Clean Comfort - Stacey Morris

This cookbook-memoir tells the story of the author's rocky relationship with food, how the dieting hamster wheel ballooned her weight to 345 pounds, and how she ultimately made her way back to balance and sanity - while loving food. It was when Morris finally made peace with herself, healed her inner wounds, and accepted she was a dyed-in-the-wool food lover that she was finally able to release herself from the dieting-gluttony cycle and develop a non-adversarial relationship with food. The first part of the book is a memoir that recounts her early years surviving bullying at school and low self-esteem and how she used food as a salve to distract from unpleasant emotions such as sadness and anger. When she topped out at her highest weight at the age of 44, it was, ironically, a former professional wrestler who ultimately provided the Ivy-League-educated writer her ticket to salvation.