My husband and I read this together and found its common-sense suggestions of how to become "the leanest healthy version of yourself" easy to implement and remember. Sometimes the case study details bogged it down a bit, but I understand that as a researcher, Mann needs to explain how and why each one backed up an assertion about how and why people eat as they do.

I'd recommend this to anyone who has attempted dieting and inevitably backslid (as Mann points out, all dieters do). This goes beyond diets; it involves creating livable, life-long good eating habits.

I tend to agree with all of the author's main points. It's always nice to read things that confirm your existing beliefs! :)

Here are some of my favorite clips from the book:
Dieting doesn't work. Dieting isn't safe. Dieting has negative side-effects. If we were talking about a medication, doctors wouldn't recommend it.

Doing healthy things is healthy, whether or not they make you model-thin.

In the Ancel Keys "starvation" study, the men were allowed 1,600 kcal/day. This is a higher kcal intake than most typical modern diets.

Unless you want to battle evolution, biology, and psychology and be hungry every single day of your life, I wouldn't suggest trying to live below your set weight range. Getting so thin that you are below this range is a very difficult and self-defeating goal.

When people know they're being watched, they become self-conscious, act unnaturally, and won't eat very much. (This describes food logs)

By limiting the number of decisions we have to make with food, we may be helping to protect ourselves from impulsive decisions.

Even with all of the statistical flaws in obesity studies, the actual difference in life expectancy that they find between people who are obese and people who are normal weight is one year.

If you exercise, eat nutritiously, avoid weight cycling, and get good quality medical care, you don't need to worry about obesity shortening your life.

If you want to do less of something, create small obstacles. Example: switching Tylenol to blister packs (instead of bottles) was linked to a 21% reduction in suicides and accidental poisonings.

After dinner, clean your kitchen, put everything away, brush/floss your teeth. If you are really hungry enough to eat again, you'll have to figure out if it's really worth it to re-clean the kitchen, re-brush/floss your teeth, etc. We are naturally all lazy, so we can include these small obstacles and take advantage of our laziness.

When you buy all of your veggies for the week, immediately wash and chop them. Otherwise, you'll likely not eat most of them. Good video here: http://www.tamareadler.com/2011/10/10/how-to-stride-ahead-part-2/

Eat a salad or vegetable soup before dinner.

We do what people around us are doing.

For most people the word "healthy" is strongly associated with tasting bad or remaining hungry.

Change perceptions. Instead of thinking of vegetables as "healthy", think of them as filling, nutritious, energizing, etc. Come up with reasons that are compelling to you.

Example of a true habit? Getting in the car and putting on a seat belt. We don't debate the pros and cons of seat belts each time we get in the car. We just do it. In a cab on the other hand, we don't. It's not a habit.

Even if you've believed in the power of comfort food you whole life, it's time to let it go. Comfort food is nothing more than a food you happen to want when you feel bad. Comfort food is a myth. In fact, by eating something that may make you feel guilty later, you are actually doing the opposite of comforting yourself.

People who are intuitive eaters eat a more balanced diet than people who go on specific diets.

Satisfying a long list of food restrictions doesn't leave you with much to savor.

Here's a perfectly sensible goal: reach your leanest livable weight, that comfortable weight at the low end of your set range. You'll have no trouble reaching it if you exercise regularly and use some basic sound nutritional strategies.

I urge you to get to your leanest livable weight and then, whatever it is, decide that it's okay. Because your weight is not the point. You were not put on this earth to mold yourself into a perfect physical specimen. "Your body is not your masterpiece - your life is".

The premise is interesting but the literature review gets tedious - I get it, researchers trick research participants! The tips on a non-diet diet are sound but nothing different from many diet/research pop-culture books, if you haven't read any of those - this book would be good. Eat for health, not for weight, exercise for health, not for weight. Quit weight watchers/Atkins whatever. Keep unhealthy food out of sight, My favorite tip gleaned - don't look at certain foods as healthy or you'll likely over compensate elsewhere. I know I do this but seeing it explained was helpful.

She brings up some pretty controversial topics - like that obesity itself is not a health problem, but doesn't back it up with much research - she notes her work is controversial but doesn't convince me. She also spends very little time discussing morbid obesity - which I think kind of doesn't jive with her arguments, so this weakens her argument, in my mind.

Her argument would have been stronger if she clearly stated being overweight, particularly as a pear shaped woman, bears little to no health risk in and of itself, and there is a lot of evidence for that. Overall, it feels like she she plays down obesity risks overall but doesn't discuss rising obesity rates in children and spends little time on morbid obesity (just two examples). She mentions that being an apple versus pear shaped is very unhealthy but then mentions she's only ever seen a few women who are apples- which I thought was overall a pretty bizarre statement. Another reviewer said this book is for those trying to loose those last 5 to 10 lbs, which I think is accurate.

Nice quick read with super interesting compilation of study results regarding dieting. The writing itself was entertaining, but I loved that the focus was on statistics and human behavior/psychology rather than being just another diet book.

A fascinating read. I highly recommend it. The most interesting tidbit for me was the information from twin studies indicating that our genes account for 70% of the variation in our weight. That's not much less than the amount our genes contribute to our height (80%) yet you would never hear people say that someone "had really let herself go" because she was 6 feet tall.


We greatly overestimate how much control people have over what they weigh and, perhaps more importantly, how much their weight actually matters to their health. According to the author, the research into the health impacts of obesity show that there is almost no difference between the long-term health outcomes of "normal weight" individuals and those who are overweight or obese, except for the relatively rare individuals in the Class 3 obesity category (BMI of 40 or more). In fact, for certain diseases, there is a higher risk of death for those who are underweight.


This does not mean that the author advocates abandoning all efforts to improve our health through nutrition and exercise. On the contrary, much of the book concerns strategies for doing just that. Her bigger point is that diets do not work (i.e. the weight we lose inevitably comes back, often with interest) and that we should focus on keeping our weights towards the low end of our genetically determined set-weight range rather than aiming for the unrealistically low weight that we are societally conditioned to think is more healthy and attractive. In the long run, dieting stresses our metabolisms and sometimes causes more health problems than it fixes.


My favorite quote from the book: "You know what I find the most infuriating about this situation? People will blame the weight regain on your self- control, even though you are probably eating less food than they are! To maintain your new weight, you have to fight evolution. You have to fight biology. You have to fight your brain. You have to fight your metabolism. These are the ways your body tries to protect you from starvation, and it is not a fair fight."

Heard the author give an interview on Science for the People. And she's a researcher with the U of M. Didn't tell me anything new. Diets don't work. It's genetics over lifestyle and no matter your size you should exercise.

audio book

Love this book!

Mann: "If you lost a lot of weight and then gained it back, it is not because you lack self-control."

Mann's point is that our bodies have an optimal set weight range, and holding ourselves artificially below (or above) that range is full-time work. Weight control, she says, should not be this important.

Among the points she demonstrates in this book are that overweight is not as damaging to your health as the media makes it out to be, and exercise is beneficial even when it doesn't produce weight loss.

Mann provides 12 strategies for eating reasonably without "dieting," and she makes an excellent case that dieting is actually bad for you. One point from that argument: restricting calories produces stress, and stress makes you gain weight.

I could go on about this book all day. I took 16 pages of notes. Even the headings and subheadings are instructive:

• Diets don't work.
• You can (partly) blame biology.
• Save some of the blame for psychology.
• Self-control depends on your circumstances, not your ability.
• Controlling one thing makes it hard to control another.
• You are better off without the battle.
• Diets are bad for you.
—Diets mess up your thinking.
—Dieting is stressful.
—Diets make you feel bad.
• Obesity is not a death sentence.
• Know when to turn off your brain.
• Your weight is not really the point.
—Be okay with your body.

If you struggle in your relationship with food, I highly recommend this book.

First sentence: There is no sign on the door of the Health and Eating Lab at the University of Minnesota.

Favorite quote: So diets don't work. Big deal. You don't need them to work. You need to not go on them.

So much of what [a:Traci Mann|3888177|Traci Mann|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] says is common sense. The cool thing is she has research to prove it. DIETS DO NOT WORK. We just need to get that through our thick heads and do the practical, stress free, guilt free things she shares in section three How to Reach Your Leanest Livable Weight (no willpower required).

I started this book right after finishing Health at Every Size. This filled in stone of the gaps left by that book and provided a bit more practical advice. A lot of the evidence and research covered was the same. I wish we talked more about these issues and these pervasive myths.