You Can't Judge a Body by Its Cover 17 Women's Stories of Hunger, Body Shame, and Redemption

What if your hunger—that force that beckons you to the ice cream aisle, and guides your hands to take seconds when you didn’t even feel like having firsts—was the misunderstood sage of your body, rattling its cage inside the fortress of your soul? What if your resistance to dieting were actually a message of self-love? What if your body size and shape also held intelligence and protection? In You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover, you’ll read seventeen stories of women who opened the doors to their souls in therapeutic sessions with David Bedrick: stories of shame and self-love, fear and hope, being small and being big. These are the inside stories of the transformation, from bodies impacted by sexism and racism, rape and harsh criticism, and the deepest hungers for an authentic life. You’ll recognize your own pains and abuses, resistance to weight loss, your hungers…and power. Get ready to be inspired. Get ready to see everything differently. Get ready to meet the life-changing secrets held within your body’s rebellion to living in a society that fetishizes thinness and shames authenticity.

David Bedrick, J.D., Dipl. PW is an attorney, educator, and process worker. He founded the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-Based Studies where he teaches and works with individuals from around the world. He is the author of Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change.