📚 Tired As F*ck Book Club - Week 4/5

1 day ago
3 min read

Week 4 (Apr 20 – 26)

🛌 Rest / Catch-up week

Week 5 (Apr 27 – May 3)

📖 How to Think Positive Thoughts, or Else → How to Get Another New Face (p. 125–163)

Slightly delayed—thank you for your patience!

Without further ado… Week 5 recap ✨

And as always, thanks for being here.

🌈 How to Think Positive Thoughts, or Else

There’s some really solid commentary here on how people can latch onto terms like “intuitive eating” or “mindful eating”… and then completely warp them into another form of restriction/disordered eating... 👉 turning intuitive eating into just… another diet

This passage stood out:

“What I realized way too late is that the Law of Attraction teaches toxic positivity. Being told we have to be positive and happy no matter what and to only think positive thoughts no matter what is terrible advice because it leads to avoidance and denial. It also doesn’t acknowledge the important fact that… in general, we must feel our pain in order to process it and heal from it. Struggle is part of the human condition and perfection is just an illusion. Toxic positivity makes you feel guilty for having struggles, or pain, or sadness which doesn't allow you to heal.” (p.128–129)

I also appreciated how she distinguishes between:

✨ positivity

🚫 toxic positivity

Yes. 👏

🧘‍♀️ How to Lose Your Ego for a Month

I actually really enjoyed how this chapter starts—calling out how mantras often don’t work (at least not in the way they’re commonly used).

👏👏👏

She also talks about reading A New Earth—curious if anyone here has read it and what your thoughts are?

I also sort of love that being in Ireland seemed to allow for some letting go and just being. I have such a soft spot for Ireland and the time I’ve spent there…

…and also, yikes at the level of alcohol consumption described 😅

🎤 How to Lose Your Voice

I don’t have a ton of reactions to this chapter—somewhat entertaining, but nothing major stands out.

One thing I did notice:

👉 her ongoing internalized stigma around medication/prescription meds (ugh). Which, unfortunately, is still pretty rampant. It’s improved over the past couple of decades… but not nearly enough.

🧠💥 How to Have a Nervous Breakdown

Ooof.

Identity crisis → plastic surgery.

Oooof.

👃 How to Get Another New Face

This chapter was a harder read.

The level of disordered eating—and how often it was supported (including financially) by her parents (liposuction, nose jobs, various diets, but no actual therapy)—is honestly really sad.

It really highlights what happens when someone isn’t supported in actually healing their relationship with:

their body
food
anxiety

A few things that stood out:

👉 She acknowledges that she was engaging in disordered behaviours while calling it “Intuitive Eating” (when it very much was not & commonly occurs).

👉 It’s WILD to me that neither she nor any health professional flagged how concerning it was that she didn’t have her period for 4 years.

👉 And that she couldn’t connect eating more (and weight gain) with getting her period back.

YIKES.

✨ Week 5 Wrap-Up

This section really highlights how easy it is for diet culture to shape-shift—into “wellness,” into “positivity,” into “intuition”…

👉 without actually supporting healing

If there’s a thread here:it’s that language can be co-opted, but the underlying patterns often stay the same

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

📖 Next Up:

Week 6 (May 4 – 10)→ How to Become a French Woman → How to Figure Out What’s Depleting You (p. 164–221)

Week 7 (May 11 – 17)→ How to Figure Out if You’re Allowed to Be Tired → How to Live (p. 222–end)