Eating is presented as a form of self-care, and the author encouraged mindful eating. The author advocates for a very different approach from dieting and trying to target fatness instead, she advocates for getting in touch with your body and improving your relationship with food. She described the attitude among the dominant culture that people of colour are “just so hopelessly not white that they struggle to fully adopt Whole Foods as the solution to all their problems.” That made me laugh, but I think that the “Whole Foods is the answer” kind of attitude also feeds into other problems like orthorexia.īinge eating and the use of food to self-soothe are framed as stress responses to the disease of systemic oppression. The book also addresses the moralization of fatness and the way health disparities in communities of colour get blamed on the “obesity crisis” and people’s health behaviours. The author calls out diet culture, laying out reasons why “dieting should be avoided like the plague.” She explains the harms that dieting can cause, and addresses the issue of predatory marketing and the role of the almighty dollar in driving the diet industry. The author characterized systemic oppression as a “deadly preexisting condition.” The book begins by addressing the significant negative health effects of stress related to racism, oppression, and being regularly faced with microaggressions. And I’m anti-diet culture, and I thought the author had a great perspective on that. While I’m not a member of the book’s intended audience, I was interested in the idea of wellness through a social justice lens, plus I like to spread the word about resources for marginalized groups. The author, who identifies as a genderqueer, pansexual person of colour, wrote this book to fill a gap in resources on body positivity and food freedom for people with marginalized identities. Decolonizing Wellness by dietitian Dalia Kinsey aims to help QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) folks reject diet culture and restrictive ideas about bodies and food in order to achieve greater self-love and self-acceptance.

Decolonizing Wellness by Dalia Kinsey