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  • You Are Not a Before Picture

  • How to Finally Make Peace with Your Body, for Good
  • By: Alex Light
  • Narrated by: Alex Light
  • Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (159 ratings)
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You Are Not a Before Picture

By: Alex Light
Narrated by: Alex Light
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Summary

An urgent, enlightening and empowering guide to disavowing diet culture and learning to make peace with our bodies, from body confidence and anti-diet advocate Alex Light.

When we look in the mirror, so many of us see a ‘before’ picture: the miserable person in the side-by-side shot waiting for the ‘glow-up’ (read: weight loss) that will bring true happiness. But it’s not our fault that we see our bodies as projects in need of constant work: this is just one of the beliefs that has been ingrained in us by diet culture. We have been taught to view ourselves as a collection of ‘problem’ areas for which the billion-dollar diet industry holds the solutions.

Step-by-step, You Are Not a Before Picture provides a framework for changing the way we view ourselves and the world around us. Working with experts in the fields of psychotherapy, fitness and nutrition, Alex empowers listeners to interrogate their underlying beliefs, challenge the external and internal forces that are holding us back and finally find freedom in our bodies, for good.

©2022 Alex Light (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"A timely and passionate rally against the diet industry." (Cosmopolitan)

"You Are Not a Before Picture sets out to dismantle dangerous dieting habits and encourage self-acceptance." (HELLO)

What listeners say about You Are Not a Before Picture

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Fantastic book

Great author and beautifully read. Challenges everything you ever thought about diet culture and body image. Lots to think about and work on.

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3 people found this helpful

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Would give this 10 stars if I could

This book has given me my life back. I no longer feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in my own skin and I’m embracing my 48 year old post baby body. I bought some shorts. F it! 😃

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2 people found this helpful

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Wanted to love this

I really wanted to love this book and it is very well researched I have to say. If it were a dissertation I’d give it an A. But I wanted to connect with the author, I wanted to feel emotion for myself, to understand and to empathise and have some ‘lightbulb’ moments and feel for the women mentioned. But it just read like a massive, super well researched essay. Maybe I was just expecting something different. I wanted it to touch my heart and it didn’t.

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2 people found this helpful

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Wow, emotional an so needed!

From an absolute ice cold hearted non crier, I felt so emotional when I got to the end of this. I honestly can not think of a woman that this wouldn’t resonate with. And that’s sad.
I’m Going back to the beginning to listen again and will always keep this book to return to when needed.
I would never dream of talking about other peoples bodies how I talk about my own and if you’ve ever felt like that this book is a must read/ listen

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1 person found this helpful

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Love this.

Life changing. It has made me realise that my whole life has been focused on weight loss being by my happiness goal and it shouldn’t be. Let’s remove diet culture 💪🏼

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brilliant!

it's completely changed my views on diets, changed my life! would definitely recommend it

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Sad true … thank you Alex

This book ticks all boxes … the sad reality that I have been facing since the age of 10.
Implemented by parents

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very insightful and well researched.

I was recommended this book by a friend so I downloaded it to try it. I was very impressed and enlightened and found the start very interesting about how diet culture came about and the end empowering and really did make me change gear in how I think, which isn't easy to do. I found the fact Alex sited proper case studies and experiments, added a gravitas to her book. if anyone is interested in self help/body image I would recommend this book. My sister in law is doing a Masters on eating disorders and I have recommended this book to her for an interesting read x

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Influencer writing superficial take on important issue

Self pity ranting with negative self centred thoughts.. If I have the time I would ask for a refund, but how can you refund my wasted time reading this title! To encourage overweight individuals to go against medical advice and refuse stepping on scale is a dangerous thing, particularly if the author have no medical background or knowledge. Very disappointing read.

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    4 out of 5 stars

Generally good but incomplete

After listening to this book to the end I think that it has its strong and weak points. It's generally a good book but has a couple of blind spots.

The strong points are Light's critiques of unsustainable/unattainable body standards as promoted by various industries (capitalism) and patriarchy. The promotion of intuitive eating and movement and asking readers to seek mental health guidance and to implement practices to love one's body more are all things that are going in the right direction. She also cites medical/fitness experts to help support her positions. The book is strongest when she leans on them.

However, Light can also take things to far is when she goes from "our standards for body image are too high and people are making their health/lives worse through radcial and scientifically unsound dieting approaches" to "there is no such thing as fat causing health problems and all attempts at weight loss are doomed to fail and are ill concieved from the start". That's when the book is at its weakest. A lot of it comes from sloganeering but also a touch of black and white thinking on the author's part. In short, the standards need to shift and we need to give fat people dignity and humanity but we also need to aknowledge the health risks as we go to the extremes. This is exactly what the health professionals that she cited said, but then she turns around and says "health at every size" which is a-scientifc.

The book also has a complete blind spot for the growing rates of obesity in developed countries. Intuitive eating is at a disadvantage because of the prevalence of highly paletable foods designed to addict you similarly to social media. While we need to critique diet culture as an answer to these issues, we also need to address unregulated capitalism and how it fails to secure a healthy food environment. She simply makes no mention of this.

So while I learned things and I'm more watchful about how I view my body in the future, I think that this book suffers from some black and white thinking and failing to understand the wider forces and solutions at play here.

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