cover image Intuitive Eating: A Recovery Book for the Chronic Dieter: Rediscover the Pleasures of Eating and Rebuild Your Body Image

Intuitive Eating: A Recovery Book for the Chronic Dieter: Rediscover the Pleasures of Eating and Rebuild Your Body Image

Evelyn Tribole. St. Martin's Press, $21.95 (237pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13097-8

Nutrition therapists Tribole and Resch suggest that the best way for dieters to finally make peace with food and body image is to emulate the natural, intuitive eating habits of very young children. The advice culled from this trip down memory lane is both sound and supportive. Key suggestions include rejecting a diet mentality (often based on deprivation and denial); eating only when hungry; stopping when full; and learning to separate emotional from physical needs. No menus or food plans to follow here; the authors encourage readers to eat anything they want, as long as they pay attention to the tenets of feeling true hunger and true satisfaction. Ultimately, the authors insist, old habits subside and body and mind work together to achieve the ``natural healthy weight.'' Basic nutrition concerns are addressed late in the volume, presumably after readers have begun to accept this seemingly unorthodox approach. This nurturing volume will find an eager audience in all those who are tired of living in the land of forbidden foods and the latest greatest diet fad. (May)