Are you on your path to understanding your relationship with food and body and are looking for more information and different perspectives? Or are you looking to dive deeper into these subjects? I’ve compiled a list of these best books on body image, food freedom and body liberation to help support you on your journey through a range of different topics so that you can find what resonates with you the most.
Please note: the links below are affiliate links. I only use affiliate links for products I use and trust, a category in which all these books fall into.
Happy reading!
Anti-Diet Books
Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison
- Christy Harrison, a dietitian and host of the popular Food Psych podcast, challenges the hidden diet messages within the health and wellness industry. She exposes all of the ways diet culture penetrates our everyday lives.
Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller
- Kelsey Miller is a writer and speaker. In her memoir, she discusses her journey into self-loathing and disordered eating-and how she got out of it.
Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out—And Never Say Diet Again by Rebecca Scritchfield
- Rebecca is a dietitian whose book breaks down how to love, connect, and care for yourself, transforming your mind as well as your relationship to your body.
Eat to Love: A Mindful Guide to Transforming Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Life by Jenna Hollenstein
- Jenna is a dietitian and mindfulness teacher. In Eat to Love, Jenna challenges the deeply held beliefs behind our relationship with food and dieting so that you can heal and regain balance with food.
The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America by Virginia Sole-Smith
- Virginia Sole-Smith explores how we eat in today’s diet culture.
The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy by Caroline Dooner
- Caroline, a comedian and writer, explores why diets don’t work and breaks down the misinformation in diet culture in order to help us heal.
Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby
- Kate and Marianne are two bloggers in the fat-acceptance movement. This book is a guide to having peace with body image.
Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works, 4th Ed. by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
- The original Intuitive Eating book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch was published in 1995 and has since been updated four times to reflect the latest research. This book is the gold standard for starting your intuitive eating journey.
The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch
- The Intuitive Eating Workbook is a companion to the book, and helpful for putting the principles of intuitive eating into practice.
Body Image and Body Liberation Books
Beyond Beautiful: A Practical Guide to Being Happy, Confident, and You in a Looks-Obsessed World by Anuschka Rees
- Beyond Beautiful is a guide to building confidence in your body, your beauty and your life in today’s world of toxic beauty standards.
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
- World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor explores how radical self-love dismantles shame and has the power to dismantle whole systems of injustice.
Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand About Weight by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor
- Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr. Lucy Aphramor’s Body Respect debunks common myths about weight and fatness, and how racism, homophobia, and classism affect life opportunity, and self-worth are related to health.
Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement by Charlotte Cooper
- Charlotte Cooper’s book studies fat activist methods, analyzes literature in the field, challenges long-held assumptions that uphold systemic fatphobia, and highlights the importance of feminism and queer theory.
Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic by J. Eric Oliver
- J. Eric Oliver shows how doctors, government bureaucrats, and health researchers, with financial backing from the drug and weight-loss industries, have campaigned to create standards that mislead the public.
The Fat Studies Reader by Esther Rothblum and Sandra Solovay
- The Fat Studies Reader gathers fifty-three diverse voices to explore a scope of topics related to fatness and body weight.
FAT!SO?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size by Marilyn Wann
- Marilyn Wann, a fat-positive spokesperson, details that you can be happy, healthy, successful …and fat.
Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl’s Guide to Living Life Unapologetically by Stephanie Yeboah
- Stephanie speaks about experience navigating life as a black, plus-sized woman, and how she has found self-acceptance in a world filled with judgement and discrimination.
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings
- Strings’ historical narrative documents works of art, articles, scientific literature and medical journals from the Renaissance to the present moment to show the racial origins of fatphobia as it relates to black women.
You Have the Right to Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar
- Tovar delves into unlearning fatphobia, sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture’s lies about fatness.
Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living by Jes Baker
- Blogger Jes Baker’s book calls for women to be proud of their bodies, fight against fat-shaming, and embrace a body-positive worldview to change public perceptions and help maintain mental health.
Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim by Leah Vernon
- Unashamed is a memoir of Leah Vernon’s self-acceptance journey, delving into her faith, race and Western beauty standards. Vernon reflects on redefining what it means to be a “good” Muslim.
Landwhale: On Turning Insults into Nicknames, Why Body Image Is Hard, and How Diets Can Kiss My Ass by Jes Baker
- Landwhale is Jes’s memoir of life growing up as a fat girl, as a fat woman today and a reflection of the unforgiving ways our culture treats fatness.
Books about Self and Identity
A Burst of Light and Other Essays by Audre Lorde
- This book discusses Lorde’s reflections on her struggle with cancer, thoughts on lesbian sexuality and African-American identity in a straight white man’s world.
Don’t Let it Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender and the Body by Savala Nolan
- This collection of essays is about Savala Nolan’s life in between black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat, and how our life experiences are most authentically lived in the in-between.
I Thought It Was Just Me (but It Isn’t): Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough” by Brené Brown
- Brené Brown offers a study on the importance of our imperfections both to our relationships and to our own sense of self.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
- Roxane Gay discusses her childhood, teens, and twenties and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life, as well as a traumatic event from her childhood.
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff
- Kristin Neff, PhD offers advice on how to be kind to yourself and limit self-criticism, enabling you to realize your highest potential and live a more fulfilled life.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
- Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.
Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
- In these personal essays, Tressie McMillan Cottom analyzes whiteness, black misogyny, and status signaling as a way of survival for black women.
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