A heartbreakingly honest, endearing memoir of incredible weight loss by a young food blogger who battles body image issues and overcomes food addiction to find self-acceptance.
All her life, Andie Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her confidant, and it provided a refuge from her fractured family. But when she stepped on the scale on her twentieth birthday and it registered a shocking 268 pounds, she knew she had to change the way she thought about food and herself; that her life was at stake.
It Was Me All Along takes Andie from working class Boston to the romantic streets of Rome, from morbidly obese to half her size, from seeking comfort in anything that came cream-filled and two-to-a-pack to finding balance in exquisite (but modest) bowls of handmade pasta. This story is about much more than a woman who loves food and abhors her body. It is about someone who made changes when her situation seemed too far gone and how she discovered balance in an off-kilter world. More than anything, though, it is the story of her finding beauty in acceptance and learning to love all parts of herself.
My Review:
If you have ever struggled with weight, or loved someone who has struggled with weight, then you need to read this book. I don't say that lightly. It took me 3 months to finish this book, which is a long time for me since I can devour a book in a week if I so choose. Mitchell's total honesty struck home with me in so many ways and forced me to stop and take a look at my own journey. Many times it was just to much and I put the book down and walked away. I didn't want to read about someone else who was turning to food for comfort, who was hurt by insensitive comments, or who saw weight loss as a battle of numbers. It was convicting. And yet each time I set the book down I knew that I would be back, that I needed to know how it all worked out for her, how she managed to be a food blogger after struggling with weight for most of her life.
It is the story of one woman's mission to find herself rather than identify herself by the number on the scale. To accept who she is and what she looks like-fat or thin. And it is a story I hope to one day be able to write myself-not in a published book, but to finally be able to write that last page and be able to say that food and my weight no longer define me. Mitchell reminds us that it is possible to reach that point if we are willing to work through the things that brought us to where we currently are. She is honest about the difficulties, the set backs and the successes and that is what I love about this book.
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