"68 percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90% of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66% of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it? The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness to health and moral virtue, promotes weight loss...

"Americans are losing the battle of the bulge because our bodies and brains are not hardwired to resist food--the very idea of it works against our biological imperative to survive. In [this book], Mann challenges assumptions--including those that make up the very foundation of the weight loss industry--about how diets work and why they fail. The result of more than two decades of research, it offers ... science and ... insights into the American...

In recent decades, America has been waging a veritable war on fat in which not just public health authorities, but every sector of society is engaged in constant "fat talk" aimed at educating, badgering, and ridiculing heavy people into shedding pounds. We hear a great deal about the dangers of fatness to the nation, but little about the dangers of today's epidemic of fat talk to individuals and society at large. The human trauma caused by the war...

"Most women have spent time dieting and trying to change themselves in order to fit into a mold--and a body--that is deemed socially acceptable. Yet it is dieting that is the problem: it disconnects us from our body's wisdom and holds us back from living life to the fullest. The more time we spend trying to "fix" ourselves, the less time we have for the things that really matter. What presents as a problem about food is, in reality, much deeper and...