Sunny Side Up Nutrition

A cooking, nutrition and family feeding blog to simplify your life

Anna Lutz

Gift Guide: Nutrition and Amazing Body Books for Adults

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We are updating and re-sharing our 2018 gift guides! We’d love to hear what your favorite books are to give as gifts!

Are you looking for a gift with a theme of body positivity, self care, or leaving diets behind?

Do you know someone who could use a gift with a smashing diet culture theme?

Do you or someone on your list need a bit more self focus or TLC?

Would you like to spread the anti-diet message this holiday season?  

Media is constantly telling us that we need to do more and that we’re not enough. These books strive to be the antithesis of that. Introduce or reintroduce someone on your list to the idea that controlling your body or making yourself smaller doesn’t solve problems. Or, buy one of these fabulous books for yourself and focus on your own self care next year.

7 Nutrition and Body Books for Adults:

1. Eating Instinct by: Virginia Sole-Smith

Sole-Smith became interested in how we learn to eat the way we do, when her own infant daughter stopped eating. She realized that so many of us struggle with eating and she set out to understand why. This book asks three important questions: How did we learn to eat this way? Why is it so hard to feel good about food? And how can we make it better?  It is so refreshing for someone outside of the eating disorders field to fully “get” the complexities of food, nutrition and why people eat the way they do.

2. Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

This book, with a release date of 12/24/19, is sure to be amazing! Christy Harrison, the host of the podcast Food Psych, breaks the truth about diet culture and how weight focused healthcare. Preorder yours today!

2. Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand About Weight  by: Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor

Linda Bacon, the author of Health at Every Size, co-wrote this book that is powerful and eye-opening!  It’s a quicker and easier read than Bacon’s first book and breaks down both the research, but also the importance of treating people with respect and kindness, including ourselves. This is a great book for anyone who is ready to leave diets behind and wants to understand why weight does not define health.

3. Intuitive Eating book and The Intuitive Eating workbook by: Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole

Intuitive Eating helps the reader break free from diet culture and return to using internal cues.  The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating provides a step by step process to heal from years of dieting and weight cycling. The authors published The Intuitive Eating Workbook in 2016 and it has proven to be a fabulous resource with actionable steps.

4. EveryBody Yoga: Let Go of the Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body by: Jessamyn Stanley  

This book, complete with fabulous photos of yoga poses for the reader to be able to learn, is the first of its kind. You see many different bodies in the photos and it is certainly free of weight bias or diet talk, as many “fitness” books include. Stanley, a native North Carolinian, shares her own journey into the yoga field.  

6. Eating in the Light of the Moon by: Anita Johnston

This book, first published in 1996, uses metaphors and stories to help the reader investigate their relationship with food and weight.  This is one of my very favorite books and truly a gem to have on one’s bedside table. I’m getting very excited to se Anita speak at the HEAL Conference in February in Asheville, NC.

5. Your Body is Not An Apology – Sonya Renee Taylor

During a time when the world feels so unjust and unkind, Taylor offers the concept that radical self-love as a place to start to not only change our relationship with our own body, but also as a powerful catalyst for change in our world.  Taylor challenges the reader to leave behind shame and not apologize for the powerful body you have.

7. Mindful Eating Workbook by: Vincci Tsui

This new work book, written by an expert HAES Registered Dietitian, is sure a fabulous resource. The cover is beautiful and makes a very special gift.  

Do you have one of these books? We’d love to hear what your favorite book is and how it has helped you.

*Sunny Side Up Nutrition is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the books listed above are affiliate links.  Thank you for supporting our efforts to promote positive relationships with food.

Gift Guide: Books for Children and People Who Care for Them

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We are updating and reposting our gift idea posts from last year. We have 4 lists – 3 book lists and 1 kitchen essentials list. We will be reposting the 2019 updated gift guides over the next 2 weeks.

Elizabeth and I both love books and we love books that support positive body image, healthy relationships with food, simple cooking and rejection of diet culture. This gift guide is a list of books for children and people who care for children. Stay tuned for our list focused on adults and our favorite cookbook list!

Books for People that Care for Children:

1. Born to Eat by: Wendy Jo Peterson and Leslie Schilling Born to Eat is a fabulous book about child led weaning for a parent of a baby getting ready to transition to eating solids. However, this book is also a guide on how the whole family can approach food, weight and bodies from a weight neutral perspective. This is a resource that can be used for many years to come.

2. Child of Mine or Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family by Ellyn Satter Do you know someone who is either expecting a baby or a family that may be interested in learning more about how to take the stress out of feeding? Child of Mine is great for a new or expectant parent and leads the reader through feeding from birth. Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family may be a good gift for a family of young to older children. It also supports parents in establishing the Division of Responsibility in Eating and includes easy recipes to get dinner on the table. My favorite thing about these books is that they decrease pressure and stress on parents, when many “self help” books may leave someone feeling like they have a big “to do” list.

3. Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World by: Ana Homayoun As a parent of a 7th grader, I’m finding myself being less concerned about how I feed my daughter and more focused on how I handle electronics. I love Homayoun’s approach to how to think about teens’ use of electronics, using a wellness model. This is a great resource!

4. Anxious Eaters, Anxious Mealtimes: Practical and Compassionate Strategies for Mealtime Peace by: Marsha Dunn Klein
This brand new 2019 book is written by an Occupational Therapist, who has used responsive feeding practices throughout her career. She offers practical tips for families to implement to help their selective eater.

Children’s Books About Our Amazing Bodies:

1. Yoga Bear by Sarah Jane Hinder My 4 year old’s Occupational Therapist recommended this board book and it’s a big hit at my house. My daughter (and sometimes her family members) can pick up this book and make their body look like different animals. Big breathes are included as well as a sloth pose at the end. There are 2 other animal yoga books in the series.

2. Shapesville by: Andy Mills and Becky Osborn This is a picture book for young children (preschool) that highlights that people have different sizes, shapes, colors and talents. Talking to children about their own unique talents can model what is truly important. The book includes discussion questions for parents and educators.

3. Listening to My Body by: Gaby Garcia and Ying Hui Tan Elementary aged children enjoy this book about listening to the very wise signals of our bodies.  When so many messages we receive is about controlling or overriding messages from our bodies, it’s awesome to reinforce the wisdom of our bodies to kids.

4. I like Myself by: Karen Beaumont and David Catrow   This is a fun and important picture book about self esteem.  It encourages kids to love and accept themselves just as they are!

Non-Diet, Body Positive Books for Tweens/Teens:

1. Celebrate Your Body (And It’s Changes, too) by: Sonya Renee Taylor  I bought this book for my daughter as soon as it was released. I loved the feeling of handing her a book about puberty that I knew had images and discussion of all different bodies and no diet talk!

2. The Intuitive Eating Workbook for Teens: A Non-Diet, Body Positive Approach to Building a Healthy Relationship with Food by: Elyse Resch This new book was released in April 2019 and has become a tool in my practice. It helps supports teens’ bodies’ natural abilities as they get bombarded with diet messages at this critical age.

3. Conquer Picky Eating for Teens and Adults by: Jenny McGlothlin and Katya Rowell  I have purchased many copies of this workbook for me and my clients. This workbook walks the reader through thinking about what has influenced the way they eat and helps them takes steps forward.

I love giving and receiving books as gifts.  What are your favorite books for parents, kids and caregivers about food, nutrition, bodies and self care?  We’d love to hear about your gift ideas.

The links in this post link to items at Amazon.com.  We are members of the Amazon Affiliate program which means we receive payment from Amazon when our readers purchase items from links in this post.