A Nourishing Perspective
Reconnect with Your Inner Voice and Harmonize Your Relationship with Food
Aiming to counter harmful diet culture, A Nourishing Perspective is a health and wellness guide that’s directed by positivity.
Lee Cotton’s affirming, holistic health guide A Nourishing Perspective addresses diet culture to encourage cultivating a positive relationship with food.
Attributing the wide spread of disordered eating to the food industry and cultural obsessions with idealizing women’s bodies, the book begins with a series of questions aimed at recognizing the internal damages that such influences leave. In sections on nutrition, various forms of self-love, and eating disorders, it reframes food as a spiritual, emotional, and physical locus. It also presents self-awareness and self-compassion as essential tools for taking one’s health back from diet culture.
Throughout the book, the terms awareness and nourishment become almost interchangeable, with the former used more often than the latter; together, they suggest that health is tied to personal action, as “society is not likely to change,” nor are the nutrients that bodies require. Scientific studies are referenced as the book works to help its audience cultivate their own paths toward health.
The book also argues against generalized rubrics like the BMI scale, countering such metrics with imagined scenes at work and in social settings that illustrate how shifts in one’s perspectives on food might happen. There are questions about how people feel about food and the experience of eating to help with such transitions. Throughout the book, suggestions are made to turn one’s attention inward, away from social cues, and to be exploratory and curious in fostering one’s personal relationship with food. The guidance is somewhat amorphous and meandering beyond this. More illustrative are Cotton’s personal anecdotes, which appear in snippets in each chapter to show her methods in action.
Repetitiveness sets in, though, as the book reiterates concepts of self-love and self-compassion, awareness and mindfulness. Its work spins in place at times, urging constant stepping back to observe one’s habits and cultivate greater awareness. Indeed, it insists upon the importance of trusting one’s self-knowledge, even in a world in which marginalized people in particular are often taught not to trust themselves and their specific circumstances. Charts are used to break down the relevant data about diet trends and nutrition into chunks, making their information helpful, though the book’s use of acrostics, using words including love, work, and momentum, is a less effective and memorable tool.
A Nourishing Perspective is an encouraging health and wellness guide that’s directed by positivity.
Reviewed by
Mari Carlson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
