I would plant What's Eating Us at a solid 4.5 stars. Kazdin does a really great job at presenting information (even the information we know inherently) in such a way that feels like she's fighting in our corner, which I truly believe she is. There is a lot of talk about eating disorders, as she has struggled with one for the majority of her life. But there is also inclusive language on how the BIPOC community struggles with body anxiety, eating disorders, general access to medical care, and everyday stressors such as racism and sexism. There is inclusive language for those of us living in bigger bodies, and how acceptance of every body starts at loving those that are not thin and white.

I so appreciate that she included resources for people looking for voices not tied to the diet and weight loss industry. Overall, this is definitely a book I want to buy for every woman in my life who I at once had a diet conversation with, for my mom who has struggled with body image and disordered eating, for friends, co-workers, literally everyone. Although the information here may not always feel fresh or ground-breaking, it is presented in a way that made me pay attention again. And for that alone, I am truly grateful that this book will be out in the world.

Part memoir, part research, and all around eating disorders. An interesting look into how (particularly American) society impacts women and their perception of bodies. I became a bit frustrated with Kazdin's negativity towards therapy and her claim that there are no credentials for therapist to practice. While there are not required credentials specific to areas of practice, each therapist must obtain a master's degree and a license in order to practice. The licensure process includes hours of practice as well as passing a licensure test to demonstrate capability. Additionally, therapists must maintain their license through continuing education courses. It is possible that the specific field of eating disorder treatment could use more gate-keeping but it is not accurate to give a blanket statement that implies therapist have no training or experience in their field. Therapists can obtain specific additional credentials in areas that they wish to become experts in (although unfortunately most credentials include on-going costs to maintain in addition to the cost of maintaining your license).
Looking past my frustrations on her judgment of therapy, the book is overall an interesting read which I would recommend to those who are looking to understand eating disorders a bit better.

**Full review to be added closer to publication date in March 2023!**

As someone who has had their own fair share of struggles around food and eating, I found What's Eating Us to be particularly relevant, captivating, and insightful. I really appreciated this deep dive into the diet industry, mental illness around eating and eating disorders, and so many more incredibly important topics that, although are mentioned a lot by people, aren't really considered as in-depth as other issues often are. I can't recommend this book enough to anyone and think it's a really important work of nonfiction.

Wow. This book was absolutely fascinating and sad at the same time. I had no idea that eating disorders were so prevalent and so difficult to treat and underfunded. I hope many more people are able to read this book to get the word out about them. This book was well written and it didn't feel like a chore to read. There was some occasional profanity, but I didn't feel like it detracted too much from the content.

I found this book informational, enlightening, and easy to read. It described an experience that I've endured since around the age of 8. The wit and knowledge of the author entertain and inform and make the material in the book totally relatable. Interlaced throughout the narrative are facts and data about eating disorders, the diet culture, and the inequity in getting help. Every woman who diets or worries about her weight should read this book.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book very helpful. It was full of interesting information and good insights.

This was a great perspective on disordered eating and how the diet industry contributes. I read many lines and said “hey that’s happened to me!” Or “I think that way”. It was a very relatable read.

LOVED THIS. I feel very passionate about the diet culture impacting women today, especially high school girls. Having struggled with my own issues years ago, I felt this book was worded very well and the evidence was very supportive.

I loved this book! A fresh and insightful look at weight and gender and the body--I plan to give this book to all my female friends and family when it is published. It's revolutionary, and it is so needed in our current culture. Great book!

Thank you to NetGalley for access to an ARC of this book.

RATING: 3.75/5

What’s Eating Us was a challenging book to read for many reasons. I was instantly intrigued upon seeing the title and description of this book as an examination of women, disordered eating, and body anxiety. As someone who was socialized as a woman, experienced firsthand the impact of disordered eating on my friends, and struggled with my concerns related to body image, I knew I needed to read this book.

Let’s start with the good. The best part of this book is the way that Kazdin used her background in journalism to investigate disordered eating and support her personal experiences with data and stories of other women impacted by body anxiety. I have already immersed myself into conversations and activism around posh positivity, body neutrality, and other liberation movements and so I feel like this book would have more punch for someone who still has a lot of healing to do in that sense. I found this style of data-backed investigative non-fiction paired well with Kazdin’s own stories, which are interwoven throughout this book. Kadzin’s deeply personal experiences are so poignant and I couldn’t help but find myself relating, empathizing, and sometimes deeply disturbed by her writing.

As much as Kazdin’s strong narrative voice was an asset to this book, it was also part of what made this book so deeply uncomfortable to read at some points. Some elements of the book are, in my opinion, not handled with enough delicacy, especially considering that Kazdin is hyper-aware of the impact of “diet talk” and how triggering it can be. For example, rather than discuss calories or weight in a general sense, Kazdin instead will detail specific numbers (such as how many calories she would eat on a deficit or what her lowest weight was) or even repeat certain thoughts far more than I’d deem necessary to get her point across (like expressing that she wants to lose ten pounds seven separate times).

These faults aside, this book is incredibly valuable and hopefully will continue to fuel the conversation around body anxiety and disordered eating. As Kazdin herself points out, “eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of any mental illness” and yet we don’t talk about them nearly enough, let alone with the gravity and care that this nuanced topic deserves.

This is right up my alley: a well-researched, well-written book about an important topic. The author’s writing is inclusive of diverse perspectives and experiences, and doesn’t pull any punches. I enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend it!

This book is heavily gendered which I find interesting that books are still coming out in 2023 that are focused on one gender. That being said, this was an interesting look into the world of eating disorders. I feel that there are better books about how to heal from eating disorders that aren't necessarily marketed toward people with them like this book is. Hopefully it will help a lot of folks!

Both carefully researched and deeply personal, What's Eating Us explores factors contributing to our current culture of body and food obsession. What sets it apart from other books about disordered eating and diet culture is the special attention given to issues specific to BIPOC readers and the thoughtful and sometimes darkly humorous discussion of the author's experience. I will recommend to readers of Hunger by Roxane Gay.
Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for a digital review copy.

This is possibly one of the most honest and self aware approaches to conveying one's experience with an eating disorder that you can find. Written as part memoir, part research, Cole Kazdin tells the story of a woman in a society obsessed with food and weight and our collective battle with all of the mixed messages we are getting.

I really appreciated that Cole took the time to research BIPOC experiences and bring to light the disparities between people who live with racial and medical privilege and those who do not. I learned several things in light of the information she shared. It felt appropriate and I feel she was committed to making voices heard in a space where they largely go unheard.

I connected well to the the personal way of relating facts that Kazdin has, as well as her willingness to try different approaches to recovery in order to round out her perspective. I felt like I was getting honesty and because of that I felt very receptive to the information given. This should be a must-read for anyone who struggles in their relationship with food, and I would also highly suggest others read it too, if not to provide some knowledge on the subject.

Thanks so much to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. This book intertwines memoir, the author’s own experience of recovery from an eating disorder, with research about eating disorders in the world and recovery.

I wish the author had written more about her own thoughts and recovery as those portions were the most compelling part of the book for me.

The research bits took away from the reading experience. It felt distancing from the author’s own visceral experiences.

Title will be released in March 2023!

The title and subject matter is what interested me the most about this book. I wanted to know how I could be free from the hold that food has often had on my life.

I'm not a big fan of data-heavy books and the author is a journalist so this book provides a lot of research. She interviewed several diet industry people and also women. It provided an interesting mix of real stories - my fave - with the research commentary.

Pick up this book if you also want to learn about strategies to heal your food and body love relationship.

I enjoyed reading this book. The pacing was excellent, and I enjoyed how Kazdin interspersed stories from other women, friends, colleagues, etc. to a get a broader view on how weight impacts women from various backgrounds. As a Black woman, I appreciated that there was a section on the health impact of societal racism. However, the story of Black woman and how we navigate the world in our bodies is not all trauma and pain. There are great books out there that tell that story and wasn't expecting this book to do that.

In terms of tone, as I mentioned I did enjoy the other perspectives in the book, but Kazdin's voice does get lost in parts. I personally found the parts of the book where Kazdin comes down from that detached, journalist voice and asserts her POV more compelling. Chapter 7 captures Kazdin's voice particularly well. There is a visceral description of her ED struggles that I found to be beautiful and frank and overall compelling. Her strength as a storyteller is on display as she relays the cyclical nature of recovery.

The weakest parts of the book for me are sections on funded research for obesity and weight in general. I think for a general audience there needs to be a bit more overview on this and why certain things get the funding (obesity research as it relates to chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension) and other things, such as ED triggers and racial differences in perceptions of weight, don't get funded.

Overall, I recommend this book and enjoyed reading it.

In What’s Eating Us, Cole Kazdin dives right into the making of body shaming, disordered eating, and body dysmorphia in women (most research around disordered eating seems focused on women specifically). Using her own struggles with Bulimia and Anorexia as a focal Pont, she presents the research (or lack thereof) surrounding disordered eating and treatment.

As someone who decided to start calorie restricting right before reading this book, it hit a little too close to home. While I don’t suffer from disordered eating, I am susceptible to the same messages from media and culture as everyone else: thin is beautiful.

Researchers are slowly coming to the realization that eating disorders are part brain disorders. Many people who suffer from an eating disorder don’t have the same hunger cues as the average individual. Many people don’t feel hunger at all making it harder to recover normal eating behavior.

In addition to eating disorders being under-treated, structural racism is at play as well. You are much less likely to be diagnosed for an eating disorder if you are BIPOC than white. Kazdin says “The illness is almost universally perceived as a white woman’s affliction; a narcissistic obsession with thinness and oneself, taking the desire to be perfect too far.” In fact, eating disorders can come about due to food insecurity. If a person is starving for a period of time and then receives food, binging may be the brain's response to deprivation.

This was an insightful book. Kazdin does an excellent job balancing a serious narrative about eating disorders while injecting humor along the way. I recommend that everyone read this book. It is an important topic that needs to be discussed more.

This book provided a lot of information about a subject that always eludes me. I finished much more informed than when I began and never felt like the author was pandering.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of What’s Eating Us. 

I am a new fan of Cole Kazdin! I thank her for writing this oh-so-necessary update on how we as a society are handling food and the bodies that we feed, as well as detailing her own life experience as one of the many eating-disordered.

Having a lifetime of immersion myself in disordered eating, in either practice or perception, much of this book was not new to me.

The author’s honest, “F-You” articulation of the reality of living in a world that both punishes and promotes food and body obsession absolutely was new. I felt seen. 

Cole Kazdin writes with jaded humor that makes the physiological and psychological complexity of eating disorders all seem so universal, this “normative discontent” of the discomfort of living in a human body in a culture dictating android-like attributes of beauty. 

Five stars!