Nine Months Till Baby or Hunger Pains

Nine Months Till Baby: The Comprehensive Month-By-Month Planner & Resource for Expectant Parents: The Essential Guide for Your Preganancy

Author: Marguerite Smolen

A comprehensive planner that includes important information on what to expect during each month of pregnancy. From the same team that created the incredibly successful The Bride's Year Ahead, this gorgeous book includes nine section tabs in a month-by- month countdown format. Features include pockets, a resealable secure pouch, room for notes and lots of charts and planning tools.

Go to: Is There a Nutmeg in the House or Best Food Writing 2003

Hunger Pains

Author: Mary Pipher

We live in an appearance-obsessed culture. Fashion ads, magazine covers, TV shows, and movies idealize a body type that is impossible for most real women to achieve. In this comforting, liberating book, Dr. Mary Pipher, bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, offers advice, counsel, and practical solutions for understanding our needs, our fears, and our many hungers. She shows us how we can at last learn to live at peace with the natural differences in our bodies and appetites.

The rates of anorexia, bulimia, and depression for women are the highest they have ever been, and begin at ever younger ages. Dr. Pipher reveals how society encourages our misery and prevents us from accepting our looks. Indeed, for many women the humiliation of overweight or obesity is a wound that never heals. Dr. Pipher reminds us that accepting our bodies the way they are is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

VOYA

Pipher has done women of all ages a great service by writing a book that clearly explains eating disorders, offers suggestions for help, and gets to the heart of the causes of these problems. Chapters on such subjects as bulimia, anorexia, obesity, and diets are written in a clear, concise manner. The author covers each topic thoroughly and offers excellent advice and tips at the end of most chapters. Among tips for those struggling with anorexia: "Don't diet, skip meals, or weigh youself. Avoid magazines, TV shows, or exercise classes that focus on the importance of being thin." One suggestion for feeling good about your body is to "break the habit of comparing yourself to others in terms of appearance." The reader also encounters many eye-opening statistics that contribute greatly to this thought-provoking, compelling book. For example, the ratio of women to men with eating disorders is fifty to one, and ninety percent of all women overestimate their own body size. Most important, Pipher offers profound insight into the pressures of women to be thin in a culture where "the cost of being overweight is social suicide." Many problems stem from a society prone to lookism, including, says Pipher, the stereotyping of individuals on the basis of their appearance." Media depictions of women and commercial ads focus on extremely thin women, thus exacerbating the lookism problem. Reading Hunger Pains is an enlightening experience. This book raises the consciousness about cultural icons and media messages for females; it also reveals a great deal about women's self-images. Pipher is an advocate for women's wellness and positive cultural change; hers is a voice that should be heeded. Women of all ages would benefit greatly from the information contained in this well-written book. Further Reading. VOYA Codes: 5Q 2P M J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written, For the YA with a special interest in the subject, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).