Overweight

I gotta admit, I put the book one the shelf for a month after I received it. After all, I'm not a fat woman and that's the target audience, right? Wrong! (about the target audience). This turned out to be a delightful book. It is a must read for anyone with a sense of humor no matter if you're fat, thin, male, female, whatever! Pepper has taken the time to encourage people to "draw outside the lines". She points out the often overlooked fact that it's style that counts, not what your scale says. I like the fact that she is so damn comfortable with herself and if and when she loses weight (which she is doing right now) it will be because SHE wants to and not because anyone else thinks she should. This book is a celebration, not of being fat, but of being valuable, eccentric, intelligent, and funny no matter what the package!

Childhood obesity is rising to epidemic levels in California. This report summarizes the causes and effects of childhood obesity. In addition, it includes findings from focus groups of children and parents that looked at what keeps children from leading a healthy lifestyle....

As parents of an overweight teenager, we were unsure how to help her without hurting her. After reading this book, we felt better informed about what to say and do, in practical terms. We also came to the realization that this issue is not our problem to solve. Our daughter "found" this book lying around. She read it herself and brought us discussion about her plans. We knew to "just listen" and let her own her own efforts. A teenager, unlike a young child, has to be in full control of their own body. We as parents have to provide the context for fitness and good health but the actual responsibilty lies with the teenager herself. Being a supporter without interfering can be like walking a tightrope. We used insight gained from reading this book to help keep us from falling off the tightrope. As a family, we have all made more of an effort to be healthier and more fit; and we are experiencing some positive changes in our household.

I found this book a good resouce for preliminary research into health problems. There is a very long list of various concerns; a chapter for each one, in alphabetical order. The chapters are brief, but have a lot of information. It is easy to read and uses personal anecdotes, which makes it reader friendly. There is enough information to figure out if that particular concern may be your problem. For a couple of the problems that relate to me, I am going to do further more indepth reseach elsewhere. This book gives a great start, as well as suggestions for help/possible remedies. I hope they keep the book up to date in future publications.

This is a great book that really helps the reader put food and spirit in line. I highly recommend it. In some parts she (the author) gets very spiritual (which is good) but it can be confusing so you have to focus. When I am feeling down sometimes I go to read it and later I find myself putting things in correct perspective. GREAT for those who have any type of self-esteem, image, or food issue.

I will be the first to admit that this book was not meant for rocket scientists to ponder over, but the reason for the book can not be dismissed. Plus-sized women have issues with self-esteem and this is reinforced by society's "size 8 or less is beautiful" viewpoint. So, if reading a book makes you smile by simply pointing out why big women are beautiful, what is the harm? I enjoyed the book because it demonstrated how wonderful it is to be full-figured. It won't be a classic novel, but it is a POSITIVE affirmation for full-figured women. Thanks Katie.

By the time I discovered this book, I had become pretty jaded on the issue of plus-sized books. Many were the same old thing: wear lots of black to make you look slimmer, drape that scarf the right way to make you look slimmer, wear your blush up and out to make you look slimmer. You know the drill. But Katie Arons's book was a somewhat fresh, fun, frolick. And for me, it was the first book I'd read that dealt with BBWs and dating/romance.

Though I was disappointed by the exclusion of larger BBWs, I still enjoyed reading this book. It's lighthearted and fun to read. Good for a quick boost to any BBW that's about to go out on the town or just thinking about it, Sexy at Any Size will come in handy.

I absolutely LOVED this book, and I read it twice. The author talks in detail about typical personality styles of plus size women and how to overcome those stereotypical facads and be a woman of confidence and size.

A GREAT READ for those coming into being plus sized, or lifetimers.

Thin is simply attractive due to the fact that what is scarce has more value. In a rich, prosperous, food-filled, modern society, food is not scarce, hence those who eat as though there were no tomorrow are seen as less attractive and unable to discipline themselves in terms of healthy diet and exercise. That more Americans are overweight in America is the problem in need of a book to cure, not a celebration of the rotund. I highly recommend Nancy Etcoff's "Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty" instead. Oh, and The Firm workout tapes are just fabulous.

A complex topic (fatness and size acceptance) is presented with a one-sided perspective, and worse, the book is boring. While some of these "facts" might be new to a few readers, mostly this is a rehashing of old data combined with her qualitative research and personal experiences. Every chapter ends with tips, and they all sound very similar. The chapter on the spiral of acceptance sounds very similar to the Stages of Change presented in the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change, but her suggestions for how to go through the processes are, again, very simplistic.

The idea that some weight loss for health can be appropriate is an anathema in this book.

Maybe an o.k. introduction, but if you are the least bit familiar with size acceptance, read elsewhere. (The best part of the book is it's cover.)

Yes, I'm speaking to you...You know who you are...

First of all, what right do you have to tell anyone else what is and is not attractive? What right does anybody? And how dare you question the health, happiness, and wellbeing of another person when you don't even know the person? Why are you even wasting our time with a "review" of a book you obviously didn't read?

Before I begin to let off more steam, let me take a deep cleansing breath and say: I pity you. Yes, Illinois Reader, I pity the fact that your ignorance and bigotry have not allowed you to find the beauty in people of ALL sizes. You will never know the comfort of true friendship and love, until you have learned to love and except the beauty within all of those around you, no matter what they look like. I also pity you because you obviously do not love yourself. Why else would someone with such an abhorrence of "the rotund" need to fulfill his (Or "her"? Nevermind, I really don't care) self-esteem by ATTEMPTING to sabotage the self-esteem of others? And finally, Illinois Reader, you should be pitied because you JUST DON'T GET IT! It's not about size or looks; it's about being happy with the person you are on the inside and the outside, and not allowing your judgement to be crippled by ignorant ... like yourself!

To everyone else who reads this, I'd like to conclude by saying that if you were in any way offended by the previous review, then that should be all the motivation you need to buy this and other size-accepting books. I would also like to recommend "Survival of the Prettiest" and "The Firm" workout tape.....They make a lovely bonfire! ^_~

The things I liked about this book:
1. It has a breezy, refreshing tone that keeps the book from getting bogged down in the science.
2. Fumento presents a lot of useful information in a straightforward way: eat more fiber, eat more vegetables, get some exercise. Simple concepts, but they can get lost with the latest fad diets.
3. He encourages personal accountability about a weight problem, not trying to blame other people.

The things I did NOT like about the book:
1. Fumento often adopts a condescending attitude toward the obese. In particular, he derides NAAFA and its president, Sally Smith.
2. He ridicules several books about the diet industry as having been written by fat people trying to justify their condition, then reaches the same conclusions their books do. In particular, Laura Fraser's book, Losing It, is mocked, then cited as a source a few chapters later!
3. The thing that bothered me the most about this book was its ending. Throughout most of the book, Fumento advocates taking charge of your own health, and using exercise and a healthy diet for weight control. However, in the last chapter, he discusses the benefits of phen/fen and ephedrine, even saying that he urged his friend to give ephedrine a try. Perhaps at the time the book was published, those drugs had not been proven as dangerous as they have now. However, pushing weight control drugs after spending hundreds of pages telling people that they can't blame anybody but themselves for their obesity is inconsistent. He writes that people can't blame genetics for obesity because obesity has skyrocketed in the US over the last 100 years, and genes can't change that fast. Well, if obesity wasn't such a problem back then, and all we're doing differently is eating more and exercising less, then why advocate using drugs to control your weight?

In conclusion, I would say that this book contains a lot of useful information, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're willing to live with the condescending attitude and sort through some bad information.

This is not a self-help book. You won't get your hand held ortold to accept yourself. You'll get a kick in the butt and told to dosomething. I don't agree with everything in this book, but Fumento is an extremely good writer, and presents plenty of facts to support most of his strong opinions. Michael Fumento does an excellent job on these accounts:
1 - Showing how the food industry perverted the low-fat recommendation into a fat-free and sugar-laden feeding frenzy. Anything in excess will make you fat.
2 - Showing that the "95% of dieter's regain their weight" is an exaggeration, doesn't clearly define "dieter," and encourages people to give up on controlling their weight.
3 - Showing how the diet industry takes advantage of people's wishes to lose weight without effort.
4 - Bringing us back to the basics: to lose weight you must eat well, and exercise; excess body fat is detrimental to your health; you CAN do something about it.
Here's where he doesn't do so well:
1 - Fumento makes the claim that most fat acceptance activists are extremely obese, like the folks in NAAFA who are 300-600 pounds. This isn't true in my experience. Many therapists who treat eating disorders believe in the tenants of FA. He labels books that discuss the dangers of dieting unnecessary, or show that large people can be fit as fat acceptance and equates fat acceptance with obesity promotion. This is rather hypocritical, since he resists the idea that promoting weight loss encourages anorexia, but he apparently believes this works the other way around. He does believe that pressure to stay thin discourages obesity, however. He believes white women have a lower rate of obesity than black women do because there is more social pressure to be thin in white culture. If this is so, then it is worth noting that white women make up the majority of anorexics, and black women have almost no presence in this disease.
2 - I'm not sure Fumento has a grip on what normal sized women look like. He accuses the movie Circle of Friends in which the hero falls in love with the "chubby girl," and Plus Size models of being "Aiders and Abettors" to obesity. The average Plus Size model is 5 foot 5 and 155 pounds. By the 1959 weight charts that he sites and the Body Mass Index, this is normal. He says that Fraser, the author of Losing It, "comes off as a fat person justifying her condition" (by Fumento's own cited definitions, she is not obese). Even with this jab, much of his own book covers the same material as Fraser, in fact he footnotes her book in one of his arguments against Susan Powter.
3 - Fumento is out of touch with how severe the social effects of "fat discrimination" are. His repulsion of Fat Activists show that the arrived a bit late on the scene. He strongly believes that self-esteem comes not from acceptance, but from accomplishment. I would agree, and point out that the self-esteem that fat acceptance offers comes not from denial, but the permission to experience self-esteem from one's accomplishments in spite of one's appearance.
Fat Acceptance is a philosophy that I am glad I discovered, because at the time I felt that until I was "thin", I did not deserve to feel proud of any of my accomplishments - or even try to accomplish anything that wasn't appearance related. I accepted that I would never become "thin enough" unless I resorted to an eating disorder. However, after reading this book, I have come to the conclusion accepting that I will never be model-thin was healthy, gaining 50 pounds was not.

A lot of people are writing about how they don't like Fumento's 'tone' in this book, etc., saying he's cruel and callous, insensitive to the plight of fat. But I'm no thin person myself, and my metabolism is normal, my thyroid is functioning fine, and so on, so I can't actually blame my weight on anything except that I'm eating too much and exercising too little. It's now time for me to take responsibility and make necessary changes to prevent heart disease, diabetes, and so on. Fumento comes across as harsh, and he attacks fad diets and bad behaviors, pro-fat groups such as NAAFA. Yes, we all want to be loved for who we are, but I've gone to their meetings and I personally don't want to to in an environment where it's OK to eat half a cheesecake for dessert. This'll make some people mad, but I'm overweight because of my habits, and most of my friends who are overweight are so because they eat too much. Fumento is pointing out the simple truth.
I just wish he'd do an update and get more into some of these newer diet trends, but he really does make his point.

Honestly, one of the worst books I have ever read. Jemima, completely obsessed with food--so much that she eats 2 bacon sandwiches on her way to work every morning--suddenly does a complete 180 overnight and drops 100 lbs over the course of a couple months. Her regimen? Eat iceberg lettuce and exercise 2 hours a day, at least. Then, and only then, does she find true love (sigh).

In the beginning of the book, I was quickly bored by Jemima's whining (and Green's writing). By the end of the book, if I had to read one more chapter about Brad and Jemima's daily routine of coffee, rollerblading, or what a beautiful couple everyone thought they were, I was going to scream. The book could have easily been 50 pages shorter.

A complete waste of time. A poor excuse for "chick lit".

Ok, so the book started off cute and truthful. I really believed Jane Green was definitely a plus-sized female at one point. She really new how to explain emotional eating and took a great, creative, lighthearted approach at obesity. I had fun. Until Jemima's sudden weight loss ( she just developed this great motivation to lose weight one random day), where she decided to get thin to meet her internet boyfriend. First of all, internet boyfriend ? Can you be any more cliche than insinuating fat girls only can meet boys via the information superhighway ? Then the book goes on to make insane British stereotypes about Californians, L.A. and the state of gym-crazed twenty-somethings. And to top off the whole book, Jemima only became happy and snagged the man of her dreams when she was thin. What's the message ? you can't be fat (or even over 140 pds) and happy. Well, you can. Just ask any of the gorgeous plus sized models in today's magazines. If you're a fat girl or ex-fat girl, you'll be extremely irritated by this book. If you were never fat and a little shallow, you will probably enjoy this book and laugh. But when you read it, think about the underlining messages. These messages are blatantly weight-ist and unfounded.

I was not too sure about this book going in- so many books use the poor fat girl who loses weight and then fulfills her dream thing- but Jemima J was a pleasant read. The strange narrative goes from narrative to first person, to third person voice which can be distracting. Must of the book reads like you are seeing things through 1 way glass.

Jemima J's transformation from unsure, untested, safe fat and unchallenged to a thinner woman who takes chances is interesting not so much for the romance and what not but for the way she begins to see herself when she lets go of her insecurities and decides to live. Taking charge of her weight is her way of entering the world and taking charge of her life and breaking free of the bonds that have weighed her down metaphorically and physically for way too long.

She does not define herself in the end by what she looks like but the person she now is. A refreshing break. Not a heavy read but better than a wasted night of TV.

The reader of this book has to slog through such Emme "hardships" as her being an athlete, living abroad, dating, going to college, getting married, and becoming a top plus size model (she was signed to an agency the minute she walked in the door). If you can identify with all of that, you probably don't read or need a self-help book in the first place.

Bottom line: She's overweight and happy, but she is paid very well to stay that way. Unless you too are greatly rewarded for your "difference" (whatever that may be), it's nearly impossible to identify with her advice, her life, or her story.

UPDATE: I think the point of rating/reviewing books here is to help other readers make buying decisions. We all have different opinions. I don't understand why some readers get upset with other readers simply because they didn't feel the same way about a book. I didn't "miss the point" of this particular book as another reader suggested. I have been through more than Emme EVER will and I was looking for inspiration, not fluff.

"True Beauty" By Emme a leading plus size model, is a pretty good book. In the first part of the book Emme explain about her childhood and the issues thah she had with food. The second part of the book could only be discribe as a self-help. In this part of the book she offers advice when it comes to dealing will not only food, but clothing, make-up and even personal relationships. I did enjoy the book, but I were Emme, I would have offer pictures when she starting talking about clothes and make-up. But overall, this is a pretty good book.

The last reviewer clearly missed the point, and somehow lives in the fantasy that growing up with a difficult step-father, living abroad, going to college and coping with ultra-competitive modeling world is easy as pie. That such life experiences might affect issues of self esteem and size acceptance is entirely reasonable, and that Emme is willing to open up and share them is to be applauded. If you want to wallow in self pity and are convinced that those who are famous, wealthy or somehow seem more priveleged than yourself lead perfect lives and are not confronted with these issues, than I doubt any self-help book is meant for you. Emme generously draws on her personal experiences and shows us that it is possible to rise above such negative issues and learn to both love yourself and thrive in this world. Oh and yes - you certainly CAN be fit and healthy in a larger body. A size 2 who eats junk food and sits around watching television is a good deal less healthy than a size 16 who is athletic and eats lots of fruits and veggies. Health is not in the weight. It is in the lifestyle choices! But if you don't like yourself very much this is a very hard thing to accomplish. Emme's message is right on the money.