Love Your Body by Brooke Parker

Today, I'm privileged to be reviewing Love Your Body: A Diet-Free Approach to Balanced Eating by Brooke Parker. Take this book for just what the title implies. This is not a diet or nutrition book, it doesn't give you lists of good and bad foods, or suggest 20 quick and easy ways to lose 20 pounds. The topic is much more timely and crucial than any of these. It's about loving your body. Plain and simple. That's something I think every woman needs to understand and contemplate.

To present this material, Brooke Parker draws on her experience as a nutritional counselor for women with eating disorders. Don't discount the advice because you feel you don't have problem in this area. I don't know a single woman who couldn't benefit from the types of advice Ms. Parker gives. It's wholesome, sound and meant for every woman and girl who has ever looked in a mirror and felt uncomfortable with what they've seen.

Topics include:
· Finding a New Relationship with Food
· Honoring Your Hunger and Fullness
· Finding Your Own Healthy Balance
· Creating Healthy Expectations
· The Inner Dialogue
· Put an End to Worry
· Your Body Is a Gift
· Eliminating the Physical Triggers
· Destructive Thinking Styles
· Pampering Activities

Our bodies, our mortal experiences (including food) are supposed to be about bringing us joy and Brooke tries hard to remind us of that. We may not all experience the same intensity or the same thoughts, but as women we do tend to put a lot of undue pressure on how we look and how we think others see us. Nine times out of ten these fears are unfounded. If you've ever spent an evening berating yourself for that second piece of pie, reaching for the Ben and Jerry's on a bad day, or months depriving yourself of a certain type of food, this book is for you. Just as I mentioned, Love You Body is a message every women should come to understand. Even if you think you have no body image issues, I can almost guarantee that at least one woman you love does.

Ms. Parker does not expect you to take her word for everything. She has a few resources that she favors quoting, even drawing some of her specific messages from those texts. She gives them full credit, there in the text and does not try to hide the fact that she is introducing material that is not uniquely hers. To me, that was reassuring. I may not know Brooke Parker from Adam, oops, make that Eve, but I can acknowledge the usefulness of thoughts and ideas that have been studied and well documented then come to understand them through her use of them. Others may not see it that way. I can see some saying "Well, if I wanted to read so-and-so's book, I would have gotten that one not Love Your Body". I personally didn't think there was an issue, but I do read books for different reasons than some do. You'll have to judge that for yourself. I would suggest, however, that if the material in Love Your Body is ringing especially true look up those other resources and read them too.

Again, Love Your Body is not the source you want to turn to for diet and nutrition advice. That's not its purpose, and there are a million books out there that can promise you if you only eat this, or avoid that, or calculate and keep your numbers straight that you'll be healthy and happy. Good for them. But for me, I was thrilled to see someone actually address the thoughts and feelings we have behind reading such books. Love Your Body is the source to turn to for learning how to appreciate who you are, right here and now, and how to find joy in the blessings God has given us, namely a variety of good food and a body that is meant to bring us joy.

Pick up Love Your Body. It belongs on your shelf. It's a sweet, easy read that acts like a talk between good friends and leaves you with ideas, thoughts, and tools to tackle even the worst "why do I even keep that pair of skinny jeans" days.

Here’s a note from the publisher regarding a great give-away they’re hosting on Brooke’s blog tour. Make sure to get your entry into the pot!


We will be giving away 5 copies of Love Your Body: A Diet-Free Approach to Balanced Eating as part of the online book blog tour.

The contest starts February 17th and will close on March 5th atmidnight, MST.Entering the contest is easy--all you have to do is blog, tweet, follow, or comment and then fill out this little form here.

So exactly how do you blog, tweet, follow, etc. Here's how.

1. Become a follower of our reviewers blogs. You can follow one of our reviewers or you can follow all of them. Remember that each blog you follow gives you another chance to win, so why wouldn't you choose to follow them all? But what if we are already following them you ask? Well lucky you, because you get an entry for that too.

Walnut Springs Press

Brooke Parker RD

Of Writerly Things

Random-ish by Nichole

Queen of the Clan

Rachelle Writes

The Write Blocks

Tangled Words and Dreams

*Tristi Pinkston, LDS Author

Why Not? Because I Said So!

LDS Women's Book Review

Cami's Book

2. Post a comment on the reviews.

3. Blog about the contest or one of the reviews. Spread the word. Just remember that the blog post either needs to link to the contest or to one of the reviews.

4. Follow us on twitter. Maybe you use twitter, maybe you don't. But if you do, you should follow us.

http://twitter.com/walnutspringspr

http://twitter.com/brookeparkerrd

http://twitter.com/camichecketts

http://twitter.com/Rachellewrites

http://twitter.com/LDSWBR

http://twitter.com/nicholegiles

http://twitter.com/RondaHinrichsen

5. Tweet about the contest or one (or all) of the reviews. Yep, 144 characters or less is all it takesto enter.

6. Become a fan of Love Your Body on facebook. Brooke is constantly updating her fanpage with articles, recipes, and helpful hints.

7. Post about the contest on Facebook.

8. Anything else you can think of that will spread the word. If you mention it on goodreads, shelfari, google buzz, or any other social media site, or make it your status on gmail chat, MSN or yahoo messenger let us know. We want to reward your creativity with an entry.

Remember that you MUST fill out the nifty little form Here to be entered.

Alison's Nutritious Cookbook Challenge

I had been eyeing a new cookbook I wanted to try for quite some time when I learned that there was actually some controversy surrounding it. (Note: I did not research the validity of the information I received, to me it didn’t matter from that standpoint- it just raised an interesting question for me to explore.) Apparently, two cookbooks built on the same premise came out at almost the same time. It appears that a publisher had actually rejected one title, then accepted the other a month or so later. From the publishing standpoint there are a lot of reasons this may have happened and really, that’s just business. But the whole thing made me curious so I picked up copies of both books and began experimenting.

I began cooking and taste-testing recipes from both Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat On Your Man (In the Kitchen!). In case you can’t tell from the names, the premise of both books is basically sneaking “hidden” servings of vegetables (and other healthy ingredients) into your food to improve your family’s health, etc. You basically create purees of the vegetables and cook them into your foods.

For basic concepts I liked Deceptively Delicious’ approach to purees better than The Sneaky Chef, simply because DD’s purees were one ingredient. The recipe might call for a couple of purees but they’d read “½ cup sweet potato puree” and “½ cup carrot puree”, or whatever. I also preferred the spiral binding that let the cookbook open fully and stay on the page I wanted to read, rather than the traditional binding of The Sneaky Chef.

The Sneaky Chef, on the other hand, mixed up her veggies. So, what you saw in the recipe was “½ cup purple puree” and you had to refer back to the puree recipes to find out exactly what was in purple puree. That’s not a problem if that’s all you do, but I’d prefer to make single ingredient purees whenever I had a veggie I needed to use up, rather than having to make sure I had all the ingredients for my “orange puree” whenever I needed to stock my puree freezer. This can really add to your food bill otherwise. (Spinach may be cheap but it takes a lot to make a ½ cup of puree, you’re better off just learning to eat it if your not using up left-overs before they go bad or buying in greatly discounted bulk.) Also, Sneaky Chef tended to use a lot of ingredients that I choose not to use as an LDS cook. I would have loved to do more direct comparison of recipes that both cookbooks featured, but I don’t cook with coffee grounds and red wine.

The recipes in Deceptively Delicious also tend to be more basic “family” recipes. The Sneaky Chef tends to cater to more “grown-up” tastes. (Last minute note: I did not know when I was doing my comparisons that there is actually a “kid’s meals” book by Sneak Chef as well. It didn’t come up on my library searches. This does explain the weird little label on the book that said "Author of The Sneaky Chef" though. At the time I was mighty confused and did a second search under her name: nothing. Curses. If you’ve used the kid version let me know what you thought.)

One last thing I noticed: for books that tout being healthier (which they do appear to be) neither cookbook gives thorough nutritional information. The Sneaky Chef is better at this part but all she does is put bubbles touting “Fiber” or “Omega 3” or whatever. No specifics. I find this very weird.

So, how did the food taste? Um, well mostly okay. I found very few recipes (at least from the ones I tried) that carried a serious yuck factor, but none that just shouted, “this is awesome!” I guess my suggestion would be to choose the one or two foods from the cookbook that most appeals to you, but you don’t already have a favorite recipe for (you’ll just be disappointed that way) and give it a try. This is definitely a case where using the cookbooks can help improve your nutrition and it’s certainly worth trying but you’re better off with the “try before you buy” method in this case. Borrow these from your library before you run out to the bookstore.

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