📚 Tired As F*ck Book Club - Week 1

1 day ago
5 min read

Week 1 (Mar 30 – Apr 5)

Intro → How to Focus on the Wrong Cure (p. xii–41)

Happy April everyone! I don’t know where everyone is joining from, but here in Victoria it’s feeling a little too chilly and rainy for spring on the west coast 🌧️

So far, I’ve really loved the short chapters—it's made it easy to read for 5–10 minutes at a time and slowly make my way through the first ~40 pages.

At this point, no major red flags from the author. The writing style is definitely more

comic/social media influencer/blogger, especially compared to our last two book club reads, which were written by scholars and licensed mental health professionals.

Because of that, I’m holding a bit of extra awareness here:

👉 take what resonates, leave what doesn’t

👉 and remember she is not a trained expert in health or mental health

…but enough of the disclaimers—onto the book:

Introduction

I really loved this intro. Honestly, if you read (or listen to) nothing else, read the introduction -- it's a beautiful, brief summary of how diet culture—and our relationships with food, movement, and our bodies—are deeply intertwined with our relationships to rest and productivity.

In my work with clients, we sometimes start with food and movement, but more often we’re working on all of it at once:food, movement, body image, productivity, rest, money… all the overlapping, messy pieces.

How to Not Be a Psychopath / How to Not Be Cult Susceptible

I started these chapters wondering… where is this going?

It’s interesting to me that she so clearly names her anxiety and susceptibility to extreme/cult-like thinking. It also feels important (and relevant) to acknowledge how those tendencies, combined with the COVID-19 era, seemed to contribute to her shift toward more controversial/at times alt-right aligned views (ick).

Quick context note: around COVID, Caroline Dooner’s content shifted significantly away from her original anti-diet, body-acceptance focus. Many long-time followers (myself included) felt alienated as her platform no longer aligned with those original values.

For this book club, I’m approaching this with curiosity—

👉 Which version of her shows up on the page?

👉 The anti-diet voice people first connected with, or the more recent evolution?

Honestly, I’m holding this similarly to how I approach Harry Potter: I loveeee the books, and I strongly disagree and despise J.K. Rowling’s views & actions she takes against queer folks. So, we’ll see how this book holds up when considered separately from her current content and if there is any sort of slide into her current views that we start to see in some chapters...

How to Secure a Miracle Tooth / How to Email God

Again… such curious chapter titles 😅

Where are these chapters going (again)?

So far these stories are entertaining and have some small glimmers of reflections on anxiety/trying to control things and the flaws in that attempt for certainty and control.

I did really like this paragraph (p.19):

“I don't know exactly what I believe, but I do believe that there is something out there, nudging us toward truth. And what I've also learned is we can't hear it when we are busy, exhausted, and distracted by the stupid trappings of modern life. I think we are all intuitive. And I think if we were given the permission to trust our gut, and the space to trust our gut, we'd spend less time trying to conform and fit in, and more time doing what fulfills us. We'd spend less time fighting who we really are, and more time being who we really are. But we aren't taught to trust our gut, we are taught to follow the rules. And the more people who start trusting their gut, the less people would follow the rules, and the more people would break free.”

It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a solid reminder—especially around intuition, and how hard it is to access that when we’re exhausted, distracted, and constantly trying to follow rules instead of trusting ourselves.

How to Become Obsessed with Food

The story she shares in this chapter about “good” and “bad/junk” food, and food rules, is extremely common and shows up in almost every client I’ve worked with on their relationship with food and their body.

I really wish it wasn’t as pervasive as it is—and yet, given the influence of the ~$200 billion diet industry and ~$6.8 trillion “wellness” industry, it makes sense that these patterns are so widespread.

Some standout lines:

“Food scarcity causes food fixation. And it actually feels like food addiction. Its supposed to, its plain survival instinct. Our bodies are wired to fixate on food when they are experiencing any sort of food insecurity… its not a food addiction, but until the trauma of scarcity is dealt with, it will probably feel like one” p24” (p.24)

“Being denied, or even feeling denied causes food fixation, even if you are plenty-fed and even if you are imposing the restriction on yourself, like a diet” (p.25)

And:👏

“We deserve better than this. We deserve naps and snacks.” (p.26)

How to Start Panicking About Your Face / How to Focus on the Wrong Cure

I really how these chapters had a blend of personal story and research around:

the failure rates of diets (95%+)
weight cycling impacts on health
and the risks of prescribing weight loss—especially for young people

I'm going to go off on a bitttt of a tangent right now, as it fits with some of the themes discussed in this chapter:

👉 Dieting (pusuing intentional weight loss) is one of the main biological risk factors for developing an eating disorder

22% of children and adolescents worldwide show disordered eating (ie. dietinig behaviours)

Despite the fact that individuals with higher body weight have a 2.45x greater chance of engaging in disordered eating behaviors as patients of "normal" weight, such patients receive a clinical diagnosis of an eating disorder 50% less than patients with "normal" weight or underweight

... back to the book, I also appreciated the discussion of how often doctors prescribe trending diets to treat under-researched women’s health conditions. Ugh. 😑

Our culture is deeply, deeply obsessed with the horrible myth/lie that thinness = health. It so badly needs to stop 🛑 because the there is no effective or safe way to maintain intentional weight loss & the health risks associated with that pursuit/dieting are — both physically and mentally — is far worse than our culture lets us see.

Anyways...

Thats a wrap on our Week 1 reading! 🎉

Overall, I’m finding this start to be easy, somewhat entertaining personal essays.

There are some really solid, familiar themes here around restriction, food fixation, and the overlap between diet culture and productivity culture that are always a good reminder 😊

I’d love to hear what stood out to you—

What resonated? What didn’t? What made you pause?

📖 Coming up next week -- Week 2 (Apr 6 – 12)

Chapters: How to Let Everyone Know You Suck to How to Lose Feeling in Half of Your Face (p. 42–84)