You Are Not a Before Picture: 2022’s bestselling inspirational new guide to help you tackle diet culture, finding self acceptance, and making peace with your body

Product Information

But once you’ve healed, you realise how little control you actually wielded. You were at the mercy of a number on the scale. You couldn’t enjoy food, you couldn’t go out with friends, you couldn’t let go for even a minute. You were never in control. I have a lot of thin friends, and I’ve always felt so frustrated by it. I couldn’t help but notice how they’ll eat less nutritious foods and workout less often than me, and yet I’m in the bigger body, I’m the one that will be labelled negatively. It used to drive me mad, until I realised that I was the one fixating on the fact, no one else.

As a society, we have such a screwed-up relationship with food. It’s truly devastating when you think about it. We’ve applied morals to nutrition, and the worst part is that it’s constantly changing. Carbs were the biggest evil, and then it was suddenly fats. Food hasn’t changed, we have.An urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and learning to make peace with our bodies, from body confidence and anti-diet advocate, Alex Light.When we look in the mirror, so many of us see a 'before' picture: the miserable person in the side-by-side shot waiting for the 'glow-up' (read: weight loss) that will bring true happiness. We have been taught to view ourselves as a collection of 'problem' areas for which the billion-dollar diet industry holds the solutions.Step-by-step, You Are Not A Before Picture provides a framework for changing the way we view ourselves and the world around us. Nothing felt better than losing weight, and yet I was constantly miserable. Because I was permanently exhausted and could barely think straight. I don’t have many memories of that time, maybe just because I didn’t have the energy to even form them.

I am a woman in her 50s, a woman who has spent all her life on one diet or other…this is the book I have been waiting to read. An urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and learning to make peace with our bodies, from body confidence and anti-diet advocate Alex Light. The section of ‘You Are Not A Before Picture’ devoted to weight versus health was fascinating. I had no idea how incorrect BMIs and other weight-based measurements of health actually were. There’s also input by Dr Wolrich, advising you on how to handle doctors that focus solely on your weight or ask to weigh you. I loved everything about this book. I was particularly interested in the discussion of the relation between health and weight, exercise and weight. The exploration of BMI, its origins, and embedding in current health practise and narratives was enlightening and worrying. Alex’s messaging around consent to being weighed was for me very powerful. With the same principle as date protection the question should be - what is this information needed for. The author explores how exercise has become purposed in relation to weight loss, submerging messages about the value of exercise for mental health, strength, enjoyment. She encourages us to love our bodies for what they can do rather than their aesthetics.

True control is being able to enjoy food and exercise without linking it to your body image. True control is enjoying life and not living to make yourself smaller. 11. “And remember this: taking up space is allowed. You do not need to be the smallest version of yourself to be accepted.” (pg.223) Here’s the sneaky thing about dieting and the human experience of having a body — we want to believe there is a way to fix how our bodies look and feel. We tell ourselves if we find the right diet, the right gym, the right clothing, there will be a day when we look in the mirror and think “Perfect. Flawless. No notes.” Short, simple and sweet, this is one of my favourite quotes in ‘You Are Not a Before Picture’ because it’s a reminder we all need sometimes. We’re not the only ones feeling this way, so don’t struggle in silence. We’re not alone in this. We all want to dismantle diet culture and lose these awful lessons once drilled into us. We can do this together, it’ll take all of us.

It’s easy to feel like we’re the only ones struggling with our weight. It’s even easier to feel like we’re the problem, not the media, not society. But if only 5% of people have this ideal body type, then why are we at fault? It’s clearly not an average body, so why are we killing ourselves to get it? This book covers a huge amount of ground! It explores the world of dieting - where it started and why. It explores the relationship between health and weight, weight and exercise, social media and body image, body positivity. It explores the power of messaging and the results of societal conditioning. The author charts her own journey with weight gain and loss, offering personal insights and anecdotes. She writes candidly and with great honesty. None of these things will make you happy, at least not for long. Because as Alex says, happiness isn’t something we can discover, it’s something already within ourselves. Your situation does not determine your happiness, you do. On some level, happiness is a choice. And it can be made far more difficult by mental health struggles or toxic influences, but we will never find it outside of ourselves. When I think about losing weight or getting toned, it comes with the inherent belief that people will like me more then. Not just potential partners, but my friends and family. It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, but a part of me truly thinks that my loved ones will regard me higher if I had a smaller waist, toned legs or abs. Your worth will never be found on a scale or on a size stitched into your clothing. Your worth will never be found in the mirror. You are already enough, at this size, at this weight. Alex works to remind us of this, that we’re enough now, we don’t need to change, we don’t need to chase anything. 9. “Happiness, I’ve come to believe, is not something that we can suddenly discover, but rather something to be uncovered within ourselves.” (pg. 150)There is so much I want to do in this world. There is so much impact I want to make. And none of it has anything to do with my body. I’m almost tempted to get a tattoo of this quote as a constant reminder. Because we are here to do so much in our short lives, and none of it revolves around our bodies. So why do we dedicate so much time and energy to worrying about it? This book gives an outlook on what diet culture is, where it originated from and the real harm it causes. From a very young age, we are all conditioned by the diet culture message which is exaggerated through the use of social media. Alex Light makes aware the pervasiveness of diet culture and that people’s bodies are not the problem. However, just knowing this isn’t enough. Light continues in the second half of the book explaining how to improve our negative perceptions of ourselves, steps to take away from dieting and towards intuitive eating and how to find joy in exercise. Let’s also consider some evidence of a more anecdotal nature: if diets worked, every person would only need to do one in their lifetime. It would be a success and they wouldn’t need to diet again, right?” An urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and learning to make peace with our bodies, from body confidence and anti-diet advocate, Alex Light. In the past I have had a love/hate relationship with self-help books and have sometimes(wrongly) dismissed most of them as “woo woo”