A gift that keeps on giving
Some words about our workbook
Almost 2 years ago, we teamed up to write this workbook. I (Rachel) had the idea to write a body image workbook because in full transparency, I didn’t like the ones on the market already and I needed a resource to recommend to my therapy clients who were in recovery from disordered eating / eating disorders. But writing a workbook alone felt like a massive undertaking (and a scary one). So I started thinking about co-authors. I had just met Mimi (virtually) because we happened to be interviewed on the same podcast, the Food Freedom Podcast, and I was really drawn to her. I just had a gut feeling that she was a really phenomenal human and a brilliant thinker and writer. So I reached out, asked her if she wanted to write a workbook with me, and hoped she’d say yes.
Which she did! So we started writing. And writing and writing…entirely over Zoom. The entire making of this workbook was done virtually because we lived in two different cities. We met on most Sundays (#sundaysonzoom) for most of 2021. Not only did we write all the content but we also designed it along the way. Thank you, Canva and Miranda “Miri” Campbell (the designer) for laying a rad foundation for us. When we got stuck on a concept or a section or were procrastinating writing a harder section, we’d explore fonts and colors, shapes and styles. Despite neither of us having experience in graphic design, we created something beautiful (it just took many, many hours).
In December of 2021, we self-published on Amazon. Around this same time, Mimi was (*write what you were doing in Utah) and Rachel had just found out she was pregnant. Life happened and marketing and promoting our workbook just got lost in the shuffle. Self-promotion is awkward. But then something really nutty happened. We kept finding out that our book was selling. To date, we’ve sold about 700 copies of the workbook with very minimal marketing.
What’s in the book?
So what’s even in this workbook? The workbook content is broken up into 3 sections: educational content, therapeutic skills, and additional resources. In the first part, we unpack concepts like your nervous system, diet culture, body image, movement, and intuitive eating. In the second part, we offer 20+ therapy skills to help people who are working towards having a more positive body image. These skills aren’t just a one-time-quick-fix but rather skills and tools that people can circle back to for repeated practice. Lastly, we added an additional resources page with some books and podcasts for people who are wanting to take a deeper dive into some of these concepts.
Buy the book (for you and a friend)!
The holiday season is among us and tis’ the season for gift-giving (and buying stuff for yourself). If you want to give a gift that will keep on giving, why not gift our body image workbook?! You might be thinking– that’s a weird gift…what message am I sending to the person who I’m giving this to? I don’t want to “push” something on a friend (who I know might really benefit from this resource)! Yeah, that could be awkward but here are some ideas for you!
If you know that you have a friend who is struggling with an eating disorder/disordered eating and is actively in recovery, you could totally gift it to them and write a kind note saying something like, “You’re amazing. I heard about this workbook and I thought it might be something to help you along your healing journey! Here for you always!”
You could buy one for yourself and one for a friend and you guys could go through it together! We don’t heal in isolation and having someone else going through the workbook too would be a really neat way to absorb the content better, too. We tend to learn better when we have the opportunity to talk about what we’re learning.
There are really exciting things coming (hint: second edition).
Part of why we wanted to start this Substack is because we wanted to be able to keep people up to date on some exciting developments that are happening with the book. We can’t share everything yet but we have some exciting news that we’ll be able to share in the coming weeks and we want you and your friends to know about it! So we hope you’ll subscribe and tell your friends to subscribe, too!
If you already bought the workbook, we want to know A) How you found it and B) if you like it
But really– who are these 700 people who bought our book?! We really do want to know! And we want to know what you think about it, how it’s helped you, and what you want to know more about. We love the feedback we’ve gotten so far (we’ll share some of that in another post) and we’re excited for what is to come!