritual connection. This practical, empowering, and loving book was created to support empaths and anyone who wants to develop their sensitivities to become more caring people in an often-insensitive world. It helps empaths through their unique challenges and gives loved ones a better understanding of the needs and gifts of the sensitive people in their lives. In this book Dr. Orloff offers crucial practices, including: Self-assessment exercises to help you identify your empath type; Tools for protecting yourself from sensory overload, exhaustion, addictions, and compassion fatigue while replenishing your vital energy; Simple and effective strategies to stop absorbing stress and physical symptoms from others and protect yourself from narcissists and other energy vampires; How to find the right work and create relationships that nourish you; How to navigate intimate relationships without feeling overwhelmed; Guidance for parenting and raising empathic children; Awakening the empath’s gift of intuition and deepening your spiritual connection to all living beings. For any sensitive person who’s been told to ‘grow a thick skin,’ this paperback edition of The Empath's Survival Guide is an invaluable resource for staying fully open while building resilience, exploring your gifts of depth and compassion, and feeling welcome and valued by a world that desperately needs what you have to offer.”

• Sensitive by Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo: “‘Don’t be so sensitive!’ Everyone has a sensitive side, but nearly 1 in 3 people have the genes to be more sensitive than others—both physically and emotionally. These are the people who pause before speaking and think before acting; they tune into subtle details and make connections that others miss. They tend to be intelligent, big-hearted, and wonderfully creative; they are wired to go deep, yet society tells them to hide the very sensitivity that makes them this way. These are the world’s ‘highly sensitive people,’ and Sensitive is the book that champions them. By the creators of the world’s largest community for sensitive people, Sensitive teaches us how to unlock the potential in this undervalued strength and leverage it across the most important areas of our lives: in friendships and relationships, the workplace, leadership, and parenting. Through fascinating research and expert storytelling, Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo show readers that the way to thrive as a sensitive person is not to hide their sensitivity, but to embrace it—and they demonstrate how to do that in each area of life. Weaving together actionable advice, relatable anecdotes, and the latest scientific research, Sensitive shows readers how leaning in to their sensitivity unlocks a powerful “boost effect” to launch them ahead in life. It hands them the tools and insights they need to thrive as a sensitive person in a loud, fast, too-much world. A powerfully validating, destigmatizing, and practical book, Sensitive plants a gently fluttering flag in the ground for sensitive people everywhere. This inspiring book has the power to change—once and for all—how we see sensitive people, and how they see themselves.”

Other

• Highly Sensitive Refuge: “To change the way the world sees, and talks about, highly sensitive people (HSPs). There’s nothing wrong with being an HSP — in fact, it’s a strength.”

Religious Trauma

• Fundie Fridays YouTube Channel: “I talk about different aspects of Christian fundamentalism, American conservative politics, pop culture and queer issues in a humorous and semi-educational way.”

• Ex-Fundie Diaries YouTube Channel: “trauma recovery and faith deconstruction.”

• Mickey Atkins YouTube Channel: “I’m a therapist and social worker who makes fat and sex positive, progressive, and feminist oriented content about mental health and therapy! We unpack myths about therapy in pop culture, correct mis- and disinformation about mental health, and try to create community for folks in all places on their self love journey so welcome to our weird corner of the internet!”

General Mental Health

• Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff: “From leading psychologist Dr. Kristin Neff comes a step-by-step guide explaining how to be more self-compassionate and achieve your dreams in life. The relentless pursuit of high self-esteem has become a virtual religion - and a tyrannical one at that. Our ultracompetitive culture tells us we need to be constantly above average to feel good about ourselves, but there is always someone more attractive, successful, or intelligent than we are. And even when we do manage to grab hold of high self-esteem for a brief moment, we can't seem to keep it. Our sense of self-worth goes up and down like a ping-pong ball, rising and falling in lockstep with our latest success or failure. Fortunately, there is an alternative to self-esteem that many experts believe is a better and more effective path to happiness: self-compassion. The research of Dr. Kristin Neff and other leading psychologists indicates that people who are compassionate toward their failings and imperfections experience greater well-being than those who repeatedly judge themselves. The feelings of security and self-worth provided by self-compassion are also highly stable, kicking in precisely when self-esteem falls down. This book powerfully demonstrates why it's so important to be self-compassionate and give yourself the same caring support you'd give to a good friend. This groundbreaking work will show you how to let go of debilitating self-criticism and finally learn to be kind to yourself. Using solid empirical research, personal stories, practical exercises, and humor, Dr. Neff - the world's foremost expert on self-compassion - explains how to heal destructive emotional patterns so that you can be healthier, happier, and more effective. Engaging, highly listenable, and eminently accessible, this book has the power to change your life.”

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk: “Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.” [CONTENT WARNING: FATPHOBIA]