Review: "Unburdened Eating" by Jeanne Catanzaro

Unburdened Eating by Jeanne Catanzaro
Published September 2024 via Bridge City Books
★★★

Unburdened Eating explores the use of an Internal Family Systems approach to improve one's relationship with food and body. I picked this up partly because I'd never heard of the approach, which—in very, very simplified form—can be described as engaging in neutral dialogue with one's own conflicting thoughts to bring them closer to harmony.

I'm not really sure who the target audience for this is, as it's not a book aimed at professionals, but I don't think it's meant exactly as a self-help book either—I think it would be quite hard to apply an IFS approach without guidance from a therapist, at least initially and especially if you weren't already conversant in some of the language. (Maybe something for people who are trying IFS in therapy and want to know more?)

This ended up not being a very good fit of a book for me—I think I was just expecting something other than it was, plus I don't have any background with IFS (again, had never heard of it). I appreciate a lot of the things Catanzaro talks about (she touches briefly on things like the ways racism plays into the glorification of Thin, for example, and on her politely anti-diet stance), but this self-help-hybrid isn't really my thing. That said, if you're looking for a new way to approach an uneasy relationship with body image, this book (and IFS more generally) might be interesting to explore.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.