The Religion of Thinness: Satisfying the Spiritual Hungers Behind Women's Obsession with Food and Weight

This is a provocative book that ultimately helps women understand, how dieting fills a spiritual void in women's lives: 1. Provides an "ultimate" purpose. 2. Provides a set of myths to believe. 3. Offers rituals to organize daily living 4. Creates a set of moral rules (of which to eat by). 5. Creates a bonding between women. The author provides several ways to practice being at peace with your body, including many helpful mindfulness techniques. She also describes the importance of media literacy, to see through the hype of what is really being sold to women. As a health practitioner, and co-author of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works, I highly recommend this book to my patients--because it offers a novel and compassionate view, on how and why the pursuit of thinness is so seductive.