Body Kindness

Spiral up, y'all!!
This book is so packed with truths, you won't be able to stop reading until you have finished the whole thing!

This is such a refreshingly beautiful book. Bye bye body shaming and body hate! Filled with gentle guidance and mindful techniques, I found huge shifts and aha-moments as I was reading this. It's certainly a book you want want to return to again and again, especially when you find yourself going back to you old body shaming habits. But you can change them, and Rebecca shows you how. Highly, highly recommended!

This is THE BEST book I have ever read on taking care of our bodies. It provides clarity in a sea of too much, and oftentimes false, information on how to best take care of ourselves. I am going to buy this book for every woman in my life. Rebecca Scritchfield simplifies everything from eating to exercise so that you can free up your mental energy focused on other things in your life. I felt such a sense of relief as soon as I started to read Body Kindness. It was as if Scritchfield was giving me permission to do what I intuitively knew was best. It is just that I am so easily swayed by the newest diet, the newest idea around food, that I stopped looking at food as food. This book really helped me to put my thoughts into perspective. Additionally, the graphics throughout are really beautiful and energizing, and help to break up the normal monotony of just reading words on a page. They help to solidify the information, and they are also helpful for a quick and easy review. I cannot say enough positive things about this book! My advice: Read it and see for yourself!

Scritchfield says body kindness is a self-care mindset based on the belief that health begins by being good to yourself. (2) This book is not a diet book. She says diets fail.

This book has a ton of information regarding personal health, including food, sleep, exercise, and relationships. The idea is to give us the information we need to make choices that improve our health without the goal of weight loss.

It took me a while to accept what Scritchfield writes. It goes against so much of what we have been told to believe about ourselves. For example, she writes, “Breaking news: You can be fit and fat. Inactivity, not fatness, is linked to mortality and heart disease.” (70) We have to let go of the idea that we are trying to manipulate our weight. In fact, she tells us to get rid of our scales.

Scritchfield has much information to help us make healthful choices. She covers just about everything, from food to stress to relationships to goal setting, and much more. She asks us to put self-care at the top of our list.

She recommends keeping a journal to help work through her book. There are many prompts she gives to help us think through what we do and why. She really advocates activity. She helps us get good and adequate sleep. Her section on emotions was great.

I recommend this book to people who are looking for how to develop a mindset that helps make choices based on goals developed from our values. Scritchfield helps us reveal our values and then walks us through creating the life we want. It's all in the book.

You can find out more at http://bodykindnessbook.com/.

My rating: 4/5 stars.

Rebecca Scritchfield, MA, RDN, ACSM HFS, believes that true health is not dependent on one's weight or pant size. Through her mindfulness-based counseling business, Rebecca helps people create better lives without dieting by showing them how to make self-care choices that fir their values, interests, and goals. In addition to speaking, writing, and podcasting about body kindness, she has appeared in over 100 broadcast television, radio, print, and online interviews. She is the cofounder of Dietitians for Body Confidence. She has a master's degree in communication from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor degree in chemistry and nutrition. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and their two children. You can find out more at www.RebeccaScritchfield.com.

Workman Publishing, 297 pages.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.
Thanks to NetGalley and Workman Publishing for the opportunity to read and review Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out - and Never Say Diet Again by Rebecca Scritchfield. This book focuses on body kindness with the following four parts: what you do, how you feel, who you are, where you belong. The journal suggestion is genius and by writing The Body Kindness Manifesto as the first entry, it gives the reader/writer empowerment. The book contains amazing and simple visual ideas to reinforce positive choices and mindset, such as draw a spiral tornado: write one body kindness that makes you feel good and write down what you do and how you usually feel. Keep adding body kindness choices until the tornado is filled, building one positive choice feeling on top of the other. Reflect as you do this! The most helpful comment - "Choose to put yourself first." Diet, exercise, sleep, emotions, fun, resilience, values, peace, self compassion, connections, inspiration and spirituality make this an invaluable book - 5 stars for the easy to read and follow format and also extreme helpfulness!