Kirkus评论

For 25 years, Sharon Greene Patton tried Every Diet Known To Man; not only did she not get thin, ""the years of failure and guilt had taken their toll on my belief in myself."" When she realized that, she stopped dieting, decided to ""listen"" to her body (keeping notes, responding to cravings), are what she felt she needed, exercised regularly (doing only activities she enjoyed)--and stopped letting anyone talk to her about overweight, obesity, or their own problems with food. Eventually, Patton succeeded in improving her health, and is no longer obsessed with food and dieting--but she is still angry at American social and medical views of weight and dieting. In recounting her own story, she also looks at our ""National Pastime"" of dieting--reporting first-hand on everything from Atkin's to Cambridge. (The latter offers only 330 calories-per-day and has been implicated in at least 6 deaths.) On ""Being Fat in a Slim World"" brings reflections on the physician's belief that dieting is simple, and the overweight merely weak-willed: ""for what other medical problem do people have to earn the right for treatment?"" Also: why people get fat (it is never so simple as lack of willpower, or other psychological weakness) and ""Sex and Sexism"" (women we view as overweight are still routinely discriminated against in the business world). Without rhetoric or hype: a strong, clear-minded statement of what others have already shown (Polivy and Herman's Breaking the Diet Habit, Bennett and Gurin's Dieter's Dilemma)--but in a personal account that drives its arguments home. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.