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.