"Eat Sanely toward a peaceful relationship with food and a healthy-enough weight" is the book to guide you through the process of beginning, and then keeping on, eating sanely. Think of it as your complete guide and toolbox for making change that lasts. You can target weight loss, weight maintenance, healthier eating and exercise habits. You can define a way of eating you’d like to stick with, then start making the changes you’ll need. (Paperback)
I’ve worked with people struggling with eating disorders for over 30 years. At the same time, I’ve long been someone who loves food and cooking, and sharing good food with others. It has troubled me to see how hard we struggle in this country to settle into a healthy and satisfying relationship with food—one that supports a strong healthy body, and a healthy-enough weight, but still allows enjoyment and satisfaction. Our conflicts with eating and weight arise from a complicated web of causes--physical, psychological, social, and even political. And what affects any given person tends to be a unique mix of these factors.
Changing our relationship with food means learning to consistently, at least most of time, take good care of our bodies. We above all want to protect and improve our health, to keep ourselves strong. In terms of managing weight, this means neither overfilling ourselves with non-nutritious food nor starving ourselves with unsatisfying, unrealistic diets. It also means, though, that we eat in ways that are sometimes fun and that mostly leave us feeling satisfied. When we take care of ourselves in this way, we are almost always better able to be the people we want to be in our lives. A healthy way with food and self-care paves the path to better weight and health, but also to less psychological turmoil, better self-esteem, and effectiveness in many areas of life.
When I first created Eat Sanely: Get Off the Diet Roller Coaster for Good, in 2009, I said this about “sane eating”: We must find a way to eat that maintains a healthy enough weight, without worry or guilt, that we can more or less stick with forever, not just for the course of a diet. This still holds true.
