I read a lot of books of this type — not diet self-help books, but sciency books about diet and dieting — the facts, the myths, eating psychology, nutrition, health, and general cultural craziness about weight, body shape, and body image.

This is among the best and it’s also highly entertaining. Traci Mann is a health psychologist and runs an eating lab at the University of Minnesota. She’s been doing research — sneaky studies — on dieting and dieters, eating habits, etc., in her lab and out in the world (that other eating lab of life). You may be surprised to find that dieting promotes weight gain. Or that your genes account for 70 percent of what you weigh (they account for 80 percent of the variation in height). Or that self-control has little or nothing to do with whether and what and how much you eat. Or that being overweight is not a health risk (until you get rather huge).

In general, the book and the author’s positions are well supported by research and (with one or two exceptions, imho) Mann is cautious about overstating evidence or attributing causality to correlational data. The extensive notes and references offer many other enticing directions for further reading. (And I am so happy that the Kindle edition of the book included them all. That hasn’t always been my experience.)

If you have ever felt sad, frustrated, guilty, or discouraged about your weight or failed diet attempts, read this book NOW. You’ll never feel quite the same about your body or dieting again. This isn’t a cheesy self-help book — but I concluded that we could all be a lot happier and healthier by implementing a few simple (really!) strategies.