Reviews with content warning for Infertility - What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety

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What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety by Cole Kazdin

10 reviews

aubreyfrogger's review

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

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cassreading's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This was a great, nuanced exploration of diet culture and eating disorders, in all their inextricability. Kazdins own battle with anorexia and bulimia adds a personal touch that really makes this book Feel if you know what I mean.

I myself have never had an eating disorder, but I can see how someone with an ED could walk away from this book feeling really seen.

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jasmineehare's review

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Reading this book feels like an inoculation against diet culture and the constantly swirling body criticism we all swim in. I loved hearing the author reading her own story, it felt very personal. I wish everyone would read this book.

I appreciated when she acknowledged her own unconscious or conscious fatphobia, even though there were still moments when weight loss seemed to be framed as still desirable. But overall, this book felt extremely honest and I was fascinated by the newer understanding of the science of eating disorders, as well as the treatments. As a teacher of young girls, it makes me want to know what more I can do to prevent disordered eating before it begins.

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pmhandley's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

A really informative look at diet culture and eating disorders and how dysfunctional treatment options are. It's astonishing how little research we have done on effective treatments, and the massive racial disparities in who gets diagnosed. I appreciate how the author vetted who to include in her book, because it turned out so many people treating eating disorder patients are also on the payroll of diet and exercise companies pushing unhealthy ideas around food. The fertility chapter near the end was interesting but felt a little out of place, like there were some strained ties to the rest of the diet culture theme but it felt more like the author just wanted to fertility journey in the book somewhere.

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amandaboyer's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

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aqtbenz's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad medium-paced

3.0

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sophieheinrichs's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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kristinv20's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

i got this book and literally less than a week later got diagnosed with disordered eating patterns, so i decided to hold off on reading it until i got everything sorted out personally and that was a good decision. it's very well written, but extremely visceral and would not have been good for me two months ago (or maybe it would've smacked me out of it, who's to say). Kazdin does a really great job exploring diet culture, the recovery-industrial complex, and the effects of eating disorders in her personal life. her prose makes this lean more toward the memoir side of nonfiction, which has the benefit of feeling more accessible but the negative effect of sometimes obfuscating scientific information and allowing the author's bias into areas that could've remained objective. i would've appreciated a bit more on some of the scientific background, both on actual eating disorders and on their mechanisms of treatment--Kazdin lets her own personal experiences really color her depictions of treatments and therapies, and while that's effective in showing what she went through it could scare people off therapies that would be beneficial for them. overall this was a really fascinating exploration of diet culture, and while there's areas it could improve on i found it very solid overall.

arc provided by St. Martin's and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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readingtomydogs's review against another edition

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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.

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leif's review against another edition

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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.

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