Reclaiming Body Trust: Break Free from a Culture of Body Perfection, Disordered Eating, and Other Traumas

by Hilary Kinavey MS LPC, Dana Sturtevant

Now in paperback. A holistic and powerful framework for accepting and liberating our bodies, and ourselves.

“Essential reading for anyone who has struggled to feel at home in their body or to conform their body to external standards.”
—Savala Nolan, author of Don’t Let It Get You Down

Have you ever felt uncomfortable or not “at home” in your body? In this book, the founders of Body Trust, therapist Hilary Kinavey and dietitian Dana Sturtevant, invite readers to break free from the status quo and reject a culture that has taken advantage and profited from trauma, stigma, and disembodiment, and reclaim and embrace their bodies. Informed by the personal body stories of the hundreds of people they have worked with, Reclaiming Body Trust delineates an intersectional, social justice−orientated path to healing in three The Rupture, The Reckoning, and The Reclamation. Throughout, readers will be anchored by the authors’ revolutionary Body Trust framework to discover a pathway out of a rigid, mechanistic way of thinking about the body and into a more authentic, sustainable way to occupy and nurture our bodies.

320 pages, Paperback

Published February 13, 2024

Reviews

[Lisa Fry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very helpful book. It touched on a lot of the areas I am in the process of healing.

[Elisa Harth-Bedoya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recently diagnosed with Anorexia and Orthorexia nervosa. I bought this book because i feel I really needed to be in-tune with words that can help me overcome hard times.

I would say some of the memoirs are a little triggering if you are currently struggling with an eating-disorder (it may be a hard part to read. I know these disorders are competitive), as someone who has been recovering for a couple of months I think it was nice to see that most of us are not alone in this. Loving your body for how it is is so hard but this book is really nice to give you tips especially it gives you some mental excersises to practice body positivity.

I think that there could've been some more encouragement in this book but, I'm not the author so of course, its not up to me.

Remember that everyone is beautiful and you deserve to live with peace!

[Heidi Schauster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm reading this with a therapeutic book club that I facilitate. It's an important book for those who are willing to take a deep dive into their food issues. I loved it, but I also have found that it can scare away those who are in the earlier parts of eating disorder recovery--those who aren't willing or ready to investigate the role that family and culture have had in their body stories. For someone who really wants to stop focusing on "fixing" their (not broken) body, this is a wonderful book.

[Anna Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I found this book to be a bit repetitive, I appreciate the message. It made me take a hard look at my beliefs about body image and diet culture. I will eat when I’m hungry and move because my body wants to move.

[Isabelle Gutierrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book that only added onto what I’ve learned so far in my recovery. I definitely got triggered throughout the book but I also highlighted sentences that resonated with me.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really helped me understand diet culture and respect my body more.

[Sabrina Schneider · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one just wasn’t for me. It felt superficial, and the first 40 pages went in circles without ever really addressing the main topic. I lost patience and ended up putting it down.