It's Book Review Month!

Perhaps it is the "read a book on your last minute beach vacation" or the "Back-to-School" energy floating around, but it just seems we need to chat about some good health and wellness reads.  I'll start with two of my favorite mindful/intuitive eating books...French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano (Random House, Inc.) and Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch (St. Martin's Press).

For those who don't know my story, I started dieting at age 9.  It started years of anorexia mentality, yo-yo dieting, constantly thinking about food, etc.  By my early 20's I realized it wasn't working, but I knew no other way to think.  I didn't remember what having a "normal" relationship with food was like.  So I read two books, Diets Don't Work by Bob Schwartz and Breaking Out of Food Jail by Jean Antonello.  I highly recommend these two books if you have dieted and want to break free of the destructive mentality.

Along came many other books, but the two I'll review briefly today have helped me tremendously.  In fact, I am in the process of becoming a Certified Intuitive Eating Coach through Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch's program. 

First, French Women Don't Get Fat:  this is a "read it on the beach" book.  Full of ideas and stories in a style that you absorb the concepts that food is for both nutrition and pleasure and that you must have both.  Her teaching that Americans focus on not eating what is "bad" and French focus on eating what is "good" is central to the French Women philosophy.  I have read this book over and over (and listened to it on CD) to continually re-program my thinking about food and nutrition.

Second, Intuitive Eating:  this is a "study it" book, though it is not a dry textbook for back-to-school.  It is also full of ideas and stories, but presented more in a Step One, Two, Three fashion.  Each step is needed and they are very encouraging that a change of all the diet habits won't happen overnight and that is all right.

If you have dieted and want to be free, I recommend you read both of these books.  Like grilled asparagus is to grilled fish, they really complement each other.  Why?  Here's one example...in the Intuitive Eating book, one of the steps is "find ways to deal with emotions other than food."  There are ideas given, but the French Women Don't Get Fat book really gets into how to amp up the pleasure of life so that your emotions are soothed without even thinking about food. 

During August, I'll review other health and wellness books.  If you have any you would like for me to review, please let me know.