I got extremely excited when I saw this cover and read the synopsis. The comic covers an extremely important topic that is such a personal issue for so many people who have struggled with their weight, and loving and accepting themselves. So I'm pretty sad to say that the story gave me pretty mixed feelings and that ending was especially disappointing because it was so abrupt. I checked to see if this was a series but I couldn't find any information on it. I'm kind of hoping that Mindy's journey will continue but I have a feeling it won't?

First of all, this art work was fantastic. I loved the colour palette and I loved the drawing style. It has a modern edge to it but it's a little bit more "rough" than I usually like but I really enjoyed it in this graphic novel. I thought Mindy was drawn well. She's shown as having a very curvaceous body type although I don't know that I would identify her as having a "big" body. Still, I liked the way she was drawn and her style in particular was great!

Now, on to the more serious content… My weight and self-image is something I've struggled with my whole life, even now as a 31yo, so Mindy's situation was entirely relatable and really hit so close to home. This comic made me feel so much--sadness, anger, happiness and hope. I experienced so much of what Mindy went through, although I'm thankful (I guess) who've always had friends who've told me that they loved me the way I am without then going on to give me backhanded compliments about my eating habits and body. But when it comes to family, the toxic words that came out of their mouths were mirrors to what used to come out of my parents' mouths, and wow. Those were some really tough scenes to read. You can feel Mindy crawling into herself and wanting to drown her feelings in the one thing that gave her comfort: food.

Mindy experiences flashbacks after eating this chocolate bar called "Eat, and love yourself". I thought the concept was really cool--imagine discovering such a chocolate bar! The flashbacks show us when she started purging for the first time, how she stopped eating in front of others but binged in private, how she went to therapy to try to deal with her bulimia but stopped going, and how until now she has never learned to love or accept herself because of the hurtful things her family and friends would say to her. These moments were so painful to see, and my heart broke for Mindy (and in a way also for myself) but with each one I was really hoping that we would get to see more growth in her character. I know how we see ourselves doesn't change over night but for a premise that promises a journey of acceptance and self love, I have to say that we don't really experience it.

That's not to say that Mindy doesn't experience any change. She stands up for herself to her parents and it was a scene that had me screaming "HELL YES, MINDY! You tell them, girl!" It was an empowering scene that I felt in my bones! She also started to realise in later flashbacks towards the end just how much damage she was possibly doing to herself, but just as things were getting better the story just ends. I was expecting more positive changes to come, especially with the rekindled friendship/romance between Mindy and Elliott, but the story cuts off seemingly mid-positive thought and let's just say it was pretty underwhelming and unsatisfying.

Overall, I think that this story has a great message that's very important to talk about and I'm glad this graphic novel exists. That said, I think it could stand to be slightly longer so that Mindy's change and growth can be fully realised because unfortunately, I wasn't near convinced she had accepted herself with that ending. It felt too much of a "beginning" than a satisfying ending.

Tw: eating disorder

Thank you so much for the Arc from NetGalley!

Basically loving the art, the drawing, and the story. Talking about body change and how the character sees herself. How it affects her in her life and with her confidence in everything. I think this comic talk about an important subject but I also feel I needed a little more.
Anywho I feel like you should read it and understand how people can feel.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing this e-arc!

A story about Mindy, a woman living with an eating disorder who has to learn how to love herself again. Whimsically, she goes back in time recollecting memories of her as she tackles body dysmorphia. I liked the story. It was fine. But upon reflection i have decided to bum my rating up thanks to the author's subtle ways of adding diversity and tackling various problems.

Oh wow.. I did not expect this!

Now, listen to me. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is overweight, who did and does struggle with eating disorders and who has suffered and still does sometime because of how she perceives herself and how others do.
I am not of the opinion that carrying extra weight is okay. Not from an aesthetic point of view, but from a very objective health perspective.

However

What I would love for everyone to understand: we are work in progress. And the way we relate to ourselves and to those around us affects how that progress goes.
If you find yourself in my place or Mindy's, you will never love yourself if you can't love yourself as you are in this moment. Loving someone does not mean washing all imperfections or ignoring them. It means being able to accept and embrace someone with and as they are, and lovingly helping them achieve their best self. And so you must do with yourself. You must accept who and what you are now, understand that your value is not those extra or too few kilos you have or that acne or those scars, and then, from that point on, decide on how you can bring this body to its best, healthy shape, to be able to enjoy it for many years to come and to cherish it.

If you are friends with or have family members who struggle with their bodies, pointing it out, judging their every bite and move, won't help. It will just feed their anxiety. Instead, talk lovingly to them, show them you accept them as they are, but are willing to do more and go the extra mile and be there for them if they need your help in getting better.

I loved that this book managed to portray the inside turmoil we go through. Also, it showed how food is not just food sometimes. Food becomes the only thing that offers comfort when you feel at your lowest and so it gets you in this vicious cycle of eating, feeling bad, eating for feeling bad, feeling worse. And it showed it so well.

I'm getting way too deep into the subject but I appreciated this book. Kudos to the author

**Thank you to Netgalley and Boom! Box for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This in no way changes my rating**

Eat, and Love Yourself is described as a fantasy comic about a 27-year-old named Mindy who finds a chocolate bar that will allow her to be "brought back to a specific moment of her past -- helping her look at herself honestly, learn to love her body the way it is, and [accept] love." That is not at all what I got from this comic.

As a plus-size reader who is the same age as Mindy, I should have been all over this comic. I have struggled with my weight my entire life. I have tried all the fad diets. I've been told the same things Mindy is told by her family, which is essentially mixed messaging ("You're beautiful and don't know it" but also "you're never going to find a husband at your current weight"). My dad actually threatened to send me to fat camp in my late teens. I am SQUARELY in the demographic for this story.

Instead, I was deeply hurt and confused by it. I'm actually holding back tears as I write this.

**WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD**

In NO WAY was this "body positive" or about "loving yourself". Mindy doesn't learn ANYTHING in this story until she makes an arbitrary decision to "love herself" on the LAST PAGE of the story. The entire time, she binge eats. She is shown on the page to have bulimia, resulting in multiple panels of her throwing up after eating. While this disorder is an important topic to cover, I'm unsure if this was the best medium to portray that in. I'm concerned seeing Mindy throw up may "inspire" others to try and lose weight the same way, even though that is clearly not the message the story is trying to get across. She also lies about eating when she hasn't and constantly tells herself not to eat or that she's "not hungry". She gets to a point this is affecting her work. Even in a dream, she's telling herself she can't eat. She has very, very deepseated issues that need to be addressed by a psychiatrist (who is shown in the book, but whom she has since stopped seeing). A "magic chocolate bar" isn't going to fix them. She needs more help than that.

Mindy has a toxic family and "friend" who give her mixed messages consistently and constantly. "You're beautiful" and then a chapter later, "You're shoveling food in your face." "You shouldn't wear that pattern. It's not right for our body type" and then a few pages later "C'mon! Eat some more lasagna!" At the "moments in life" the chocolate bar brings her back to, she is called a "blob" by one parent and is said to be "not eating for attention" by the other, who also adds that she'll "never get a boyfriend this way". Her ONE friend tells her "you're never going to get a boyfriend eating the way you do" and polices her intake to the point that she tells her she can "smell chocolate" on her. While in reality, people say these things all of the time, thinking they're being helpful, Mindy barely does anything about it to "fix" those relationships to lead to the intended ending. She tells her friend sometimes what she says is hurtful. She tells her parents she's tired of being a disappointment to them. But the effort put into the relationship being fixed on BOTH sides isn't shown. She cuts off ties with the friend temporarily and her parents gaslight her by saying "she's beautiful inside" and they "never meant to give her the feeling they didn't think that" when they VERY HEAVILY IMPLIED exactly that MULTIPLE times in the text!

The love interest aspect was the least toxic because he "loved her regardless", but the ending is left open, so who knows what happened with him?

All of the extremely toxic messaging aside, the character model was inconsistent throughout the book. There are times Mindy is shown as thicker. There are times she looks thinner. There are times she's got very thick thighs and one inexplicable panel where she has a thigh gap. This is especially apparent from drawings of her facing sideways. Sometimes she looks bigger, especially in the stomach area, than she does in panels even a few pages over.

While the characters in the story are aesthetically pleasing and I enjoyed the artwork, I was EXTREMELY hurt and disappointed by the message in this story. I did not find ANY body positivity. Instead, I found a comic that was perpetuating the toxic messaging of friends and family of plus-size people leading to the character binging and purging and then berating herself. I would argue the "moments" intended to help Mindy "love herself" just show her how hurtful everyone in her life's behavior has been and would serve to make her more depressed. And a one page "decision" to "love herself for herself" isn't enough growth for me.

All in all, I give this a ⭐️/5, which is really disappointing. I have read many other comics by Boom! Box and have LOVED them. I was expecting more. I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone read this. I think it's incredibly harmful and hurtful.

Before I start gushing over this graphic novel, let me explain its contents. Eat, and Love Yourself follows a 27-year-old girl, named Mindy, who has been struggling with an eating disorder, depression, and body image since she was a little girl. Throughout the story, the reader views how the people closest to Mindy have contributed to her low self-esteem. It’s a really powerful story. I was having trouble reading the last few pages, as there were tears in my eyes.

Well, I guess that I already gushed a little bit, but can you blame me? Eat, and Love Yourself resonated with my own life experiences, and I know of multiple other people it would surely also resonate with. I already want to gift this book to a couple of people in my life. I honestly think anyone who has struggled with body image issues would get something out of this graphic novel.

Of course, there are a couple of trigger warnings associated with this title though. The trigger warnings include body shaming and binge eating and purging.

I hope that we get more volumes of Eat, and Love Yourself. I would love to view more of Mindy’s journey towards self-love.

Eat, and Love Yourself was provided to me as an ARC from NetGalley.

This graphic novel was sort of a mixed bag for me.

Mindy has spent her entire life dealing with disordered eating, and now, in her mid-twenties, she discovers a chocolate bar that, when she eats it, takes her back in time to pivotal moments in her life. Be reliving these memories, Mindy begins to recognize her disorder for what it is and move towards self-love.

My main issue with this was the ending -- I needed one more chapter. It ends abruptly with Mindy deciding she's going to change, but for me, that was a difficult ending to deal with. We see in Mindy's flashbacks that she's tried to change before: she's gone to therapy, she's oscillated between binging and restricting herself. For a story about recovery and learning to love oneself, we don't actually get either of those things. Recognizing an issue and saying "things will be different" is relatively easy compared to actually changing the disordered behavior.

I'm glad that Mindy calls out both her best friend and her parents by the end of the book for their constant commentary on her body. Seeing her disordered eating encouraged because "it's fine if she misses a meal, she doesn't need it" and the perpetual "you'll never find love" was hard, and I'm really glad they were both challenged by the narrative.

All in all, I'd say this graphic novel does a reasonably good job of accomplishing its goals. The art was gorgeous and the colors were so vivid and beautiful (I love the jewel tones).

A fairly quick read with a lot of heart to it. It hit home in many aspects, im not goning to lie, and there were parts that were a little confronting to me cause i'd been in simmilar situations and mindsets. The graphics and colouring are great and help make it a very enjoyable read. I could see this being a very uplifting and motivting book for many people and i wish it was around when i was younger. Sweney Boo is a talented author and brings the character of Mindy to life and makes her very realistic character wise. I will say though that ome aspects of this book could be triggering for people with an eating disorder or eating problems and id recommend taking that into account before starting this book if you think that it could potentially be an issue for you. Overall, it is a solid read and well put together book. I'm happy where it ended and happy with the character development throughout.

A moving modern day fantasy about a girl who has problematic views towards food and her own body.

Mindy is in her late twenties, works in a coffeeshop and basically hates her body. She can't stop herself eating when she's depressed (which is a lot, these days) and then bringing it back up.

It doesn't help that her best friend isn't being supportive, and it also doesn't help that she acccidentally repels the boy she's interested in because of her lack of confidence.

Then she picks up an artisan bar of chocolate, supposedly made by a small, indie producer, and finds that every piece she eats sends her back in time, to revisit instances when her body image was brought into question. This helps her confront her past, and see a possible way forward.

Look, I'm a middle-aged man, and I've had weight problems and self-confidence issues all my life. I know how important it is to teach (young and older!) people about body dysmorphia, and how it warps your sense of self and can obliterate your self image. And, even more important, what you can do against it. The book can sometimes be a bit too didactic, I feel, it lacks subtlety - but then I think: perhaps that is the best way to approach this problem.

The art is quite cartoony, it's cute and does a great job of telling the story.

It's an important subject, and this book handles it beautifully.

3.5 stars

The artwork is marvelous, but the story *just* misses the mark.

**Trigger warning for eating disorders.**

It would be kind to say that Mindy’s stuck in a rut. At twenty-seven, she’s deferred college to the point that she now feels too old for it. She works long hours as a barrista and barely socializes. Her best/only friend Shaé is both sweet and loyal; unfortunately, she also has a long track record of saying exactly the wrong thing when it comes to Mindy’s weight, which has been a sore point her entire life.

Mindy’s struggled with disordered eating since she was a kid, including binge eating following by purging. She has painfully low self-esteem and body dysmorphia, which holds her back in life: from making friends, dating, trying to achieve her goals, and making the most of her one wild and precious life.

Until, one late night/early morning, Mindy happens upon a weird, hippy dippy, New Agey candy bar at her local bodega, and picks it up on a whim. “Eat and Love Yourself,” it entreats her. With each bite, Mindy is transported, ghost-like, to a memory from her childhood. In each scene, her “food issues” command a large presence.

In flashbacks, she witnesses her well-meaning but oblivious parents arguing over her eating habits; a young Mindy keeping a food journal; a teenage Mindy blowing off a cute guy at school, because he couldn’t possibly like her; and much worse.

Thankfully, adult Mindy is much kinder to her young self; with the help of “Eat and Love Yourself” (man, why couldn’t you be dark chocolate instead of milk!?), Mindy takes a tentative step on the path to self-acceptance and healing.

I wanted to love EAT, AND LOVE YOURSELF – I cannot tell you how much! – but I just feel like there’s a piece missing. The story ends abruptly, at a point that literally had me protesting, “Wait, that was it!?” I can’t even say that the ending is hopeful, since it feels incomplete: *has* Mindy made peace with her body? I’m not 100% sold.

Plus there’s this really odd multiple-Mindys sequence in the very first pages that I *thought* would be explained (or at least referenced!) at end, but no such luck. I guess we’re just to take it as a (day)dream sequence? Personally, I find my original interpretation – Mindy starts some radical body acceptance movement, becoming an overnight sensation, and so everyone starts copying her unique style – much more satisfying.

That said, that artwork is gorgeous – as in comma, drop dead. Mindy is freaking adorable, with her bopping teal ponytail and geekalicious oversized owl glasses. I just wanted to give her a smushy hug and then borrow her combat boots indefinitely.

There’s a lot in the story that did hit home with me, especially all the underhanded comments from mom and dad that gradually eroded Mindy’s self-esteem.

EAT, AND LOVE YOURSELF is a welcome contribution to the literature on eating disorders, self-esteem, and the beauty industrial complex, but it could have been so much more. I mean, magical chocolate bars! What a great idea!

'Eat, and love yourself' a graphic novel about body positivity and kindness. Filled with messages about self-love, friendship, love and family bands.

I really liked how the author contained lots of messages in this story. She talked about self-love in a very different way. The artist showed the downsides of eating and even hinted towards eating disorders like Bulimia. She told the story in a very kind and respectful way, but still showing off the hard truth.
The images contain different drawing techniques. The bright and joyful colors, make the story less harsh. It gives it a nice and relaxing feel. With the different techniques, the artist was able to tell different stories through the same images. It sounds very complicated, but it explains itself while reading. I thought that was very unique creative and original from her.
Even when I liked the message, creative storyline, and amazing artwork; I still wasn't fully convinced. There was not enough depth in the story and the main character was very flat. She went through a change, but a way to drastic and not in a realistic way. I felt like a longer story would have shown off more. Mostly because the author didn't convince me about the strength of her message. I missed emotion and most of all the emotions which would make me feel sorry for the main character.

Overall, I really liked this comic. The drawing style is very sweet. It's just the story that lags a bit.

A potent and beautifully illustrated story about the struggle of living with an eating disorder and the way that seemingly small experiences and comments from loved ones can build up and play a part in shaping someone's relationship with food and their body. I loved the journey and the hopeful tone of the ending.

<I> I am incredibly grateful to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this graphic novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is currently set to be published in April 2020 </I>

4.5 stars

<U> Eat, and Love Yourself /u> is a story about Mindy, a young woman living with body dysmorphia (and as a result struggling with a number of self-esteem issues/eating disorders), who comes across a magic chocolate bar that enables her to relive experiences from her youth.

Oh my lordy, this is a book that all women need to read. Aside from the fact that the art is absolutely phenomenal and vibrant with colour, the storyline really packs an emotional punch. It is so raw and real that I could feel my heart being squeezed, crushed, and reassembled as I read. This is a story that the young adult in all of us can relate to.

I loved the art in this book. The character had a lot of deep rooted emotions tied to her eating disorder and it felt real in that regard. I think it's a solid graphic novel that many will enjoy.

I absolutely adored this book! To see a struggle of eating disorders and depression does. That this is what our world deals with. Just reading this makes your eyes open a little more of the problem. The characters were perfect and the illustration was beautiful!

This comic digs dipper into body image issues and journey to break the cycle of the eating disorder. We follow mindy who has body image issues and eating disorders. I loved the message of this book. About the self love starts with yourself.
Thank you netgalley for the E-Arc in exchange of the honest review.