Customer Reviews

Losing It: America's Obsession with Weight and the Industry that Feeds on It

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book to be a real mind-blower; I'd always thought Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and their ilk had too much stake in their clientele staying fat, and this book confirms not that they are evil, but that they have the size of their bottom line -- and not your bottom -- uppermost in their concerns. I thought it was a page-turner, not at all dull or even self-indulgent of the author, and it was the final piece in the puzzle of why I can't lose weight (and we're talking about that final 10 lbs, no more) and why it's okay not to look like Barbie, or Kate Moss, or the average bulemic/anorexic twenty-year old. I'm seriously considering buying a few dozen copies and handing them out to every friend of mine who has ever bemoaned her shape or cursed herself for loving food. The message should be: there is no bad food, only bad quantities; if you learn to enjoy food and think about every bite, avoid "zoning out" (mindlessly devouring food because it is t! here or because you are stressed out), and make food a blessing instead of a curse in your life, you will be a happier, healthier person. And exercise! (Fervent thanks to my eating disorders therapist for recommending this book -- thanks, Rebecca A.!)

Fraser does excellent journalistic work here, much needed work indeed. It was the first time I ever heard the notion that people might be ok at their weight no matter what that weight was. It has allowed me to see overweight others as just ordinary people instead of judging them on their weight.
What if it didn't matter if we were fat? What if it was not relevant? To me, those are revolutionary questions, and they changed my whole outlook on the demonized obesity. THANK YOU Mrs Fraser. This book should be read by Society and not just a marginal few.
This book is also about not being lied to, manipulated, fooled, used, cheated and mistreated by a money-hungry market. In that light, it is very empowering.

Having been a dieter all my life, this book reminded me that the diet industry is a business. Ms. Fraser left no stone unturned in going to all sources such as diet centers, doctors, pills, shakes, research people, exercising etc. At the end I decided there wasn't any need to continue on the roundabout and stay obsessed with my weight when I could be getting on with better things in my life. Consequently I've lost 15lbs since reading the book!!! Because I chose to get off the merry go round of dieting and give my money to a more worthy cause.

Laura Fraser has done two great things: She has slogged through years of research for the reader's benefit, while also encouraging us to look at the facts independently. The second great thing she has done is given men and women the necessary tools to like the bodies they have been given. What a tremendous gift!

The New York Times reviewer was overly harsh in her assessment. It's true that the author spends too much time early in the book telling her own story and also explaining her methodology and reasons for her approach. And, especially in this early segment of the book, the writing is somewhat plodding (it gets better later). One needs to be motivated to read this book to get through the long introduction (I was!) Once into the heart of the book, however, Fraser does a fine job of exploring and exposing the exploitation of overweight (and NOT overweight) Americans by diet industry "experts" and gurus. I have done an immense amount of reading (and a bit of writing) about this subject and I still learned things from Fraser - she seems to be a relentless researcher and investigator. She might have been a bit more objective and even-handed in her exposition (she TELLS us she's being more objective than she really ends up being). Nevertheless, if this book can help ANYONE to get off the dieting and self-hating treadmill and get on with her life, it's worth spending the money to buy it and the time to read it

This book is a must have for anyone interested in size acceptance! The story about Jenny Craig and her "oil free" bruschetta alone is worth the price of this book.

This book seems to be painted as some type of Expose' by some, but it's really more accurately described as one person's opinion. Actually, the book rather reminds me of the recent movie Supersize Me, in that it can be entertaining, and does have some facts to back up the content, but in the end is not really journalism or science, but is commentary. No one is perfectly objective, but there is a wide gulf between something like a science journal article and a book like this. That isn't to say that the book is worthless, of course; but only that it shouldn't be taken as the last word on the subject. Or the most important word.

Laura Fraser is a slightly overweight, city-dwelling, liberal, probably somewhat spiritual, somewhat iconoclastic, writer. She had some interesting experiences with weight early in life, and she still struggles with some of those issues that began decades ago. In a way, saying that is merely repeating what Laura Fraser herself says in the book. However, it needs repeating because more than once she goes into a somewhat polemical mode in which everything is painted in black and white, leaving no room for grey. In those cases, it's important to know where she's coming from, and where she wants to take us (the readers). For example, that food and diet industry tries to milk money out of consumers is undoubtedly true: ALL businesses try to milk as much money out of consumers as they think they can. For better or worse, that's capitalism. But, that these same companies are as hell-bent on trapping people in vicious cycles, creating problems that they can then provide solutions to, etc. seems a bit less likely. Leastwise, it's hard to believe that there are so many people out to get less than ideally weighted women, as Laura Fraser seems to believe.

Overall I liked the book, though it had a certain unevenness to it. I don't just mean that it started somewhat slow--history is often like that, no matter who the author. By uneven, I meant that the best and most insightful parts were the ones which were most personal (e.g., overviews of when she personally met people like Richard Simmons and Susan Powter); and oddly enough, the worse parts (often seeming more like diatribes than anything) were the ones in which she probably genuinely tried to be most objective and provide references to scientific findings. So, I guess I would have enjoyed the book more had it been more openly subjective, providing commentary, and tried less to be something scientific or journalistic. In the end it just came off as subjective pseudo-science, neither having the power and persuasion of personal testimony, nor the persuasive factualness of hard evidence.

I think the book is a good counter-weight of sorts to some of the information that we get bombarded with as consumers--but then no information can necessary be taken as the last word we need on a subject. As an example, the book is decidedly anti-fasting. And many recent studies seem to support the idea that many smaller meals are better than great lengths of time between meals. Yet I have also seen studies which praise the healthy and cleansing benefits of fasting, and my own religious tradition (Eastern Orthodox) has been fasting since that Jesus fellow told his disciples to do it a few thousand years ago. The answer to the problems raised in this book probably can be found somewhere between the black painted by the food and diet industries and the white painted by Laura Fraser.