Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry [Paperback]

Laura Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

This probing social and cultural history of our preoccupation with weight blows the whistle on a multi-billion dollar industry that feeds on insecurity

Taking the same revolutionary and ultimately inspiring approach as The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, Losing It examines and explodes our culture's obsession with slenderness and the huge establishment that exploits our fears of being fat.

A reformed dieter and an ex-bulimic, Laura Fraser traces our fixation with thinness to the images that began appearing a hundred years ago in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Cosmopolitan. Fraser chronicles the corresponding growth of a $50 billion a year industry that provides false hope in exchange for cash.

In this meticulously researched journey through Dietland, Fraser gives the inside scoop on:
-- Diet drugs, including the controversial phen/fen
-- Diet gurus Richard Simmons, Susan Powter, and Dean Ornish
-- Commercial weight loss centers, including Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers
-- Weight-loss products like thigh creams and diet cookies

Provocative, political, and personal, this revealing book is a remarkable work of investigative journalism and an enthralling, compelling story with almost universal relevance.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Plume (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452272912
• ISBN-13: 978-0452272910
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #615,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a longtime freelance writer, San Franciscan, and literature junkie. I'm excited about my new book, All Over the Map, which is a memoir about what happens in midlife when things don't exactly go as planned--and you take a few plane trips to figure out how to come to terms with that, learning a lot of other life lessons along the way. The book is, in some ways, a sequel to my bestselling memoir, An Italian Affair. People who loved that book (thank you for so many of your kind letters!) will see what happens next in All Over the Map. Unlike An Italian Affair, this book isn't written in the second person ("you") but the first person ("I"), so I won't have to answer quite so many questions about why I wrote it that way.

I make my living as a writer, mostly doing personal essays, travel, and food articles for magazines, along with the occasional piece of more serious journalism. I have a passion for good writing, and appreciate writers who are simple, clear, and funny. My model and mentor as a writer is William Zinsser, who wrote On Writing Well, along with a lot of other great books about writing. I recommend that if you are interested in writing you read his books.

I have a website (laurafraser.com) and a blog (laurafraser.com/notes), as well as a list of all the books I've read since I was 13 years old (laurafraser.com/list.html). I love having this list and suggest that if you're a reader, you create, one, too. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. It's never too late.

I divide my time between San Francisco and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico (both 415 area codes, weirdly). I feel blessed to be able to read and travel and write and have so many wonderful friends around the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Just Finished Losing It, February 13, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry (Paperback)

She covers nearly everything, doesn't talk much about Type II diabetes, doesn't cover liposuction at all, and she DOES say that losing weight is deleterious to your health (directly negating what a previous reviewer wrote). She talks about dieting causing more fat to be layered on when it fails, but also about how dieting to lose weight actually kills the heart muscle, and can cause heart attacks (John Candy is cited). Her thing is not that it is unhealthy to "lose weight if you are meant to once you start eating healthy and exercising regularly", but that repetitively starving the body's muscles and other tissues is simply bad for your health. She says some people will stay round and plump looking even when eating normally (i.e., not overeating all the time, not undereating all the time, but eating till your satisfied and knowing when you are hungry.)

What I really liked was that she talks about the healthfulness of eating plenty of nutritious calories and getting plenty of exercise, as in "eat your veggies and then go outside and play." Seems so commonsensical, but most of us would rather wait for a pill to solve our problems and to do it fast. We would rather change to fit society than tell society to start accepting ALL sorts of bodies and types. Probably, because this is the USA, we will never get around to letting go of our puritanical viewpoints (part of which is denying the self=godlike), and we will continue to be thrown an onslaught of thin, plastic surgery girls to look at in the media. The only way we can stop feeling bad about ourselves is probably to just get over it and live our lives to the fullest.

I like what she says about living.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life Changing, June 13, 2000

By 

Lynda Bowman (Fort Washington, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry (Paperback)

This book offers a refreshing change for people, especially women whose lives have been misdirected and for many ruined by the preoccupation with body image. Ms. Fraser has done an indepth research of the diet industry, examined the false claims, and explored the likelihood for permanent change after someone has lost weight by using a diet. This book promotes the idea that women should feel good about themselves and embrace their individuality. She stresses doing the best for yourself in your present self, take care of your self both physically and emotionally. I recommend that this book be read by women and girls whose lives have been misdirected by being taught that they only matter as far as what others think of how they look and not for who they are.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wake-up America!, May 24, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Pagos (Short Hills, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Losing It: False Hopes and Fat Profits in the Diet Industry (Paperback)

The book goes behind the closed doors of the diet industry and reveals what's really going on in the world of dieting. This book really is a wake-up call to all those who have fallen into the American diet trap. I was astonished at some of the tricks and gimmicks used by the diet industry! The book even gives some steps to becoming a healthy eater by relying on yourself, rather than following someone else's diet.