Forever Beloved

About the book:

All her life, Andie Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her confidant, and it provided a refuge from her fractured family. But when she stepped on the scale on her twentieth birthday and it registered a shocking 268 pounds, she knew she had to change the way she thought about food and herself; that her life was at stake.

It Was Me All Along takes Andie from working class Boston to the romantic streets of Rome, from morbidly obese to half her size, from seeking comfort in anything that came cream-filled and two-to-a-pack to finding balance in exquisite (but modest) bowls of handmade pasta. This story is about much more than a woman who loves food and abhors her body. It is about someone who made changes when her situation seemed too far gone and how she discovered balance in an off-kilter world. More than anything, though, it is the story of her finding beauty in acceptance and learning to love all parts of herself.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ll know my journey hasn’t been an easy one.  From losing nearly 100 lbs. to gaining quite a bit back during years of sickness.  When someone speaks of the sadness that comes from being overweight, I get it.  And not just like I kinda get it, like I totally deep down in my soul get it.   When I saw this book up for review, I was so excited to get it and read about someone else’s journey.

Andi grew up with an overworked mother who nurtured through food and a detached alcoholic father who died while she was still young. Definitely not an easy life for a young girl to lead. I thought she was completely genuine and sincere with her readers in her detailed description of her experiences – she has a big heart.

Andi does lose the weight, losing more than 130 pounds. She ends up becoming obsessed with food, developing obsessions over eating the right, healthy food, before she makes peace with herself and finding balance.

WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group provided this book to me for free in exchange for this honest review as part of their Blogging for Books program.