Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'
What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety, by Cole Kazdin
7 reviews
murphykat's review
I see the benefit of the book for certain demographics. I, as a doctor, appreciate the inside look at the experience and feelings of people who have struggled with eating disorders. But I found the organization of the book hard to follow, I’m unsure what the overarching point is and I got the halfway point. I appreciate calling out problems with the system, but the book feels bleak. I also think the author isn’t defining certain words they use clearly. Saying no diet is sustainable isn’t true considering vegan, vegetarian, Dash, and mediterranean are considered diets. I’m assuming the author meant fad diets, but it is kind of important to define in the book. Now I did listen to the audiobook so it’s possible that there is an appendix at the end of the book to address these things and I just didn’t have access to that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder
readingtomydogs's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
What's Eating Us is a great book about eating disorders, and how so many areas of modern life affect and may create the conditions for an eating disorder to form. My one critique is the longer chapter on fertility; while I appreciate the difficulty child-bearing can be because of having an eating disorder, I felt it went too far into IVF and struggles there, without always linking it back to the ED. I think this book would be a great resource for anyone who has an issue with food, body image, or has or is in recovery from an eating disorder. It didn't get too bogged down in science, but was well-researched and thorough.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder
Moderate: Infertility
ladymacbette's review
challenging
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder
momloves2read's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Wow. This book was absolutely fascinating and sad at the same time. I had no idea that eating disorders were so prevalent and so difficult to treat and underfunded. I hope many more people are able to read this book to get the word out about them. This book was well written and it didn't feel like a chore to read. There was some occasional profanity, but I didn't feel like it detracted too much from the content.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder
leif's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Thank you to NetGalley for access to an ARC of this book.
RATING: 3.75/5
What’s Eating Us was a challenging book to read for many reasons. I was instantly intrigued upon seeing the title and description of this book as an examination of women, disordered eating, and body anxiety. As someone who was socialized as a woman, experienced firsthand the impact of disordered eating on my friends, and struggled with my concerns related to body image, I knew I needed to read this book.
Let’s start with the good. The best part of this book is the way that Kazdin used her background in journalism to investigate disordered eating and support her personal experiences with data and stories of other women impacted by body anxiety. I have already immersed myself into conversations and activism around posh positivity, body neutrality, and other liberation movements and so I feel like this book would have more punch for someone who still has a lot of healing to do in that sense. I found this style of data-backed investigative non-fiction paired well with Kazdin’s own stories, which are interwoven throughout this book. Kadzin’s deeply personal experiences are so poignant and I couldn’t help but find myself relating, empathizing, and sometimes deeply disturbed by her writing.
As much as Kazdin’s strong narrative voice was an asset to this book, it was also part of what made this book so deeply uncomfortable to read at some points. Some elements of the book are, in my opinion, not handled with enough delicacy, especially considering that Kazdin is hyper-aware of the impact of “diet talk” and how triggering it can be. For example, rather than discuss calories or weight in a general sense, Kazdin instead will detail specific numbers (such as how many calories she would eat on a deficit or what her lowest weight was) or even repeat certain thoughts far more than I’d deem necessary to get her point across (like expressing that she wants to lose ten pounds seven separate times).
These faults aside, this book is incredibly valuable and hopefully will continue to fuel the conversation around body anxiety and disordered eating. As Kazdin herself points out, “eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of any mental illness” and yet we don’t talk about them nearly enough, let alone with the gravity and care that this nuanced topic deserves.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body shaming, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Vomit, and Infertility
Minor: Addiction, Dysphoria, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, and Self harm
stmartinspress's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder
ameliareads's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Eating disorder
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