you are my sweetest downfall

40% of 9-10 year old girls have tried to lose weight, 78% of 17 year old girls are unhappy with their bodies¹, and 37% of the articles in teen magazines for girls are focused on their appearance². Maria Newfield, a woman who beat her own body image-related demons, publishes a book teaching radical self-acceptance to women everywhere.

July 2012, UK: Maria Newfield’s own experience of recovering from eating disorders inspired her to find out more about women and body image. When she learned some terrifying statistics about how women and girls view their bodies, she knew she had to take action. The book 19 Steps to Loving Your Body: A Confidence Guide for Women was the result.

During her research, Maria discovered that:

• The average woman in Britain worries about the size and shape of her body EVERY 15 MINUTES and only 2% say that they are happy with their body³;
• 80% of 10 year old children are afraid of being fat⁴
• Approximately 7 million girls and women in the US have an eating disorder⁵;
• More than 50% of 10 year old girls wish they were thinner⁶
• 95% of all dieters will regain their lost weight within 1-5 years⁷
• 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 25% will progress to partial or full syndrome eating disorder⁸

Maria Newfield learned that not only are the vast majority of women dissatisfied with their bodies, but that the diets they put themselves through are ineffectual and can be seriously damaging to health.

“As women, we are taught to hate our bodies. Then we diet and though we may initially lose weight, all the research shows that we gain the weight back. Dieting teaches us that our bodies are wrong, that we can’t trust our own hunger signals, and that we must deny ourselves. This is not good for women’s self-esteem, and it causes us to be preoccupied by hating ourselves. This has to stop!”.

In her book, 19 Steps to Loving Your Body: A Confidence Guide for Women, Maria Newfield describes, step by step, how to start loving our bodies, how to treat them well, and how to stop criticising ourselves, and others, for how we look.

The book is available for Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. A Kindle is not required to read the book – free Kindle software is available for PCs, Macs, phones and tablets.

Notes to Editors:

For further information, visit www.MariaNewfield.co.uk and check out the Love Your Body Tumblr.

To contact the author, email maria@marianewfield.co.uk

To download a full media kit for this book launch, visit http://www.marianewfield.co.uk/mediakit

Thin privilege is being able to reveal your invisible disability in public without people assuming you are disabled because of your body shape.

Thin privilege means not having to forge on through pain and sickness because you are too ashamed to reveal that you have an invisible disability.

Thin privilege is knowing that people are not assuming that you choose to be disabled.

Thin privilege means never having angry people accuse you of not having a real disability.

Thin privilege means not having people deny you use of a wheelchair because they are only for ‘real disabled people’, roll their eyes or mutter loudly if you use a mobility aid in public, or yell at/threaten you when you use facilities for disabled people because ‘if you weren’t fat and lazy you wouldn’t need this!’

Thin privilege means finding a wheelchair that you can fit into.

Thin privilege means never having your nearest and dearest delicately suggest that your disability might be made worse by your size, even though they already know a) it wasn’t caused by your size in the first place, b) your disability makes it practically impossible to lose weight, even temporarily.

Thin privilege means not having medical people refuse treatment for your non-weight-related disability because your inability to lose weight makes them brand you as ‘non-compliant’.