You Are Enough; How to love the skin you're in & embrace your awesomeness.
Dates read: 11/04/2024 to 12/04/2024
Word to describe: Uplifting
Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Non-fiction / self care
Every so often you come across a book that is so beautifully illustrated and is filled with heart and soul to the brim that it emits love from the pages. Harri Rose has poured herself into this book, has taught readers to treasure their bodies and has indefinitely taught me to love my body. When I picked up this book I had had this niggly feeling in the back of my mind. My body appreciation was not there and I had already begun to plan out my next few days of eating salads and going to the gym. (Note: nothing wrong with this but for me a weeks worth of just salad? No thanks, this girl likes her carbs). And, basically, I had already started that spiral into I need to lose weight because I am disgustingly large.
I'm a UK 14/16. On the chunky side, with the scales telling me I am obese, (thanks to the doctor who invented BMI's), and just like everyone else sometimes that damn dress just does not fit over my lumps and bumps. I eat terribly, but I enjoy what I eat. Crisps are my Achilles heel, alongside anything that has been covered in salt. The more salty the better. So you can understand, that after eating a few too many family share bags of crisps how the inevitable disgust can sink in. It's a cycle, one I have known closely since a young age. My first diet was at 15 and I was a size 8! I had no boobs and no lumpy bumpy stomach either but I had convinced myself I was fat. The reason I am telling you all of this? Because earlier this week that disgust came back an I decided enough was enough. This little book made it all worth while.
With books (or articles or YouTube videos) that talk about weight and eating there will always be that sense of hesitancy. Do I really want to read another book that focuses on calorie counting, 5 days a week at the gym and self-care days with bubble baths and a face mask or two? My point being that there is a ton of information out there, and plenty of it recycles the same topic over and over again. Being fat is the enemy and being skinny is the utmost desirable. They tell you to go to the gym and eat salad bowls filled with quinoa, avocado and kale (okay those foods are pretty good but you get my point!). The articles will tell you that curvy is another way of embracing being fat and we all know fat is bad. And then on the next page they'll be yelling that curvy is in and we should all get Brazilian butt lifts. Women need to be curvy and skinny, men should be tall with a ton of muscles the more the better.
I'm getting ahead of myself here, but in essence this book is nothing like anything you will have read before. There is no hate and no pressure to change who you are to appease the worlds sense of western beauty. There are no lists of bad food, no exercise recommendations to have an ass like a Kardashian, and there is no mention of BMI (thank the lord! Seriously, screw that doctor). Harri Rose has created something special, she turned the world of diets into a book on self love and acceptance. Being fat is okay, being skinny is okay. Eating 5 bars of chocolate is okay and so is eating none. Harri Rose focuses all of her energy on reminding her readers that self love is for all shapes and sizes. There is no information overload as she perfectly takes all of the resources and condenses into a delightfully colourful book. Teamed with illustrations of all shapes, sizes, and colour the words in this book are gently encouraging and they do the job.
So, in short, screw the diets eat the chocolate and dance a little. It's a fat world. Let's enjoy it.
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