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.