Sixty-eight percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90 percent of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66 percent 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.

The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners - a total of over two million people. This number continues to steadily rise. Over the past 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the United States has increased by 500 percent.

Have you ever thought that if only you could change something about the way you looked, your life would be better? But the truth is that even if you were to magically attain the “perfect” body right now, your problems wouldn’t be solved. Because body image issues are never just about the body. Body image issues are always about something deeper, and they always serve some kind of purpose.

Most women have spent time dieting and trying to change themselves in order to fit into a mold - and a body - that is deemed socially acceptable. Yet it is dieting that is the problem: It disconnects us from our bodies wisdom and holds us back from living life to the fullest. The more time we spend trying to "fix" ourselves, the less time we have for the things that really matter.

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace—feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted.

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.

In Decolonizing Wellness, registered dietitian and nutritionist Dalia Kinsey will help listeners improve their health without restriction, eliminate stress around food and eating, and turn food into a source of pleasure instead of shame. A road map to body acceptance and self-care for queer people of color, this book is filled with practical eating practices, journal prompts, affirmations, and mindfulness tools.

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.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

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.

An urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and learning to make peace with our bodies, from body confidence and anti-diet advocate Alex Light, You Are Not a Before Picture provides a framework for changing the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

This inspirational and lively book tells you how to create a healthier and happier life by treating yourself with compassion rather than shame. It shows the way to a sense of well-being attained by understanding how to love, connect, and care for yourself - and that includes your mind as well as your body. With mind and body exercises to keep your energy spiraling up and prompts to help you identify what you really want and care about, Body Kindness helps you let go of things you can't control and embrace the things you can by finding the workable daily steps that fit you best.

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect.

Dr. Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model has been transforming psychology for decades. With No Bad Parts, you’ll learn why IFS has been so effective in areas such as trauma recovery, addiction therapy, and depression treatment - and how this new understanding of consciousness has the potential to radically change our lives.

An exploration, both personal and deeply reported, of how we learn to eat in today's toxic food culture. When her newborn daughter stopped eating after a medical crisis, Virginia Sole-Smith spent two years teaching her how to feel safe around food again - and in the process, realized just how many of us are struggling to do the same thing.

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.

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.

In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jayne Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is “against you,” she presents new ways to cope with your body's fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90 percent of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66 percent 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.

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? The Health at Every Size program. 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 this book will show you how.

Nourish will guide you to transform your eating from self-control to self-love, using a 10-step healing process. In this book, Heidi Schauster, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, founder of Nourishing Words Nutrition Therapy, shares 20 years of wisdom from her Boston-area practice treating disordered and emotional eating.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

Have you ever thought that if only you could change something about the way you looked, your life would be better? But the truth is that even if you were to magically attain the “perfect” body right now, your problems wouldn’t be solved. Because body image issues are never just about the body. Body image issues are always about something deeper, and they always serve some kind of purpose.

This inspirational and lively book tells you how to create a healthier and happier life by treating yourself with compassion rather than shame. It shows the way to a sense of well-being attained by understanding how to love, connect, and care for yourself - and that includes your mind as well as your body. With mind and body exercises to keep your energy spiraling up and prompts to help you identify what you really want and care about, Body Kindness helps you let go of things you can't control and embrace the things you can by finding the workable daily steps that fit you best.

From comedian and ex-diet junkie Caroline Dooner, an inspirational guide that will help you stop dieting, reboot your relationship with food, and regain your personal power. Our bodies are hardwired against dieting. But each time our diets fail, instead of considering that maybe our ridiculously low-carb diet is the problem, we wonder what’s wrong with us.

The United States incarcerates more of its residents than any other nation. Though home to five percent of the global population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners - a total of over two million people. This number continues to steadily rise. Over the past 40 years, the number of people behind bars in the United States has increased by 500 percent.

Most women have spent time dieting and trying to change themselves in order to fit into a mold - and a body - that is deemed socially acceptable. Yet it is dieting that is the problem: It disconnects us from our bodies wisdom and holds us back from living life to the fullest. The more time we spend trying to "fix" ourselves, the less time we have for the things that really matter.

The Wisdom of Your Body offers a compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied living. Weaving together illuminating research, stories from her work as a therapist, and deeply personal narratives of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a near-fatal car accident, and chronic pain, McBride invites us to reclaim the wisdom of the body and to experience the wholeness that has been there all along.

In Live Nourished, Shana Spence starts by exposing diet culture for what it is: a patriarchal, capitalist mindset that is engrained in countless aspects of our society, and that keeps us from living healthily and joyfully. It’s a systemic belief that equates fitness, health, and thinness with worth and assigns food a moral value. And it’s a belief that pervades our society.

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 listeners 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.