This book is a memoir. The author is currently a professional blogger whose blog is centered in healthy but tasty recipes. No, I have not visited this bog personally. Not yet. The author arranges her memoir chronologically, discussing her childhood, which laid the foundation for the dysfunctional relationship she has always had with food. She details how her parents, especially her mother, set examples of the relationships with food that she would have for many years. She devotes much of her memoir to her late teens and early adulthood. There are only a handful of photos in this book, including a "Before" and "After" photo of the author, just before she launches into her book's introduction. She ends this memoir with poetic reflections of her life. She provides two recipes of luscious sweets and wraps it all up with acknowledgements for the central people in her life.
This book was pretty much how I expected it to be. It is a memoir, after all. I found it to be interesting. As a Christian and as I filtered her book through my worldview, I saw how this author, from early childhood, was set up to turn to food for her joy, her hope, her strength, her meaning, and her life. As this author gets to the heart of her problem with a counselor and loses her weight over time, she ends up thinner for her weight than yours truly. However, as she did not marry or give birth to children, I could understand this. I was glad that she made peace with her body size. I was impressed with how she took to running and to learning to like fruits and vegetables and created healthy recipes out of them. When she shares that she gave up running because she actually did not like it at all, and substituted walking, this rand a bell with me. For I'm in a local church with a number of runners and, after seeing all these runners in the news I get a little irritated as I'm not a runner and never was. I know people who are beginning to take it up, even aspiring to run a marathon some day. I don't see a thing wrong with that but, like the author, running isn't my thing. Toward the third quarter of the book, the author carved out for herself a free, independent life that many people can only dream of, as she went on to travel in other countries. I have to credit her for how she worked through her root issues that led her to eat herself into her past gross obesity, and to persevere for many moths until she lost all the weight she had planned to lose all along. I know that the full life that she currently enjoys was hard-won.
I recommend this book for anyone who is struggling with his or her relationship with food, with weight and fat, or with any kind of eating disorder. This is a book for a general audience and is not addressed toward any niche community. However, if any of you call yourselves Christians and deal with food issues, weight issues or eating disorders, read this book. It is not a Christian book but it will show you that you are not alone. It is indeed ironic that while so much of the world is starving and lacks enough food to survive, we in the West have too much food and stand in danger of bad health, physical and spiritual and emotional, from too much food and "stuff." As this author learned, the heart of many of our problems in the West is that we have a tough time delaying gratification and rely on "vices" to help us face life.
I received this book free of charge through Blogging For Books in exchange for an honest review of this book.
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