Abby Langer - Good Food, Bad Diet: The Habits You Need to Ditch Diet Culture, Lose Weight, and Fix Your Relationship with Food Forever

praise for good food, bad diet

Abby Langers new book has a simple but much-needed message: ditch the diet culture. Hear, hear! This highly readable book maps a hype-free path to a realistic, sustainable, and healthy relationship with food and eating. Along the waywith clarity and humorLanger takes on celebrity culture, the diet and wellness industries, and our societys wayward obsession with youth and thinness. A timely, fun, and science-informed read!

Timothy Caulfield, bestselling author of The Science of Celebrity

Abbys no-nonsense approach to eating is a breath of fresh air in the sea of diet books. If youve had enough of diet culture and categorization of food as good or bad, give this book a read. It will open your eyes to a realistic and doable approach to eating, while helping you accept your body and enjoy the food you consume to nourish it.

Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, FAND, award-winning nutrition expert and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook and The Best 3-Ingredient Cookbook

In a world overflowing with nutritional nonsense, Abby Langer is the rare expert bringing light to dietary darkness.Good Food, Bad Diet is exceptional.

James Fell, author of The Holy Sh*t Moment

If diet culture has you so confused that youre not even sure what healthy eating looks like anymore, this is the book for you. Good Food, Bad Diet is a total reeducation in nutrition, one that will help you sort fact from internet fiction. Abby calls BS where she sees it and will guide you compassionately towards a healthier, happier you.

Desiree Nielsen, bestselling author of Eat More Plants

In the wellness world of extremes, Abby offers a much-needed middle ground for those looking to improve their health without the physical and psychological risks of restrictive diets. Good Food, Bad Diet is evidence-based, witty, and packed with accessible tips for anyone looking to live their healthiest, happiest life.

Abbey Sharp, RD, founder of Abbeys Kitchen

Simon & Schuster Canada

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Copyright 2021 by Abby Langer

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Canada Subsidiary Rights Department, 166 King Street East, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 1J3.

This Simon & Schuster Canada edition January 2021

SIMON & SCHUSTER CANADA and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-268-3216 or .

Cover images: Leonello Calvetti (orange); Kwangmoozaa (chip)

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Good food, bad diet : the habits you need to ditch diet culture, lose weight, and fix your relationship with food forever / Abby Langer.

Names: Langer, Abby, author.

Description: Simon & Schuster Canada edition.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200248243 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200248316 | ISBN 9781982137502 (softcover) | ISBN 9781982137519 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: NutritionPopular works. | LCSH: Weight lossPopular works. | LCSH: Food habits.

Classification: LCC RA784 .L36 2021 | DDC 613.2dc23

ISBN 978-1-9821-3750-2

ISBN 978-1-9821-3751-9 (ebook)

E ating is the most primal instinct we have. We might not think about this fact day to day, but we need to eat to stay alive. In psychologist Abraham Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, food is pretty much the highest priority, along with warmth and sleep. While it isnt required to find pleasure and emotional nourishment in food, that doesnt mean we should miss out on those aspects. Remember that moment as a kid when you bit into a sun-warmed, perfectly ripe peach? Or when you tried your first homemade chocolate chip cookie? It was incredible, right? And why shouldnt eating be incredible? Food has been bringing us together, not just for nourishment, but for pleasure and social connection, since the dawn of time.

Today, as then, having enough to eat is a privilege and something we can all be grateful for. And yet, in North America, where there is so much abundance, there are conflicting messages about what we should eat and what our bodies should look likeor not look like. This is called diet culture, and it has a chokehold on our society. Its made us physically and emotionally exhausted while simultaneously destroying what should be a fun and pleasurable experience.

Ever notice how many diets persuade us to shun foods that are toxic and bad in favor of clean and good? We label any sort of ultraprocessed food as bad, but why? You probably dont want to base your entire diet on them, but dirty? Nope. Food is not laundry. Its not clean or dirty. To assign it those words is to condemn the nourishment that sustains our lives. It also deems those who make the wrong food choices as lesser, which is elitist and morally wrong. Intellectually, most of us know that someone who prefers Cheetos to a ten-dollar bag of kale chips is not unclean or bad. But emotionally, many of us tend to believe the opposite because this is what diet culture has taught us. Person who eats Cheetos: bad, lazy, and unhealthy. Person who eats expensive kale chips: good, clean, and healthy.

Even seemingly harmless colloquial terms that are sometimes used to describe food, such as guilty pleasure, sinful, cheat day, naughty, and guilt-free, have a destructive, underhanded meaning that categorizes anyone who eats as either devils or angels. This language hijacks the pleasure associated with food, and eating turns it into an anxiety-ridden moral dilemma: one that keeps plenty of us on the diet hamster wheel, going back and forth between good and bad, on and off the latest diet.

News flash: What you eat doesnt make you a good or bad person. Despite what our culture will have you believe, there is no association whatsoever with your diet and who you are. Using judgmental and moralistic terms to describe what we eat can create feelings of guilt and shame around food. If we overeat, were weak. If we punish ourselves with diets, were being good. These labels are like little parasites that crawl into our brains and set up shop, subconsciously changing the way we feel about ourselves as people and influencing the choices we make in our food.