Today, I’m super excited to present my interview with fellow blogger and friend Karen Anderson of Before & After: A Real-Life Story. What I love about Karen and her blog is the honesty and authenticity. Karen always speaks from her heart and writes it like it is.

She recently published her book After (the Before & After): A real-life story of weight loss, weight gain and weightlessness through total self-acceptance. In it, she tells her story of going from a “weight-loss success story” to regaining half the weight to discovering the power of self-acceptance.

You can learn more about the book, including reading excerpts from it, here!

I just received my copy in the mail, and I think it’s stunning. Here’s a brief paragraph that struck me, where Karen explains “what this book is and what it isn’t”:

“It’s about working through the rough spots. It’s about what it’s like to take two steps forward and one step back, and then two steps back and one step forward, and how to be okay with that. And it’s ultimately about realizing that there is no such thing as a step back.”

Below, Karen talks about how she actually didn’t set out to write the book, what self-acceptance means to her, myths about weight loss and more!

By the way, Karen is generously giving away a copy of her book! Just leave any comment below (whether it’s a reaction to her interview or sharing your own story), and I’ll randomly select the winner. The giveaway ends Sunday at midnight eastern time! I’ll announce the winner on Monday.

Mondays can be rough for many of us, and this doesn’t create the ideal environment for building a better body image. To help you turn that around, every Monday features a tip, activity, inspiring quote or some other tidbit to help boost your body image – and kick-start the week on a positive note.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky at gmail dot com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. I’d love to hear from you!

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I’ve talked before about body image being so much more than falling in love with your physique or face. (See here, here and here.)

I believe that it’s falling in love with yourself.

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Dear Self,

Your whole life you’ve been hard on yourself and set sky-high expectations, whether it was academics or appearance.

You rarely felt good enough.

Sure, sometimes you were super confident or felt pretty or smart. But deep down in your core, for some reason, you didn’t feel worthy.

You let others walk all over you, even when they were supposedly your friends or significant others. It was excruciating for you to stand up to someone else.

You yearned to be everyone but you, compared yourself constantly to people you thought were better, prettier and more intelligent.

Here’s part two of my interview with Sunny Sea Gold, author of the blog HealthyGirl.org and the newly released book Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings.

Like I said yesterday, I highly recommend this book, because it provides accurate info about binge eating disorder (BED), shatters the stigma, debunks common myths, features interviews with women who’ve recovered and experts in the eating disorder field and offers recovery tools. It’s also very honest and hopeful.

Yesterday, in part one, we talked about BED myths, what helped Sunny recover and the hardest thing about writing Food: The Good Girl’s Drug. (Check it out here!)

In part two below, Sunny discusses how she was able to overcome her insecurities and perfectionism, her take on working in the magazine industry, what recovery means to her and more!

Binge eating disorder (BED) is a topic that’s rarely talked about. Not only that, but there are so many myths and so much stigma attached to this serious disorder.

That’s why I’m thrilled to present today’s interview with Sunny Sea Gold. Sunny is the author of the recently published (just yesterday!) book Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings. She’s not only written a fantastic book, but she also shatters the stigma surrounding BED.

The book is half memoir, half self help. In it, Sunny shares her struggles with and recovery from binge eating disorder. Plus, she busts a lot of pervasive myths, provides accurate info about BED and offers a variety of tools for recovery.

She also features interviews with other women who’ve struggled with BED and experts who provide insight into the disorder.

I’ve read the book and highly recommend it. (Check out my review of it here.) It’s powerful, accurate, well-written, incredibly relatable and inspiring.

Sunny also writes the blog Healthy Girl, which has become an entire website with resources on disordered eating and body image; and serves as deputy editor at Redbook magazine.

In part one of our interview, Sunny talks about BED myths, what helped her recover, the toughest thing about writing Food: The Good Girl’s Drug and more!

If you’d like to learn more about Sunny’s story, check out her video. Also, check out the trailer for her book. (It’s powerful.)

Mondays can be rough for many of us, and this doesn’t create the ideal environment for building a better body image. To help you turn that around, every Monday features a tip, activity, inspiring quote or some other tidbit to help boost your body image – and kick-start the week on a positive note.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky at gmail dot com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. I’d love to hear from you!

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Last week, we talked about the things that seem to override our positive body image, such as: unsupportive family or friends, people who fat talk, social settings where we don’t know anyone or going to the beach or gym.

Today, let’s talk about the things that make you feel great about your body and yourself.

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The night I wrote yesterday’s post, it stayed with me. In fact, I was lying in bed, still pondering.

My positive body image remains so in certain situations. But in others, it shatters.

Why?

I think it’s because for some of us, negative body image isn’t universal. That is, it’s not a one-size-fits-all thing that applies to all situations.