Customer Reviews

Confessions of a Carb Queen: The Lies You Tell Others & the Lies You Tell Yourself: A Memoir (Thorndike Biography)

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

On the face of it I was not too thrilled about reading this Confessions of a Carb Queen memoir, figuring "What else could I possibly learn?" It turns out that I could learn a lot, both about Susan Blech's astonishingly surgery-free and high carb/low fat 250 pound weight loss and about how she gained over 300 pounds in the first place. I learned about emotional eating, about lying and hiding your eating, about losing sense of yourself, about waking up and not even believing that it is your body that you live in. And I learned about taking responsibility and ultimately control over emotions, over spirit, over body, and over food.

When I first opened the book and began reading about Blech's attempts at Fat Sex in the shower with her ex-boyfriend Bobby I was morbidly fascinated. "We can't. I can barely stand up. My legs hurt. My calves and ankles are blown into one mass. I call them 'cankles.' I can't see my toes.... My stomach folds onto my lap, almost to my knees. I don't translate sexy. It's another language. Feminine is far away. Human comes across only because I'm breathing."

And then the binge that her anger over the misery of ending this relationship! The Binge to stop her thinking about The Body. First the 24 hour McDonald's for "a fish sandwich with extra extra tartar sauce and extra extra cheese...a burger too, with extra cheese and french fries." Supersized, of course, with Diet soda. "I almost order 18 cookies, but it's so late. So I order nine. I think to myself, See, I can cut back."

The third of four children, raised by a single father (her mother had a severe stroke when Blech was young and spent her life in hospitals and nursing homes), Blech went from a young adulthood of compulsive diet and bodybuilding to completely out of control obesity, typically eating more for one snack than 4 people could eat for dinner. Most of it take out, and much of it in her car. Luckily (or not) she worked at home.

She began to go out less and less and eat more and more. Going out meant not eating in front of others. Going out meant the possibility of not fitting into a restaurant seat. Once going out meant weighing down an elevator to the point where everyone had to carried out and she had to literally be hoisted like a large whale. Then one day, after her physician puts her on blood pressure medication and says the magic words, "your blood pressure is high enough for you to have a stroke", Blech decided to take back control of herself & her life. She took her life savings and credit cards and moved from NY to Durham, North Carolina to begin a new life with The Rice Diet. New city, new apartment, new clinic, new friends.

At the clinic Blech realizes that she craves salt. The minute salt is removed and she starts drinking lots of water she literally drains, peeing all the time and losing pound upon pound of water. She begins to exercise, ultimately finding a personal trainer and a pilates teacher who teach her to move and to walk again. She even manages, by the end of the book, to run every bleacher in the entire UNC football stadium in under 30 minutes (I don't know if I could do that!). Blech loses 100 pounds a year and leaves the clinic after 2.5 years 250 pounds lighter.

The story doesn't end perfectly. This is not a fairy tale. Yes, Blech moves back to New York City, goes back to school, and lands a job as a legal assistant at a famous law firm. Yes she wrote a book and has made numerous media appearances, yes she met and married a wonderful man, and yes she has kept the weight off. But she still has another 40-50 pounds to go, still has emotional wounds to heal, and still has to deal with some plastic surgery to remove the 20+ pounds of excess skin around her stomach.

This is a gritty true life story written from the trenches of emotional and physical pain. I laughed, I cried, I was repulsed, I commiserated, and in the end I was so proud of and learned so much from Susan Blech and the work she had done for herself.

This is not a diet book or a weight loss program. In fact, she does not even completely back the Rice Diet program. This is simply the story of a woman who lost a large amount a weight and it can inspire you to do anything you currently think is impossible.

I tore into this book on Christmas Eve, read it cover-to-cover, and was done in time for the traditional Christmas dinner of Chinese take-out! This is the most comforting, inspirational book I've read in a while. If you struggle with your weight and have a book shelf like mine, I doubt you'll find anything glaringly new as far as diet and exercise, but you'll cheer with and for Susan Blech as she courageously changes her world in order to save her life. If you ever lay in bed and reach a near-panic state wondering what would happen if you were caught in a fire, and you didn't have time to get dressed, and you needed clothes, and none of your neighbors were even close to your size....then this is the book for you! This book has renewed my hope that by continuing to search for what's really behind my food obsession, I can, one day, be successful. Just knowing you're not alone makes it a little bit easier to put your feet on the floor and trudge through for another day. Thanks, Susan, for making my ridiculous thoughts and feelings, seem almost normal!

Wow, I was just blown away by the bravery of Ms. Blech! This book was as addictive as the donut on the cover! I'm not a fan of self-help books - in fact, I hate them, so this story was just so fun and surprising to read. It made laugh and cry - and shocked the hell out of me! Ms. Blech lays it all out like no one has before. She takes you into her mind and through her struggle in a way I know will always stay with me. And, oddly enough, this book made me very hungry.....

This book is not a diet book. Susan doesn't tell you, 'do what I did, and you, too, will lose weight'. Instead it is a story of a woman, who because of pain and loss, entombed herself in layers of fat. How she fought her way out of that tomb and became a whole person is the lesson of the book. Now that she is whole again, and can better deal with pain and loss.
A must read for any woman, and even some men.
I read it in one sitting and was very moved.

After reading about Susan Blech in I think it was People Mag, and hearing about her story, and finally buying her book, I was for a short term encouraged that someone actually can lose a substantial amount of weight AND keep it off. I read all the reviews here and see that many are finding Susan to be some sort of beacon for permanent weight loss.

So, when I heard she was making an appearance on the Sunday Today show, I was eagerly awaiting her segment.

I was shocked to actually see her, and more shocked at the Today show for not commenting about her weight GAIN! She is not at ALL close to what her website pictures, or the magazine article, or the today show promo pictures show. She has gained back, from rough guess close to 100 pounds, maybe more.

Lets have some honesty here about a subject near and dear to my own chubby heart. Losing weight is one thing, but keeping it off seems to be the holy grail.

Susan Blech, has NOT won the battle by a long shot. And to keep it totally real an honest, she should discuss this and not just keep promoting her book as the beacon of lifestyle change, when its clear she has gained back enough to prove once again, NO ONE is ever cured from this excrutiating curse.


Come on Susan, lets get real here. What are YOU doing NOW to deal with this?

Dissapointed that this book is being touted as having some reality, when in fact, its just another been there done that story.. I too have lost weight, and regained, and am struggling to get it back off, but the difference for me , is I did not write and prosper from a book, and I admit that I regained weight

Meet Susan Blech, a former 468-pound woman who backed on the pounds despite being healthy and fit as a kid and then a bodybuilding in young adulthood. But, as she says in her book, LIFE happened and the rest was history. Thankfully, at the age of 38, Susan took back her life and lost 250 pounds. But it wasn't before some rather humiliating circumstances in her life woke her up to this grave problem that she had been trying to deal with since the weight came pouring on. Anyone who has ever been obese will relate to these stories because they hit home. Susan moved to Durham, North Carolina to lose the weight...how did that go? This little square book reads like a riveting suspense novel and will entertain, educate, and motivate you to start doing some confessing of your own.

Anyone that has ever struggled with obesity and specifically, binge eating, will appreciate Susan Blech's brutal honesty and sense of humor about her struggle to lose more than 200 lbs. She is an inspiration for those of us who have feared that we would never be able to stop eating or to succeed in changing our lives. Her writing style makes for a fast read, and I had difficulty putting the book down, easily finishing it in two sittings. I am grateful Susan was willing to share her story.

Thank God Susan has the courage to be so blunt and honest in this compelling memoir about finding her way back to her life and body after being completely detached and lost. I could relate to so very very much that she wrote: I drove myself from St. Louis to Durham to stay the month of June at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center and then returned for two weeks in August and two more weeks in November. When I weighed in on June 1st, I weighed 351 at 5'3"; near the end of the month on the 28th which was my 42nd birthday I had lost 20 pounds. And currently, I just hit a milestone as I weighed myself on Christmas morning and hit the 80 pounds lost mark. I aspire to be (and have no reason to doubt that it will happen) the success story and inspiration that Susan is and surely will be for millions of others that will encounter her triumphant tale!

I give the author praise for sharing her story. There was a lot of pain in her early childhood and it explained a lot about where her eating disorder stemmed from. However, I was looking for a book that would inspire me and that I did not find. For me, there was much too much explicit detail concerning her binges and sex life, and not nearly enough about her recovery and what she learned about herself. I found the book dark. It seemed like the little bits of positive recovery she shared, were wrapped in thick layers of trips to endless fast food drive-thrus and all of the men she seemed compulsive about meeting. I applaud the author for her recovery, but I did not like the book.

This is my first book review.
I really felt compelled to share how much I feel I knew Susan through reading this book. She shared so many experiences that I related too but more importantly, shared about the shameful things we as humans do when in addiction. The book is told in a way where you get to understand her relationships and how special each person is in her life and what they brought to the table.
A real page-turner - it was a gift I learned from and will be passing it on to others.
Thanks for a great read!
Congratulations Susan!! (especially on your new life)
You are an inspiration to all!!