Don’t take her word for it.  In Alli Spotts-De Lazzer’s MA, MFT, LPCC, CEDS book, Meaning Full, she shares the words of 23 people who struggled with diet culture, body image, size shaming and proposed ideal weight. 

Through the diverse lens of culture, gender, zip code, religion, skin color, and sexual orientation, she shows the universal impact of this battle of size.  She shares that there is not a single path to health and happiness, but as many ways as there are stories.  Each storyteller shares their experience and what they did to reconcile a relationship with food and body that was not healthy.  That path was not always what you might guess. 

After each narrator shares his or her experience, Alli writes some notes to clarify information for the reader, or in my case the listener.  There are two times that could use a little more clarity as post publication of Alli’s book can change information and references. 

The website for Health At Every Size, HAESCommunity.com, is not available at the time of this review.  The Association for Size Diversity and Health are re-writing many of their principles while considering their focus, which may impact its usefulness for the readers.   

A study by Katherine Flegal, Brian Kit, Heather Orpana and Bardry Graubard that suggests people who are “overweight” are prone to live longer than any other weight category has, since its publication in 2013, been shown to have missed other variables.  A study in 2018 indicates muscle mass is a greater indicator than BMI for risk of death.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0194697+

Full of Meaning, (pun intended) this book is uplifting in the various ways it shows that hope for success and happiness do not depend on what you see in the mirror.