This was unexpected to me in that it focused a lot on eating and body. I think I anticipated more of a general study of hustle culture and burnout.

It was okay, but as someone who has struggled with healthy eating before, I found it a bit triggering in terms of the content covered just because I wasn't expecting that.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Toxic Striving by Paula Freedman-Diamond is a powerful and thought-provoking book that resonated deeply with me. It tackles the challenges of living in a culture that glorifies perfection and constant achievement, offering a raw and honest exploration of the toll this takes on our mental and emotional well-being.

This was a difficult book to listen to at times because it hit so close to home, but it was also incredibly enlightening. Freedman-Diamond provides a nuanced understanding of perfectionism and its roots while offering actionable steps to break free from its grip.

By the end, I felt a greater sense of clarity, balance, and hope. If you’ve ever struggled with perfectionism or felt overwhelmed by the pressure to excel, this book is a must-read for finding a healthier and happier path forward.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to this ARC.

**4 Stars: *Toxic Striving***

Paula Freedman’s *Toxic Striving* is a compassionate and practical guide to breaking free from the relentless pursuit of perfection. Using tools from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and intuitive eating, Freedman helps readers reconnect with their values and build self-compassion. I appreciated the balance of evidence-based strategies and reflective exercises, which felt approachable and empowering. This book is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to silence self-critical thoughts and live authentically on their own terms.

4/5

Toxic Striving is a book that examines “grind culture,” and the way that it is harmful to us as individuals and as a society. Freedman-Diamond takes time to both deconstruct the unrealistic and hyper-capitalistic culture around over-achieving, as well as giving the reader tools to examine the ways in which it impacts their thoughts. She also includes workbook activities for the reader to examine and unpack their relationship with toxic grind-culture, as well as tools to try and build healthier relationships with productivity, weight, and other aspects of our culture.
Toxic Striving takes an insightful and rightfully critical eye to hustle-culture and related aspects of diet culture. It gives the readers useful tools to help examine their own relationship with hustle-culture, as well as separate themselves from the ways that it creeps into their world view. Although some of the workbook activities seemed rather common-sense, I still feel that I benefited from them. I feel that being asked to specifically examine my behaviors allowed me to identify even more behaviors that may be more related to the culture I was socialized in than my own personal values.
I was also incredibly pleased with this book's acknowledgment of diet culture and fatphobia, as well as the ways it relates to the modern hustle-culture, and even the way that hustle-culture can promote disordered eating. A lot of times self-help/self-improvement entirely shuts out people in marginalized bodies, even when their experiences are directly related, and I was relieved to see that this book did not succumb to this pitfall.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is feeling disillusioned with modern hustle-culture, those who are feeling burnt out by it, those who feel crushed under the weight of their own perfectionism.
This book, like most self-help style books, can be a little surface level, but this is a subject that is quite complex and personal, and therefore hard to generalize. However, for this reason, I do not feel that I took away a substantial amount from this book. I learned a few new tools, got some more insight into the ways in which my behavior is impacted by the world around me, and left feeling a bit more positive and hopeful than I went in, which is perhaps all I could have asked for.

Narrated by Stefanie Kay
Presented by Tantor Audio

This was BRILLIANT.

Loved it and would happily listen again. Plan to get a physical copy.

Everything in this book just made so much sense. It was easy to digest and logical, without forcing the reader to do an abundance of long activities and set impossible goals.

There's science behind the claims, and there are anecdotes (both personal and otherwise) to help reinforce points.

In particular, I really enjoyed the way the author wasn't claiming to have all this sorted and down pat. She emphasises that she's human like the rest of us, and sometimes that means messing up. I really liked that.

The audio was fantastic, delivering the information in a bright, easy manner. It was easy to take in and understand with this delivery, and her voice was soothing and comforting to listen to.

This just really worked for me. 2024 was a rather disappointing reading year for me so getting this one towards the end of year was a blast of fresh air to clear out all the stale reading energy. Very happy with it.

Highly recommend to those who love a good self-help book, and particularly this time of year where we all want to improve ourselves without having to set unrealistic expectations.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

Very good book about the topic „Burn Out“. It came to the right time for me and it really helped me understand better, what can cause a burnout and the situation of trying to overachieve things.
I loved the exercise questions in between chapters which helped me a lot to reflect on my personal situation, so I highly recommend this if you want to improve yourself rather than just read about this topic (though it’s also a good book to just learn more about reasons for burnout).

This book connects wellness culture to hustle and diet cultures. It shows the negative sides of "wellness" but really focuses more around the lack of boundaries and limits women put up. I found that this book often went to the extremes of these cultures where you have to be all in rather than how slight adoptions of wellness items could be beneficial. As someone with chronic illnesses that relies a lot on "wellness" items (ie. Supplements, low impact workouts, etc), I felt like this book slightly missed the mark. I would have wanted to see more on the holistic doctors, supplements and other areas of wellness in healthy doses rather than making it the villain and comparing it to crash diets and burn out. There was one section that mentioned how holistic doctors could make it seem like you're the reason you are sick if you're not consistently taking supplements or eating healthy and I wish the book was more focused around that topic. Overall, it did have an interesting perspective on how it could be seen as the latest fad for women.

I cried in the first chapter. Never before has a book so accurately expressed my own experiences and emotions. I felt so seen by this book and found it so helpful. Freedman-Diamond does an excellent job of connecting the dots of your inner dialog to your actions and helping you to change your habit of striving and perfectionism.

An excellent book about the lies we tell ourselves about how to survive in this world, with some nice exercises to help identify them. I absolutely loved the little vignettes used to explain some concepts and how they might show up in unexpected ways. The book itself is digestible and easy to understand. Came for the bitching about hustle and wellness culture, stayed for the takes on self-judgement.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This self-help book was exactly what I needed for this current stage in my life. I'm going to do my best to apply the things I read about here in my every day life. If you need to better yourself in terms of getting over toxic behaviours, I cannot recommend this book enough!

I have 15 or so friends who need to read/lister to this one. This was phenomenal. The library needs to order it too. I have not checked out the web page yet but I will. The narration was perfect.
I was thinking about toxic perfectionism while listening to this. Toxic perfectionism is like toxic striving but more image based. It is prevalent in Utah and is a huge part of our culture. While I focus on reaching goals, like grad school and home renovations, the other gals are focused on looking a certain way. We are all struggling doing this and this book will help all of us.