From “The Four Hour Body,” to “Atkins,” there are diet cults to match seemingly any mood and personality type. Everywhere we turn, someone is preaching the “One True Way” to eat for maximum health. Paleo Diet advocates tell us that all foods less than 12,000 years old are the enemy. Low-carb gurus demonize carbs, then there are the low-fat prophets. But they agree on one thing: there is only one true way to eat for maximum health. The first clue that that is a fallacy is the sheer variety of diets advocated. Indeed, while all of these competing views claim to be backed by “science,” a good look at actual nutritional science itself suggests that it is impossible to identify a single best way to eat. Fitzgerald advocates an agnostic, rational approach to eating habits, based on one’s own habits, life- style, and genetics/body type. Many professional athletes already practice this “Good Enough” diet, and now we can too and ditch the brainwashing of these diet cults for good.

What do we mean when we call any group a cult? Definingthat term is a slippery proposition – the word cult is provocative and arguably pejorative. Does it necessarily refer to a religious group? A group with a charismatic leader? Or something darker and more sinister? Because beliefs and practices surrounding food often inspire religious and political fervor, as well as function to unite people into insular groups, it is inevitable that "food cults" would emerge. Studying the extreme beliefs and practices of such food cults allows us to see the ways in which food serves as a nexus for religious beliefs, sexuality, death anxiety, preoccupation with the body, asceticism, and hedonism, to name a few. In contrast to religious and political cults, food cults have the added dimension of mediating cultural trends in nutrition and diet through their membership. Should we then consider raw foodists, many of whom believe that cooked food is poison, a type of food cult? What about paleo diet adherents or those who follow a restricted calorie diet for longevity? Food Cults explores these questions by looking at domestic and international, contemporary and historic food communities characterized by extreme nutritional beliefs or viewed as "fringe" movements by mainstream culture. While there are a variety of accounts of such food communities across disciplines, this collection pulls together these works and explains why we gravitate toward such groups and the social and psychological functions they serve. This volume describes how contemporary and historic food communities come together and foment fanaticism, judgment, charisma, dogma, passion, longevity, condemnation and exaltation.

Become a diet rebel and make friends with food. Can you remember a time in your life without diets? Without seeing adverts for diets, hearing about diets, or being on a diet? Most of us would struggle to imagine it. Our obsession with being healthy has driven us to push our bodies to the absolute limits, but still every year we're told how unhealthy we are as a population. Despite a wealth of information at our fingertips, we get so much wrong about food and health. The No Need to Diet Book challenges misconceptions about what it is to be healthy and helps us make better friends with food, using evidence-based science.

Science is beginning to understand that our thinking has a deep and complicated relationship with our eating. Our thoughts before, during, and after eating profoundly impact our food choices, our digestive health, our brain health, and more. Yet most of us give very little thought to our food beyond taste and basic nutritional content. In this revolutionary book, Dr. Caroline Leaf packs an incredible amount of information that will change readers' eating and thinking habits for the better. Rather than getting caught up in whether we should go raw or vegan, gluten-free or paleo, Leaf shows readers that every individual is unique, has unique nutritional needs, and has the power to impact their own health through the right thinking. There's no one perfect solution. Rather, she shows us how to change the way we think about food and put ourselves on the path towards health. Anyone who is tired of traditional diet plans that don't work, who struggles with emotional eating, or who simply isn't satisfied with their level of health will find in this book the key to discovering how they can begin developing a healthier body, brain, and spirit.

This compelling book strips away the messages promoted in glossy advertisements and reveals the real dangers of diet drugs. It separates fact from fiction and addresses topics such as the mythology of “all natural” labels, the notion that over-the-counter is always safe, the world of eating disorders, and how to live a truly healthy lifestyle. Just because diet drugs may be marketed on a national stage doesn’t mean they’re safe. This book impresses upon readers the importance of recognizing the dangers and choosing healthy alternatives.

Sports Nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald has spent nearly twenty years studying the diets of top professional endurance athletes, who are among the fittest and healthiest people in the world. As a result, he has identified five core habits-most of which are contrary to what popular diets advise-that are essential to maximizing workout benefits. The Endurance Diet shares key strategies for optimal health and performance: eat everything, eat quality, eat carbohydrate, eat enough, and eat individually. Whether you want to lose weight, win a race, or look a little more like an elite athlete, this plan is for you. "I am always amazed at how much I learn from Matt Fitzgerald's books." -- Shalane Flanagan, Olympic bronze medalist

A Layman's Guide to Religion is a provocative, factual often-humorous personal study of evolution and religion. The author is unsparing in his contempt for all religions and cults and for the hypocritical rascals, the pied pipers who sidetrack their innocent victims, robbing many of them of their most productive years. The author finds those who claim to speak for God while defrauding the elderly of their life's savings especially loathsome. One scholar, who prefers anonymity, remarked after reading the manuscript, that when published, this one thin volume would contain more common sense than the hundred of thousand dusty works by so called theologians over the past several millennia. The comment was most gratifying as the author world rather have the admiration of one intelligent person whom the author highly regards than the admiration and even reverence of a billion fools! Bold, blunt and unflinching, this thin volume, cuts through millenia of B.S.! The author's purpose is not offend one religion but to denigrate all of them and, hopefully, replace religion with reason and common sense. Targeting historical unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner, and the role of evolution, the author shows where religion has today become a compost of hypocrisy and pretense and the root cause of all evil! Plainly, this volume contains "All You Ever Wanted To Know About Religion Before You Put The Subject To Rest And Get On With Your Life!"

In this comprehensive and insightful work, Dr. Sharon K. Farber provides an invaluable resource for the mental health professional who is struggling to understand self-harm and its origins. Using attachment theory to explain how addictive connections to pain and suffering develop, she discusses various kinds and functions of self-harm behavior. From eating disorders to body modifications such as tattooing, Dr. Farber explores the language of self-harm, and the translation of that language and its psychic functions in the therapeutic setting. She tells us, "When the body weeps tears of blood, we need to wonder what terrible sorrows cannot be spoken." Brilliantly illustrated with rich clinical material, this book offers a practical approach to the diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of the increasing number of patients whose emotions are expressed through bodily harm. The challenges of working with patients who tend to view the world of relationships in terms of predator and prey are clearly explicated and the stormy countertransference responses that threaten to destroy the treatment are given a full hearing. Finally, she shows how the attachment relationship formed in treatment can repair the traumatic attachment in mind, body, psyche, and soul, and can serve as the cornerstone of therapeutic change. A Jason Aronson Book