Lori Brand transitioned from a celebrated career in the fitness industry to advocating for strength and self-love. She went from gymnast and model to fitness writer turned novelist of Bodies To Die For.

"I first encountered Diet Culture in fourth grade, when my dance instructor, in an effort to lose weight, had her jaw wired shut. Since then, I’ve steeped in it as a gymnast, stripper, Playboy model, bodybuilder, and group fitness/spinning/yoga instructor. I’ve felt it as a new mother in the pressure to “bounce back.” Even as an engineer, I’ve heard it in my colleagues’ voices: Do I look fat in this? Is dairy bad?

In January 2020, Jillian Michaels was interviewed on BuzzFeed News. When the subject of Lizzo as a body acceptance role model came up, Jillian said, “Why are we celebrating her body? Why does it matter? Why aren’t we celebrating her music? Cause it isn’t going to be awesome if she gets diabetes.” And social media blew-up. The HAES camp accused Jillian of fat phobia disguised as health concern. The Wellness camp said that we needed to stop normalizing obesity.

Then in May, Adele posted a birthday picture of herself to Instagram, and it was clear that she had lost a significant amount of weight. Immediately HAES zealots criticized her weight loss. People were “hurt” and “disappointed” in her smaller size (as if she owed them her body). They wrote that celebrating her weight loss was akin to saying that there was something wrong with her before. Later, Adele would explain–though why should she have to?—that she had been going through a challenging time, and that exercise helped her deal with it. That it was never so much about shrinking, as about getting strong, both physically and mentally. And that is something to celebrate.

The social media backlash against both Jillian and Adele struck me. How what started as a desire to make the world better–through wellness or body acceptance—could be twisted into making it worse. I wanted to probe that, and BODIES TO DIE FOR was born.

Once I finished BODIES TO DIE FOR and started talking about it, so many people told me their own Diet Culture horror stories. Fat or thin, young or old, we’ve all been impacted by it.

And that’s why I’ve dedicated this book to all women everywhere, and why it has the ending that it does. I truly believe that we are all sisters. That we need to quit fighting and judging each other. We are responsible for the world that we are bringing our daughters into. What sort of place do we want it to be? Strong women lift each other up."

FOR MORE: https://www.loribrandwrites.com/