You Are Not a Before Picture

I really, really enjoyed this book! It was uplifting, teaches about self confidence, and was exactly what I needed.

Wow, I am blown away by the level of detail author Alex Light put into this text. I feel so seen by many of the experiences she shared and greatly enjoyed the way it felt like we were having a conversation over coffee. Light focused on all bodies rather than solely that of her own identity, which goes beyond what many other authors are doing. This text includes a lot of current trends, buzzwords, and connects well with current social media movements. Rather than basing much of the work on her own experiences, she brings in strong voices of professionals in the margins to enhance access to the book. I will happily be sharing this with my friends upon publication!

You are Not a Before Picture: How to Finally Make Peace with Your Body, for Good by Alex Light

As someone who has struggled with body image and disordered eating, I found this book to be a welcome resource. In the first half of the book, Light has provided a concise and accurate primer on diet culture, its origins and iterations, its lies and harm. From a very young age, we are all recipients of diet culture’s messaging, which has only become more powerful with the advent of social media. With awareness of diet culture and its pervasiveness, readers can see that they, and their bodies, are NOT the problem. Just knowing that isn’t enough unfortunately, which is where the second half of the book comes to the rescue. Here, Light explains how to improve our negative perceptions of ourselves, steps to take away from dieting and toward intuitive eating and how to find joy in exercise again.

Light uses many resources to back up each and every chapter of this book. She gives examples from her own life and lives of others, points to recommended reading, and provides Instagram handles to follow for continued encouragement. This book is incredibly readable and each chapter offers something complete and helpful on its own. There was something that I could relate to on just about every page and the second half of the book provides real, actionable steps. Light is also careful to mention her privilege as a straight-sized white woman with access to mental health care and brings in diverse voices.

I love the design of the book as well and hope to get my hands on a physical copy as soon as possible. Throughout, quotes are pulled out from the text and displayed in pink boxes. They are almost all quotes that I picked out to highlight myself. There are also minimalist illustrations of bodies by Louise Evans that I absolutely adored. With so many of them, I thought “That looks like me! And it’s so beautiful!” They are a perfect accompaniment to Light’s message in this book.

In the final chapter, Light says, “[Life’s] too short to live as a ‘before’ picture. You are not a ‘before’ picture…We are living, breathing, multi-faceted, talented human beings whose true beauty cannot be captured in a picture…Our bodies are merely the vessels that hold all the good stuff.”

Thank you to @netgalley and @harper360 for the ARC.

This is a must-have resource to help one improve mental health, resiliency, and live a more full and happy life. It is full of great strategies, advice, and easy to implement ideas. This is one I'll return to again and again. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

A great book! While I couldn’t relate to all of it, the author herself acknowledges that you don’t have to relate to every chapter and that some will stand out to yourself more than others - and that’s what happened here for me. It was a positive book and I very much so enjoyed reading it.

Every single woman needs a copy of this book. I have followed Alex for a few years and absolutely love her page. This book was incredible and exactly what I needed to hear. She did an amazing job with this book!

As someone who is currently working on body acceptance, I was excited to read this book. It was well-written and I liked the tone. I think many women will be helped by it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC! This was a really neat book. I enjoyed reading it and I learned a lot while reading this. The little call-outs in each chapter were nice and good reminders of how to start thinking about your body and self in a better light. I also really liked how the author talked about the history and culture of the ideal body, and also the author's own experiences with her body. I loved the emphasis on intuitive eating rather than dieting or restricting and that was really nice to see.

You Are Not a Before Picture: How to Finally Make Peace With Your Body For Good by Alex Light

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

TW: eating disorders, weight stigma

Body confidence, beauty, and fashion blogger summarized the critical themes of what keeps many individuals entrenched in body shame, eating disordered behavior, dieting, and at odds with their bodies. This book delves into both the facets of body image and intuitive eating, highlighting how diet culture developed, sustains, and wreaks havoc on our well being. This books balances personal accounts of tackling weight stigma, disordered eating, and body image with facts and information from research in a consumable, relatable manner. It is easy to read without weight of statistics and research findings some nonfiction books contain. This is must read content for women looking to expand the understanding of the anti diet world or who may simply be open to healing their relationship with their body. Dive in and share so we can keep pushing back on diet culture with shared knowledge!

Mode: 📱thank you to NetGalley and Harper 360 for allowing me to review and advanced copy e book in exchange for this review.

“We are living, breathing, multi-faceted, talented human beings whose true beauty cannot be captured in a picture.”

A helpful read for anyone who has ever dealt with body image insecurities. Alex Light has done extensive research on this topic. Most illuminating was the look at diet culture, its origin, and why it achieves the opposite of what it intends to. Look no further than the Minnesota Starvation Experiment to learn why diets are not effective. In fact, they are harmful. This book also discusses how diet culture has racist and sexist undertones as well.

The latter part of the book is an advice guide on liberating yourself from this insidious diet culture. At times, the content felt repetitive, but I also think it should be. The author’s intention was to drive the message home in as many ways as possible and help it resonate with as many people as possible. As someone who has encountered many of the issues faced in this book, I found it to be a validating and insightful read. I will be following Alex Light on social media so that I can continue to benefit from her journey and influence.

I have followed Alex Light on Instagram for quite a while now, so I was absolutely thrilled when she announced she wrote a book. I'm happy to say her book did not disappoint. If you are like me and grew up believing you had to be everything society deemed acceptable in order to be worthy of living life, than this book is for you. Alex does a fantastic job at talking through all the nonsense we prescribe to from the dieting world, society, social media, even the health industry, and how you can find your own way to being your true authentic self at the size you are now, with your body exactly as it is right now. I found this book and Alex's story empowering. She shares a lot of great advice and lists many resources to continue your journey to being your authentic self.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper 360, HQ for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. I learned so much from this book!

As a woman reading this, I feel empowered. Having the author acknowledge that toxic thinking is hard to shut off after years of listening to what media tells us is desirable and ideal and what society has ingrained into us about gender norms, I found this book to be refreshing in its honesty of acknowledging the main issue that prevents us, as women, from moving into a positive headspace. I particularly like the formula of: acknowledge, explain, dissect; it appealed to the academic in me and as a reader, it was nice to have a familiar pattern that gave me time to stop and reflect before moving on. All in all, I highly recommend this book to any and all.

Here’s the sneaky thing about dieting and the human experience of having a body — we want to believe there is a way to fix how our bodies look and feel. We tell ourselves if we find the right diet, the right gym, the right clothing, there will be a day when we look in the mirror and think “Perfect. Flawless. No notes.”

Of course, that’s not how a journey to acceptance and comfort in one’s own skin happens. I was reminded of this fact as I read Alex Light’s “You Are Not a Before Picture: How to Finally Make Peace with Your Body, for Good“ (out Aug. 16). As a former beauty editor at the UK’s Hello! magazine and a woman with a history of eating disorders, Light has written a frank, comforting book. And if I’m being honest, I was kind of dreading this one. After a year and change of reading self-help books and writing this column, the idea of yet another cis white woman influencer getting a book deal to tell me to love myself starts to feel . . . tiring.
The cover of "You Are Not a Before Picture," by Alex Light.
The cover of "You Are Not a Before Picture," by Alex Light.Handout
Get The Big To-Do
Your guide to staying entertained, from live shows and outdoor fun to the newest in museums, movies, TV, books, dining, and more.
Enter Email

Fortunately, Light has done her homework. I think I was expecting a very general, surface level “You go girl!” kind of book, and I was pleased to discover there’s much more here than that. The book starts with an introduction to the concept of diet culture, which is, in Light’s words “a set of beliefs that puts thinness, shape, and size above all else and equates it with health, success, happiness, and moral virtue.” She traces the word diet throughout history, and talks about the ways specific body types were favored in different parts of the world at different times. I found it particularly gratifying that Light, now a social media influencer, took the time to delineate how diet culture is a way of controlling women’s bodies, and that there was (and still is) racism embedded in the idea of what an “ideal” body looks like. “Fatness was more identifiable in Blackness, therefore thinness was seen as more ‘evolved’ and ultimately more desired,” she writes.

Light includes ways for the reader to think about how they’ve been conditioned by diet culture, and offers tips and thought starters around things like the accounts we follow on social media. She asks us to really notice what we’re engaging with. And because she is deeply aware of the ways we’ve been trained to think of beauty as white, straight, and cis, she asks the reader to actively seek out content from people who are marginalized. “Being exposed to a range of bodies reminds us how varied, different, and beautiful the human race is.”

I love a book that not only gives me information, but provides a framework for how and when to use it. As a woman on the Internet who writes about bodies, Light is no stranger to trolling, whether that be straight up nasty comments or what is known as “concern trolling” — comments that are disguised as concern for your health. She offers ways to combat those responses, as well as a reminder that sometimes, the best medicine is to simply walk away from social media. Light wraps up on a hopeful but realistic note, reminding all of us that the journey to acceptance of our own bodies is a long road. “I believe these little lapses are critical to our progress: they are where we gather more tools with which to arm ourselves, so we come back stronger.”

Thank you to NetGalley, Alex Light, and HarperCollins 360/HQ for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.

I needed this book in my life. I still need this book in my life. I will be reading and rereading this book, either in part or in whole throughout the year, especially around the holidays where food is aplenty and shame abounds. As someone who struggles with disordered eating, has struggled with my weight my entire life due to health issues out of my control, and works in the mental health field, this book is so incredibly necessary.

This book breaks down diet culture, fatphobia, racism, the historical contexts surrounding weight loss/gain, and the socioeconomic factors that rule this entire system. I knew some of this (like the fact that BMI is *incredibly* racist and built on white male's body weights) but I didn't know so much of the other racism that is ingrained into diet culture that is mentioned. Alex does a great job backing up everything she says with either research or news articles or anecdotes. There is so much packed into this book that I don't think I can adequately express how much great content is in this and how necessary it is to read.

I also listened to the audiobook of this book and it is read by Alex - and is done phenomenally. If you can't read books, try listening to it. This book really helps with breaking down diet culture, why the "body positivity" movement isn't necessarily great, but finding food freedom is.

I am so grateful I got to read this book and I will be rereading it during the holidays for sure. 10/5

Good book that covers a typic that needs to be addressed more for women. Loved the way the author wrote and the voice used.