"Linda Bacon earned a master’s in psychotherapy, with a specialty in eating disorders and body image, and worked as a therapist before going back to school for a master’s degree in exercise science. Then she completed a doctorate in physiology, with a focus in nutrition and weight regulation. (There’s a reason this book’s 326 pages includes 29 pages of citations!)
There is similarity with Glenn Gaesser’s Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and Your Health. Both books are written by physiologists who have found the science of weight loss does not fit the “cultural dogma” of weight loss. Both books show how fatness does not indicate poor health. Both books emphatically recommend that expectations of weight loss be dropped, and both books suggest a program for how fat AND thin people can be healthy at whatever weight. Gaesser gets more into the specifics of physiology and the history of weigh charts; Bacon discusses nutrition and notes how agribusiness if affecting the overall American diet.
Of the two, I prefer Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight, in large part because I prefer Bacon’s “unrestrained eating” and HAES Manifesto (PDF) to Gaesser’s offering of, sigh, a low-fat diet. Linda Bacon told Med Journal Watch that she envisions HAES as “the peace movement” for the war on obesity, and that comes through her writing. Her style is friendly and engaging, summarizing the science in an accessible fashion."
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