BlogHer Book Club Review: Why Women Need Fat

It's the new year, and everyone's making resolutions, including many about losing weight or getting more fit. There are tons of diet and exercise books out there, some that I find downright scary and others that fascinate me. Why Women Need Fat: How "Healthy" Food Makes Us Gain Excess Weight and the Surprising Solution to Losing It Forever by William D. Lassek, M.D. and Steven J.C. Gaulin, Ph.D. falls into the fascinating category.

I am someone who believes in real food. We don't eat high fructose corn syrup around here, and I do my best to minimize processed foods. Tonight's dinner, for example was honey glazed chicken served over cous cous. It had six total ingredients, the most processed being soy sauce. When I cook, I'd much rather taste my food and have it be what I consider to be real food, which means that I'm not eating Splenda or margarine either. After reading this, I'm grateful for some of the formative years I spent in Europe that perhaps led me to eat this way (shhh, most of the time!).

The BlogHer Book Club book Why Women Need Fat validates this approach for me. That isn't to say that I'm anywhere near the weight I'd like to be or that I'm perfect, but it discusses intelligently why it is that we need to eat the real foods and why substituting low fat foods is counteracting the very thing we're trying to do. That and it talks about how we need to figure out what our weight should be and not just dream of a completely unreasonable six foot, eighty-five pound frame that fits dreamily into a size zero dress.

The first two sections of the book run to the statistical and are fairly evidence based. As someone who is somewhat of a stats and analytical geek, this appealed to me, and I really enjoyed reading some of the hows and whys behind the findings. It was right up my alley, but I know that isn't the case for everyone. The third section was the one that I'm guessing most people will gravitate to, as it's the one that talks about what we need to think about without laying down the law of each six cups of this, four cups of that and so on. It focuses on us educating ourselves and taking charge of our lives and being realistic about doing so.

So no, we can't and won't all be thin. Not all our bodies can be that way, but that's ok. We still need to take care of the bodies we have, and it's critical that we eat real food instead of the chemically altered ingredients designed to resemble food. What do you think about what and how Americans eat? Join in the BlogHer Book Club discussion.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am participating in the BlogHer Book Club, which is a compensated review program. I also received a copy of book to facilitate the review. As always, the opinions expressed remain my own.