A Nourishing Perspective: Reconnect with Your Inner Voice and Harmonize Your Relationship with Food

Dietitian Cotton debuts with a compassionate guide to healthy eating geared toward helping women undo disordered eating habits. Believing that the path to a better relationship with nutrition begins with awareness, she helps readers unpack their ideas about food, encouraging them to reflect on what they learned during childhood and how those beliefs evolved as they grew up. She traces diet trends through the decades, like the diet pills of the 1960s and the Atkins diet resurgence in the 1990s, explaining how advertisers make women insecure about their bodies to drive up profits. Meanwhile, quick weight-loss solutions not only deprive people of essential nutrients but lead to a cycle of stress, disappointment, and low self-esteem. She urges readers to view food as nourishment and pay attention to their bodies’ unique cues and signals, which change over time. Cotton also debunks myths about eating disorders, demonstrating how they can’t be identified by outward appearance alone, and outlines treatment options, including family-based treatment, which allows the patient and their family to meet with a therapist together. Elsewhere, she offers tips for cultivating a positive body image, applying mindful eating principles, and navigating nutrition during menopause. She imbues her practical advice with empathetic and empowering messages (“You are worthy of nourishment”). The result is a welcome antidote to a diet-obsessed culture. (Feb.)