📚 Tired As F*ck Book Club - Week 3

[Photo taken by me on my walk home from Physio today, Victoria, BC April 20 2026]

Week 3 (Apr 13 – 19)

📖 How to Be an Actual Cheese Grater in a Musical → How to Make a Vision Tin (p. 85–124)

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🧀 How to Be an Actual Cheese Grater in a Musical

“I just assumed that I was straight up lazy, and I had to keep pushing harder. This ‘laziness’ assumption is a manifestation of toxic diet culture and toxic self-improvement culture.”

I feel like this whole passage—and honestly this chapter—is likely very relatable for many people, especially those who have not healed their relationships with their body, food, and/or themselves.

I don’t love how detailed and graphic she is when describing restriction and compulsive, punishing exercise… and it does clearly shine a light on what are very common thoughts and behaviours for so many people.

She also highlights the harm of complimenting thinness, which makes it even harder for people to understand and accept that very real and not okay harms to health and mental health caused by rescriction and compensatory behaviours...

👉 TL;DR the praise people receive for thinness or weight loss is so problematic in so many ways.

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🧠 How to Not Know You Have an Eating Disorder

This opening passage does a really nice job summarizing the “why” behind my upcoming Masterclass with Bri Campos on disordered eating and eating disorders (stay tuned!)

While I (we) don’t agree with the author’s current views/writing, I’ve found this part of the book especially worth highlighting:

“If someone sat me down and had said, Caroline, I think you might have an eating disorder, or disordered eating in the very least, I would have thought, No, no, you don't know what you're talking about. My problems are food- and weight-related, and I’m going to figure it all out. Lack of fluency around eating disorders is a major problem. We don't seem to understand how rampant they are, and how easily disguised they can be as a passion for healthy living. We don't understand how many times we praise or envy someone for having disordered habits or a full-blown eating disorder… Disordered habits are so normalized and glorified in our culture that most eating disorders fly under the radar.” (p.90)

She also references the book Sick Enough—which is an excellent resource for clients, families, and providers.

A key line:

“Starvation can occur in people of any body shape and size. It doesn't just happen in people with lower body weight…”

👏 YES. Say this louder and on repeat.

Another important passage:

“This myth about eating disorders and body size exists and persists because of another myth: the myth that weight is always a matter of calories in vs. calories out… Our bodies burn less the less we eat, in order to purposely hold on to weight so we don't diiiieeeeeeee.” (p.92)

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🩸 How to Have No Blood

Well… a lot of this chapter also screams:

👉 health issues exacerbated by severe disordered eating / eating disorder behaviours

Sigh.

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❤️ Hope to Cope When Your Parent Has Cancer

A solid shoutout to Intuitive Eating.

Fun fact: I’m a certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor.

Side quest/story time: through clinical supervision with Elyse Resch, I was advised to work with less acute clients in private practice—since more severe eating disorders are often better supported within full treatment teams/programs.... if only programs actually were doing that... sigh

Also—something I see all the time:

👉 many people don’t actually understand what Intuitive Eating is

👉 or how to meaningfully move toward it

So when people say it “doesn’t work,” it’s often because they were never truly practicing Intuitive Eating in the first place.

And… my heart really hurts for the author here. The level of diet culture embedded in her family, especially through her mom’s influence, is honestly heartbreaking.

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🥕 How to Join the Cult of Raw Veganism

Veganism can exist within a healthy, non-disordered relationship with food…

…but in my clinical experience, it’s actually quite rare.

Often, disordered eating behaviours attach themselves to moral frameworks like vegetarianism or veganism.

And interestingly, as clients heal, I often see this shift:

👉 they reconnect with foods they had cut out

👉 and rediscover enjoyment (hello chicken nuggets, steak, etc.)

Veganism is a nuanced and tricky topic for sure.

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🔮 How to Make a Vision Tin

Does anyone else remember the book/documentary The Secret? Total throwback 😅

Knowing where the author has landed now with some of her thinking, it’s both amusing and fascinating to read her describing her own susceptibility to more rigid or “cult-like” beliefs... lots of foreshadowing for her future there!

Overall chapter thoughts:

👉 interesting

👉 entertaining

👉 and still doing a solid job calling out diet culture and disordered eating

I’m into it.

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✨ Week 3 Wrap-Up

This week really highlighted how normalized and reinforced disordered eating can be—from cultural praise of thinness, to misunderstandings about eating disorders, to the ways control and identity get wrapped up in food.

I do love that she keeps highlighting this theme

👉 this isn't personal failure—it’s learned, reinforced, and often invisible

Curious what stood out to you this week—what landed, what didn’t, what felt familiar?

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📖 Coming up next:

Week 4 (Apr 20 – 26) 🛌 Rest / Catch-up week

Then…

Week 5 (Apr 27 – May 3)→ How to Think Positive Thoughts, or Else → How to Get Another New Face (p. 125–163)