Books to Support a Healthy Lifestyle
In case you didn’t see it earlier in the week, I compiled a list of the recipes I posted on my blog in 2011: Wednesday’s Healthy Eating
Judging by the number of newbies showing up at the 3 Fat Chicks Forum to seek support for dieting, the New Year’s resolution to lose weight has lost none of its popularity. Those of us who read know that one way to make sure one’s resolve lasts longer than a day or two is to read a book about it. Here are my top 5 books for living a healthy life at a healthy weight:
1. The Beck Diet Solution and/or The Complete Beck Diet for Life by Judith Beck. Choose Book 1 if a task per day format appeals to you, Book 2 if it doesn’t. The other difference is that Book 2 has a healthy food plan incorporated in it (but you can ignore it). Book 1 requires you to choose your own food plan. Both books teach Cognitive Behavior Therapy techniques, applying them to the complex and difficult task of dieting.
The Beck Diet Solution teaches you how to get yourself to eat the way you’re supposed to eat. It shows you how to talk back to the I don’t want to, I don’t have to, or I can’t voice in your head. (The Beck Diet Solution, page 19)
2. The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler. This is the book that started me on my weight loss journey. While reading this book, I stopped eating junk food cold turkey. He explains how modern foods are engineered to be hyperpalatable and to stimulate further eating, irresistible and craveable.
The ubiquitous presence of food, large portion sizes, incessant marketing, and the cultural assumption that it’s acceptable to eat anywhere, at any time, have combined to put more and more people at risk. We see the results as increasing numbers of people become conditioned hypereaters. (p. 248)
3. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I read this book several years ago and it helped me change my eating to one that was more plant-based, more local, and more natural. I slowly lost forty pounds over a couple of years (then gained it all back, but that’s another story). The philosophy from In Defense of Food still informs the choices that I make in eating. It’s a way of eating that is intellectually, socially, and physically stimulating to me. Some of my obsession with food that used to go into overeating now goes into food politics, shopping directly from farmers, and growing my own food.
4. Food Matters by Mark Bittman. From what I can gather, Michael Pollan isn’t the cook in his household. In Defense of Food champions cooking, but not in quite the same way that someone who actually loves to cook would. The book that filled that void came from New York Times’ cooking columnist, Mark Bittman. This was the book that taught me how to appreciate cabbage salad.
5. Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating by Ari Weinzweig. I’m not sure this book would have helped at the beginning of my weight loss journey, but it made a big difference along the way. If you ever get in one of those phases where food feels like the enemy or you think maybe you swapped an obsession for overeating for an obsession for measuring and counting calories, this book is a cure. It took me to a new level of appreciating food, not in the old “let me at it” mode but in a new “let me really taste and enjoy it” way.
If you have or have had a new year’s resolution about eating healthier or losing weight, what books helped you?
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