Body Con: A Memoir of Losing, Gaining, and Unraveling Diet Culture
What happens when the pursuit of health becomes the greatest harm?
Allie’s body can’t be trusted. At least, that’s what she believes.
Her brain insists she's not thin enough. Her breasts, if anything like her mother’s, will kill her before she turns fifty. Her heart has started to flutter beneath her rib cage. And her period has long disappeared.
After years of watching her mother's body deteriorate, Allie is left navigating grief and the terrifying prospect of adulthood without her guidance. Desperate for reassurance, she turns to the promises of wellness culture: the right diet, the right habits, the right body. By following its rules, Allie attempts to fix the one thing that failed her mom.
But the harder she tries to protect herself, the more her body pushes back. The behaviors she's taught to celebrate begin to backfire, while her attempts to seek help are dismissed, ignored, or misunderstood. What begins as self-care spirals into a life-threatening eating disorder.
BODY CON: A Memoir of Losing, Gaining, and Escaping Diet Culture is an intimate exploration of grief, recovery, and the cultural forces that teach us to mistrust our bodies. It’s a story about what happens when the pursuit of health becomes harmful, and how to question everything we’ve been taught about self-worth.
About the Author
Allie Moore is a writer and advocate whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, CBS News, and The Mighty. She is the founder of Recovery Writes, a community for people who write through recovery, and has advocated for eating disorder awareness and access to care on Capitol Hill. Moore is the recipient of the Eating Disorders Coalition’s inaugural Voices of Advocacy Award for her writing about social media’s influence on body image.
BODY CON is her debut memoir.
Early Praise for BODY CON
“In this visceral and honest account, Moore narrates her journey from sickness into recovery in clear, lucid prose. BODY CON is a smart and moving indictment of the false promises of diet culture.”
— Anna Rollins, author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl
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