Nothing to Lose: A Guide to Sane Living in a Larger Body

the item was shipped quickly and arrived exactly as described. Perfect transaction. very satisfied.

It's about time someone with some real sense wrote a book that celebrates people with flesh on their bones. I am trully disgusted by images of overly thin bodies that look like they came from a concentration camp. Women, such as Marilyn Monroe - the epitome of beauty and sensuality, would be considered obese in today's environment. Women and men shouldn't go around trying to staple their stomachs or whatever in order to look unnaturally thin. Thanks to Cheri Erdman for writing this book so that people who live in large bodies feel like they have the right to take up space in the world...A lotta space.

I read this book very slowly over the course of a year. I'd put it down from time to time because the ideas it contained were so radical that it took me a long time to absorb them. This book has had a major and lasting impact on my life and on my relationship with my body. It started me on my own spiral of acceptance and introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about my body, about food, about exercise, about my place in the world. I highly recommend this book to any woman who has ever hated her body. The ideas in this book will bring peace, enlightenment, and healing. I wish you a joyful journey.--Mary Ray Worley

It's a sad commentary on American women that, at a time when a new diet book is published practically every day, and that sloppy exercise in anti-fat bias "The Fat of the Land" is a best-seller, this book has gone out of print! As someone who spent much of her adult life fighting a "weight problem" that didn't exist in the first place, I only wish this book had been around when *I* was a teenager. Erdman's recommendations are right on, and I won through to those same attitudes only after many years of self-hatred, self-punitive behavior, and "conditional living" ("When I lose 30 lbs, I'll take yoga ... buy some really good-looking clothes ... find a better job ... "). I heartily recommend the book to any woman who thinks her weight precludes her from doing what she really wants in life -- and to her significant other who doesn't understand what she's going through.

Reviewed by Barbara Altman Bruno, Ph.D. Dr. Cheri Erdman is intelligent, wise, responsible, warm, and accessible. So is her book, Nothing to Lose. Erdman, a professor and counselor at the College of DuPage in Illinois, has nearly always been fat. When she was five, her well-meaning parents, at the instigation of her fat kindergarten teacher, sent her for a year to a residential facility where she was kept on a diet. Healing from the stigma of being fat has been the focus of her career. The information in Nothing to Lose has been synthesized so as to be accessible to the average reader. Erdman starts with a larger perspective about the changing popularity of different body sizes for women. She moves then to the arguments that being fat is unhealthy, and challenges these beliefs. She presents her own body philosophy: Eat healthy (no diets); move your body because it feels good, not because you think it will help you lose weight; and get on with your life (regardless of what the scale says). In this and subsequent chapters, Erdman suggests practical ways to move toward a healthier, happier life. She also suggests topics for possible journalexploration by the reader. She guides the reader into how to become more inner-determining -- that is, listening more to one's own truths than to societal ideas about fat women. She speaks powerfully through statements by various fat women she has known in a professional or personal capacity over the years, and even in the voice of herself as a child. As a therapist myself, I was particularly intrigued by Erdman's cataloguing of body images (how we see ourselves). She found that many fat women have "creative" body images, seeing themselves as thinner than others see them -- and therefore able to do more than if they saw themselves at their full size. Other healthy fat women had a "transfigured" body image, which may be at their full size, but unencumbered by fat stereotypes -- and thus also free to be themselves. Erdman discusses her concept of the spiral of self-acceptance, reminding us that at times in this process we can feel like we are going backwards, but that is just the way the self-acceptance process feels. She believes that we do not usually just decide to accept ourselves and then do so in a linear way. Another of the many aspects of this book which I liked was a chapter about involvement in something larger than oneself. Spirit in action, to Erdman, involves accepting and cherishing one's body, developing all aspects of oneself, and often "going public" -- perhaps, like many NAAFAns, as a leader in size acceptance. She offers tips for therapists and for finding a size-accepting therapist. (I'd also suggest giving your therapist NAAFA's brochure, "Guidelines for Therapists Who Treat Fat Clients.") If you wanted to run your own support group, she offers suggestions for how to do so. Also included are a fairy tale of a girl named Abundia, good footnotes, and a useful resource guide.