“You Just Need to Lose Weight”
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Average rating3.9
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the great thinkers of our generation . . . I feel fresher and smarter and happier for sitting down with her.”—Jameela Jamil, iWeigh Podcast The co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and creator of Your Fat Friend equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy—calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance “glorifies obesity.” The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive. In “You Just Need to Lose Weight,” Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people. Bringing her dozen years of community organizing and training to bear, Gordon shares the rhetorical approaches she and other organizers employ to not only counter these pernicious myths, but to dismantle the anti-fat bias that so often underpin them. As conversations about fat acceptance and fat justice continue to grow, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” will be essential to ensure that those conversations are informed, effective, and grounded in both research and history.
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I love the way she explains anti-fat myths in such common sense ways, but also with research to back her up. This has honestly changed the way I look at the world.
A few years ago I attended a continuing ed training focused on helping clients with weight/emotional eating/body image concerns. That training was so helpful to me in so many ways, and one of the great side effects was that I was introduced to Aubrey Gordon. She is an amazing thinker and community organizer, and has written for many years under the pseudonym of “Your Fat Friend.” She is also the co-host of the AMAZING podcast Maintenance Phase.
Anyway, needless to say reading one of her books has been on my list for a while now. As suggested by the title, this book is organized into 20 chapters, each one focused on a different myth about fat people (perhaps relevant here - one of the chapters focused on reclaiming the word “fat” as a neutral body description, akin to short/tall). If you have never thought about your views on body size, never questioned your innate reaction to congratulate people for weight loss, never thought about how larger bodies are portrayed in the media (or as the punchline of jokes), this may be a great book for you! It is heavily research-based, but for me the biggest punches come from stories and experiences of her own life.
If you are already a Maintenence Phase listener, you have probably been exposed to a fair amount of the information in this book (although not all). And if you expect it to read like a MP episode, that is not quite the vibe. Many of the chapters end with questions to think about and/or actions to take, which I really appreciated. I'm very glad I read this book!
