I am currently reading CRYING IN H MART, a memoir about a woman caring for her Korean mom who has cancer. This came right after A LIVING REMEDY, also a memoir from the perspective of a woman whose mom who has cancer). What can I say, I am doing lots of elder care lately and these books are helping me somehow? I also recommend ALL THIRTEEN, a young adult narrative nonfiction book about the incredible rescue of the Thai soccer team a few years ago. It was a great read and I learned so much I didn’t know about Thai culture and even the geology of caves.
I finished it last month, but for snarky academia, I adored Julie Schumacher's DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS. It's a book full of made up letters of recommendation a creative writing professor wrote and it's hilarious.
The WashPo article...ugh. I follow Cara Harbstreet on Instagram and had noticed a lot more sponsored content lately which frustrated me. I felt like she has been pushing people to eat XYZ. It felt like the anti-diet version of Oatzempic. Like isn't the idea of anti-diet we can eat whatever feels good and nourishes us and not promote one food (or brand) over another?
The thing that really got me about the article was Christy Harrison walking back her statement on health concerns related to weight. Harrison has always seemed a bit "militant" to me in her anti-diet approach but as time as gone on and I've gotten fatter, her and Regan Chastain's work have been things I've come back to as "It's okay to be fat. Your body is not going to fall apart just because of that." To hear she wanted to walk back that claim was devastating.
Just devoured I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU by Rebecca Malakai. Loved The Great Believers and loved this even more. I think it’s been marketed for true crime heads but that is so not my jam and I still couldn’t put it down!
For the Wash Post article - as I read this, I knew logically that this was meant to be a scare tactic toward “anti-diet” and people who follow intuitive eating, but my ED brain made me take it to my therapist and tell her I think she has been lying to me for years and it’s all bull and I have been doing everything wrong and messing up my body!! This article messed me up and made me think things that I thought I was fully recovered from.
I'm currently reading CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah) and whew it's a wonderful and pointed dystopian satire.
Recently read THE BIRTH OF THE PILL (Jonathan Eig) a history of the birth control pill.
BITCH: ON THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES (Lucy Cooke) is a super fun and interesting look at biology and the way that the patriarchy has contributed to all kinds of bad science about female animals, with a healthy dose of her dry British wit throughout).
EXIT INTERVIEW (Kristi Coulter) is maddening and relatable about the experience of being a woman (specifically a GenX woman) in corporate America.
And in fiction, I really enjoyed THIS DISASTER LOVES YOU (Richard Roper), ON THE PLUS SIDE (Jenny Howe), and ONE ITALIAN SUMMER (Rebecca Serle).
I just read Happiness Falls and loved it. I am currently in between books. My holds list at the library is long but with long waits.
I have THOUGHTS about the WaPo article. First of all, I think the biggest complaint about the anti-diet dieticians on IG (I don’t have TikTok, but I think they overlap their content) is that they are mostly thin white women and very few of them acknowledge that. The article also mischaracterizes intuitive eating basically saying it’s “just eat whatever” when it’s more nuanced than that. They’ve also really cherry-picked the creators they talk about. I follow Colleen and she’s not advocating for eating ice cream all the time. And for the purposes of this article protein shakes and Kodiak pancakes are bad? I mean, the article even tells on itself here: “The downside from a health perspective is exacerbating their obesity and potentially making worse their risk for other nutrition-related diseases.” Potentially. So also potentially not making their risk worse.
I just finished NK Jemison's The Broken Earth trilogy and I am not the same person. It's fantasy, the magic system is mind bendingly creative. It's got deeply unconventional narration. People describe it as "inaccessible" to people who aren't into fantasy. But I don't think it's true. The main protagonist is a 42 year old woman with kids trying to survive the apocalypse, and you know? If anyone can save the world? She can. Jemison writes about life experience and emotion so bluntly and so realistically, with emotions as things you don't feel til they almost overwhelm you. I truly can't stop recommending it to people!
I'm trying to gently re-approach reading for pleasure after an intense English degree where I had to read 50-100 texts a term, continuously analysing them and turning them into essay content. Every time I start trying to read, even the pulpiest book, my brain goes into anxious overdrive and I can't fully engage. It's like trying to coax a hypersensitive puppy through a walk. I wondered if anyone's had a similar experience/has tips!
Robot vacuums- I am a low consumer for a variety of reasons, and we just bought a second (off brand that is modular for easy replacement of parts) one for the basement. I love it for every reason she mentions. Especially with a dog and kids. It’s not perfect- but it’s better than the job my 9 year old does at sweeping by 300%.
First of all, I want to name my own bias as a self-described anti-diet dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. You can probably suspect just from those 2 pieces of info about me what I thought of the article. But I’ll continue.
I didn’t feel the need to read beyond the heading and subheading because whoa boy was that a mouthful of hot garbage right there in those 2 lines! They threw all of the buzzwords together to make a complete shitstorm: “O*esity rates rising!” “Big Food!” “Anti-diet dietitians ‘push’ xyz and promote junk food and discourage weight loss!” Ridiculous. Then the opening photo shows a person sliding into a bowlful of oversized plushie Cheerios next to a 2-story replica of a Cheerios box front with some stats about child hunger and the implication that Cheerios/General Mills is going to be part of the solution. Lots to unpack just right there but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave those for another day.
I did in fact keep reading while fuming and stopping to say, “What the actual fuck?!?” Several times. The article opens with a narrative about a woman who gained weight after attempting what she thought was intuitive eating after watching some videos on social media and is now obviously concerned for her health. (No mention of working with a therapist or dietitian, just that she “took the advice of influencers.”) The weight=health correlation is assumed throughout the rest of the piece without even a hint of challenge.
I won’t dissect every inch of the rest of the article but it goes on to bafflingly weave Big Food, influencer RDs, anti-diet rhetoric, and the unsupported notion that processed foods are directly responsible for the rise in chronic health conditions. This article makes so many assumptions about its readers already agreeing with its underlying premises that it’s embarrassing. Probably the most insulting part was the few paragraphs paying lip service to HAES and IE and how their messaging has been co-opted by industries trying to profit off of them (yes!). Then they quickly revert back to the aforementioned woman’s story who claims that she was indoctrinated with anti-diet messaging and why it was harmful to her. Of course it closes reinforcing its true agenda: using a quote from an RD who claims he worked with so many clients who have gained an unacceptable amount of weight because of IE, and he believes that has exacerbated their risk of developing chronic health conditions.
I do think the RD influencer/food sponsorship piece is messy and absolutely is contributing to confusion surrounding our field and endorsements. It would have been nice if the article had mentioned that one of the main reasons RDs accept brand deals is that we get paid shit compared to other allied health professionals, and we have to supplement our paltry earnings from clinical, foodservice, public health, or private practice work. I will say that it’s no secret that our field is quite fractured at the moment and is dealing with some pretty heavy issues: namely, the historic and continuing lack of diversity; our role in upholding white supremacy and racism; the deepening divide between weight-centric and weight-inclusive dietitians (and those who are fence-straddling between the two groups); lack of respect from the healthcare industry generally; gatekeeping and exclusionary practices making a master’s degree a requirement but doing little to advocate for increased pay or increased access of our services to the public. I could go on and on. This article is blatantly trying to discredit RDs and pile-on criticism of our already broken field. We obviously have our issues, but this article is only reinforcing deeply-held biases and beliefs about weight, food and health and is offering nothing substantial to counteract them. Total lack of nuance.
I definitely understand your "if you push too hard, I won't go" attitude about ACOTAR! When you work in books (as I did for YEARS, as a bookseller and librarian), there is a lot of wariness towards books that EVERYONE is talking about. FWIW, I read ACOTAR years ago, before it became THIS, and it's great for what it is, which is a very sexy couple of books about fae. They're fun. They're not life-changing. Revel in the JOMO!
I'm reading a hard book right now: CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE by Sarah Schulman. I definitely don't agree with all of her arguments, but it's hard not to agree with her base premise, which is that we are mixed up, on the whole, about what constitutes abuse, which leads to unjust punitive measures (socially) that don't make a lot of sense.
With ACOTAR - I started this series in 2021 when I was recovering from my ED and I didn’t see it from your perspective because what I saw was underfed, undernourished, women in poverty who then started eating and saw their bodies change and fill out. They were happy about the changes and that was a novel idea to me! So yes, I 100% agree that there is no fat representation and it is all about fit fae banging each other, BUT they are fit because they are warriors so maybe that’s better? If you’re adamant against this one, maybe try her first series which I personally love more, Throne of Glass. Less focus on skinny fae banging. She was 19 when she wrote the first book so if you start it, read it from that perspective knowing THE WRITING GETS SO MUCH BETTER!
We lost power and had a snow day yesterday so I read more than I usually get to on a Thursday! I read A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll which was a pretty wild and creepy AF graphic novel, I’ll have to read it again after having finished it but… definitely recommended if you like books with some horror but not TOO much.
I also recently flew through reading THE NO-GIRLFRIEND RULE by Christen Randall, I loved it! My kids have been extremely into DnD so I picked it up thinking it’d help me understand why they love it so much (it did!). But it was also a sweet YA story about a fat senior girl whose boyfriend plays DnD with his guy friends and won’t let her join (no girlfriends allowed). She finds a sign up about an LGBTQIA+ and girl friendly group and joins and finds the sweetest and funniest group of girls to play with. She has anxiety and that felt well represented in the book, and she learns a lot about being herself and healthy, loving relationships.
I am currently reading CRYING IN H MART, a memoir about a woman caring for her Korean mom who has cancer. This came right after A LIVING REMEDY, also a memoir from the perspective of a woman whose mom who has cancer). What can I say, I am doing lots of elder care lately and these books are helping me somehow? I also recommend ALL THIRTEEN, a young adult narrative nonfiction book about the incredible rescue of the Thai soccer team a few years ago. It was a great read and I learned so much I didn’t know about Thai culture and even the geology of caves.
I have been devouring these stupid books. The writing is so god-awful, yet I can’t stop. It’s not even a hate read.. I don’t know how to describe it.
It is nice to be in on this cultural moment…
I finished it last month, but for snarky academia, I adored Julie Schumacher's DEAR COMMITTEE MEMBERS. It's a book full of made up letters of recommendation a creative writing professor wrote and it's hilarious.
The WashPo article...ugh. I follow Cara Harbstreet on Instagram and had noticed a lot more sponsored content lately which frustrated me. I felt like she has been pushing people to eat XYZ. It felt like the anti-diet version of Oatzempic. Like isn't the idea of anti-diet we can eat whatever feels good and nourishes us and not promote one food (or brand) over another?
The thing that really got me about the article was Christy Harrison walking back her statement on health concerns related to weight. Harrison has always seemed a bit "militant" to me in her anti-diet approach but as time as gone on and I've gotten fatter, her and Regan Chastain's work have been things I've come back to as "It's okay to be fat. Your body is not going to fall apart just because of that." To hear she wanted to walk back that claim was devastating.
Just devoured I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU by Rebecca Malakai. Loved The Great Believers and loved this even more. I think it’s been marketed for true crime heads but that is so not my jam and I still couldn’t put it down!
For the Wash Post article - as I read this, I knew logically that this was meant to be a scare tactic toward “anti-diet” and people who follow intuitive eating, but my ED brain made me take it to my therapist and tell her I think she has been lying to me for years and it’s all bull and I have been doing everything wrong and messing up my body!! This article messed me up and made me think things that I thought I was fully recovered from.
I'm currently reading CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah) and whew it's a wonderful and pointed dystopian satire.
Recently read THE BIRTH OF THE PILL (Jonathan Eig) a history of the birth control pill.
BITCH: ON THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES (Lucy Cooke) is a super fun and interesting look at biology and the way that the patriarchy has contributed to all kinds of bad science about female animals, with a healthy dose of her dry British wit throughout).
EXIT INTERVIEW (Kristi Coulter) is maddening and relatable about the experience of being a woman (specifically a GenX woman) in corporate America.
And in fiction, I really enjoyed THIS DISASTER LOVES YOU (Richard Roper), ON THE PLUS SIDE (Jenny Howe), and ONE ITALIAN SUMMER (Rebecca Serle).
I just read Happiness Falls and loved it. I am currently in between books. My holds list at the library is long but with long waits.
I have THOUGHTS about the WaPo article. First of all, I think the biggest complaint about the anti-diet dieticians on IG (I don’t have TikTok, but I think they overlap their content) is that they are mostly thin white women and very few of them acknowledge that. The article also mischaracterizes intuitive eating basically saying it’s “just eat whatever” when it’s more nuanced than that. They’ve also really cherry-picked the creators they talk about. I follow Colleen and she’s not advocating for eating ice cream all the time. And for the purposes of this article protein shakes and Kodiak pancakes are bad? I mean, the article even tells on itself here: “The downside from a health perspective is exacerbating their obesity and potentially making worse their risk for other nutrition-related diseases.” Potentially. So also potentially not making their risk worse.
Thank you, I hate it.
I just finished NK Jemison's The Broken Earth trilogy and I am not the same person. It's fantasy, the magic system is mind bendingly creative. It's got deeply unconventional narration. People describe it as "inaccessible" to people who aren't into fantasy. But I don't think it's true. The main protagonist is a 42 year old woman with kids trying to survive the apocalypse, and you know? If anyone can save the world? She can. Jemison writes about life experience and emotion so bluntly and so realistically, with emotions as things you don't feel til they almost overwhelm you. I truly can't stop recommending it to people!
I'm trying to gently re-approach reading for pleasure after an intense English degree where I had to read 50-100 texts a term, continuously analysing them and turning them into essay content. Every time I start trying to read, even the pulpiest book, my brain goes into anxious overdrive and I can't fully engage. It's like trying to coax a hypersensitive puppy through a walk. I wondered if anyone's had a similar experience/has tips!
Robot vacuums- I am a low consumer for a variety of reasons, and we just bought a second (off brand that is modular for easy replacement of parts) one for the basement. I love it for every reason she mentions. Especially with a dog and kids. It’s not perfect- but it’s better than the job my 9 year old does at sweeping by 300%.
HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell was a beautiful book! I’m planning to go back and read her earlier work now too if anyone has a suggestion.
The WaPo piece- I have thoughts….
First of all, I want to name my own bias as a self-described anti-diet dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. You can probably suspect just from those 2 pieces of info about me what I thought of the article. But I’ll continue.
I didn’t feel the need to read beyond the heading and subheading because whoa boy was that a mouthful of hot garbage right there in those 2 lines! They threw all of the buzzwords together to make a complete shitstorm: “O*esity rates rising!” “Big Food!” “Anti-diet dietitians ‘push’ xyz and promote junk food and discourage weight loss!” Ridiculous. Then the opening photo shows a person sliding into a bowlful of oversized plushie Cheerios next to a 2-story replica of a Cheerios box front with some stats about child hunger and the implication that Cheerios/General Mills is going to be part of the solution. Lots to unpack just right there but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave those for another day.
I did in fact keep reading while fuming and stopping to say, “What the actual fuck?!?” Several times. The article opens with a narrative about a woman who gained weight after attempting what she thought was intuitive eating after watching some videos on social media and is now obviously concerned for her health. (No mention of working with a therapist or dietitian, just that she “took the advice of influencers.”) The weight=health correlation is assumed throughout the rest of the piece without even a hint of challenge.
I won’t dissect every inch of the rest of the article but it goes on to bafflingly weave Big Food, influencer RDs, anti-diet rhetoric, and the unsupported notion that processed foods are directly responsible for the rise in chronic health conditions. This article makes so many assumptions about its readers already agreeing with its underlying premises that it’s embarrassing. Probably the most insulting part was the few paragraphs paying lip service to HAES and IE and how their messaging has been co-opted by industries trying to profit off of them (yes!). Then they quickly revert back to the aforementioned woman’s story who claims that she was indoctrinated with anti-diet messaging and why it was harmful to her. Of course it closes reinforcing its true agenda: using a quote from an RD who claims he worked with so many clients who have gained an unacceptable amount of weight because of IE, and he believes that has exacerbated their risk of developing chronic health conditions.
I do think the RD influencer/food sponsorship piece is messy and absolutely is contributing to confusion surrounding our field and endorsements. It would have been nice if the article had mentioned that one of the main reasons RDs accept brand deals is that we get paid shit compared to other allied health professionals, and we have to supplement our paltry earnings from clinical, foodservice, public health, or private practice work. I will say that it’s no secret that our field is quite fractured at the moment and is dealing with some pretty heavy issues: namely, the historic and continuing lack of diversity; our role in upholding white supremacy and racism; the deepening divide between weight-centric and weight-inclusive dietitians (and those who are fence-straddling between the two groups); lack of respect from the healthcare industry generally; gatekeeping and exclusionary practices making a master’s degree a requirement but doing little to advocate for increased pay or increased access of our services to the public. I could go on and on. This article is blatantly trying to discredit RDs and pile-on criticism of our already broken field. We obviously have our issues, but this article is only reinforcing deeply-held biases and beliefs about weight, food and health and is offering nothing substantial to counteract them. Total lack of nuance.
I definitely understand your "if you push too hard, I won't go" attitude about ACOTAR! When you work in books (as I did for YEARS, as a bookseller and librarian), there is a lot of wariness towards books that EVERYONE is talking about. FWIW, I read ACOTAR years ago, before it became THIS, and it's great for what it is, which is a very sexy couple of books about fae. They're fun. They're not life-changing. Revel in the JOMO!
I'm reading a hard book right now: CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE by Sarah Schulman. I definitely don't agree with all of her arguments, but it's hard not to agree with her base premise, which is that we are mixed up, on the whole, about what constitutes abuse, which leads to unjust punitive measures (socially) that don't make a lot of sense.
For awesome romances with fat women leads, I love Olivia Dade’s books.
With ACOTAR - I started this series in 2021 when I was recovering from my ED and I didn’t see it from your perspective because what I saw was underfed, undernourished, women in poverty who then started eating and saw their bodies change and fill out. They were happy about the changes and that was a novel idea to me! So yes, I 100% agree that there is no fat representation and it is all about fit fae banging each other, BUT they are fit because they are warriors so maybe that’s better? If you’re adamant against this one, maybe try her first series which I personally love more, Throne of Glass. Less focus on skinny fae banging. She was 19 when she wrote the first book so if you start it, read it from that perspective knowing THE WRITING GETS SO MUCH BETTER!
We lost power and had a snow day yesterday so I read more than I usually get to on a Thursday! I read A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll which was a pretty wild and creepy AF graphic novel, I’ll have to read it again after having finished it but… definitely recommended if you like books with some horror but not TOO much.
I also recently flew through reading THE NO-GIRLFRIEND RULE by Christen Randall, I loved it! My kids have been extremely into DnD so I picked it up thinking it’d help me understand why they love it so much (it did!). But it was also a sweet YA story about a fat senior girl whose boyfriend plays DnD with his guy friends and won’t let her join (no girlfriends allowed). She finds a sign up about an LGBTQIA+ and girl friendly group and joins and finds the sweetest and funniest group of girls to play with. She has anxiety and that felt well represented in the book, and she learns a lot about being herself and healthy, loving relationships.