Leave Me Alone
Author: Orit Yogev
Genre: Health, Fitness & Dieting, Non-Fiction
Rating: 4,5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Can you begin to imagine the anguish and shame of being morbidly obese?
“I can’t go out with my daughter. It’s like walking around with an elephant. People stare daggers and wonder how I let it happen!” Honestly, who has not looked at obese people with feelings of disgust, anger, and maybe even aggression?
Discover what lies behind the daunting angst of morbid obesity
No one chooses to be fat. Many morbidly obese adults and children would willingly give a hand or foot to reduce their body size. Yet they continue to devour endlessly. What is behind this insatiable hunger? Readers will be stunned by chilling, real-life stories of unhappy family relations, violent divorce, injury, and life-changing loss, all intertwined with the unremitting struggle to fit into the right size. This is a rare document that reveals a different perspective on the urge to eat oneself to death. It is also a valuable tool for practitioners and is included in many Israeli academic institutions as compulsory reading in the study of eating disorders.
Leave Me Alone is a powerful book, and one that, at least for me, strikes closely to home. As a child, I was overweight – not obese, but overweight, and weight struggles have continued to haunt me ever since, even until this very day. Of my female friends, about 90% is on diet. Dieting, losing weight, obesity, it’s something we see every day and deal with on a daily basis as well. Now, it’s no longer sufficient to go to work for eight hours a day to make a living – you also have to combine this with a healthly lifestyle and diet, regular workouts, and so on.
Yet, as the author describes in this book, no one chooses to be obese. Even people who binge on food, who devour so much food it’s no longer healthy, they don’t do it by choice. They do it because something stronger than themselves is making them do it. Unsolved family traumas, troubling relationships, stress, you name it.
An interesting book, and one that I would recommend to everyone who struggles with obesity, has struggled with it as some point, or just genuinely wants to understand why some people are compelled to eat, even if it’s not healthy for them, or for people who are or know someone who is struggling with an eating disorder in general.
