Consumer Critique: Fat Girl - How to Let Go of Your Weight and Get On With Your Life

Disclosure:I received complimentary products to facilitate this post. All opinions are my own.

Fat Girl: How to Let Go of Your Weight and Get on With Your Life is written by Susan Bodiker, advertising executive turned health coach. She is the founder of One Girl Wellness, a health-coaching consultancy dedicated to “raising strong women one girl at a time.” A self-described former ‘fat girl’, Bodiker had to search her past for the source of her body image issues in order to find self-confidence and a healthier lifestyle. Like so many things in life, both positive and negative, she realized that her body image started at home. Bodiker begins with reconciling the mother-daughter dynamic and the role it plays in shaping self-confidence and body image through the generations, encouraging readers to break the cycle – starting with mothers learning to heal themselves first before they turn to heal others.

What Fat Girl is not, is a no-fail diet plan or a recipe for perfection. Instead, it is a book that provides a lifeline out of the darkness – a roadmap to greater awareness and self-esteem, providing a set of tools that just might set you free from your insecurities.

         A relatable, empowering, and inspirational guide, Fat Girl will reveal:

• Self-esteem starts at home. Mother/daughter relationships play a significant role in one’s body confidence.
• It’s not what you eat, but why. Once you can deconstruct the reason or reasons for your cravings and binges, you can find strategies to overcome them.
• Good girls are bad news—for themselves. By consistently putting others’ needs before their own, by being a people-pleaser rather than living a life aligned with their own values, they get out of touch with their own bodies and emotions and, as a consequence, unconsciously sabotage their best interests.

The book is easy to read, and easy to relate to. As a relatively fit daughter of an overweight mother, I know what it's like to have a body image shaped by someone else. Although I stayed at a healthy, I was always ultra-conscious of it, and not always for healthy reasons.

Fat Girl: How to Let Go of Your Weight and Get on With Your Life can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and through all major booksellers.

With 30 years’ experience as a copywriter, broadcast producer and account planner, Susan Bodiker has developed branding, image and fund-raising campaigns for advocacy, association, health care, nonprofit, professional practice and retail clients. She has also created print, broadcast and digital advertising, training materials and web content for a range of local and national marketers—from AARP to the YMCA.

Connect with Susan Bodiker on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and GoodReads.