Thin is the New Happy
Author: Valerie Frankel
“Val Frankel is a woman of amazing insight. . . . Read this, weep, and heal.”
—Stacy London, cohost of What Not to Wear
You’ve heard the phrase “the mirror is not your friend.” For Valerie Frankel, the mirror was so much more than “not a friend.” It was the mean girl who stole her lunch money, bitch-slapped her in the ladies’ room, and cut the hair off her Barbie.
If you’re like 99.9 percent of women, the war you wage with yourself over your body image begins at the ripe age of eight, and the skirmishes are fought for the next eight decades. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’ve won. (How many of us have taken out a photo from high school and thought, “Hey! I looked great—why didn’t I know it?”) This book is for anyone who has spent most of her life on—or thinking about being on—a diet. It’s for anyone who ever wished for candlelight in dressing rooms. It’s for anyone who has ever owned a pair of “fat pants.” In short, this book is for anyone who ever felt good or bad about themselves based on how they look.
Valerie Frankel, like most women, has spent most of her conscious life on a diet, thinking about a diet, ignoring a diet, or failing on a diet. At age eleven, her mother put Val on her first weight-loss program. As a teen, she was enrolled in Weight Watchers (for which she invented creative ditching methods). As a young woman, her world felt right only when she was able to zip a certain pair of jeans. Not wanting to pass this legacy on to her own daughters,Valerie set out to cleanse herself of her obsession. Thin Is the New Happy is the true story of one woman’s quest to exorcise her bad body-image demons, to uncover the truths behind what put them there, and to learn how to truly love herself. It’s a poignant, hilarious, and all-out honest account of one woman’s struggle with body image—the filter through which she’s always seen the world—and the way she ultimately overcame it.
Publishers Weekly
Prolific author Frankel (most recently, I Take This Man) was only 11 when her mother put her on a diet. She went from 100 to 88 pounds in six weeks, making her mother ecstatic, although she gained back four pounds right away. Frankel learned a basic lesson: she could enjoy eating or "have approval," but not both. Although she blamed her mother's "fatphobia" for her unhappy childhood, from middle school on her peers were her cruelest tormenters. As she got older, her "bad body image" translated to "anorgasmia"; research shows that women who feel unattractive often develop sexual dysfunction. Later, working at Mademoiselle, where so many co-workers had eating disorders, she realized that an obsession with diet was one way of avoiding life's thornier issues. In her 40s, Frankel decided to jettison all the emotional baggage she was carrying about her weight, to free herself, finally, from dieting. After hiring a photographer to shoot a portfolio of her nude, having a friend help her find her personal style in clothing and coming to terms with her husband and her mother over fat issues, Frankel finally got rid of her body-image negativity. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Kirkus Reviews
Novelist and self-help journalist Frankel (I Take This Man, 2007, etc.) chronicles her 30-year addiction to dieting and subsequent "journey out of the waistland."After trying 150 different diets, the author made a pact with herself to go on a "Not Diet," a decidedly forgiving approach to eating based on the theory that she would achieve her goals via moderation and exercise, as long as it involved getting rid of the negative emotions and self-flagellation that characterized her relationship to food. With the aid of a stopwatch, she spent a day counting 263 specific instances of negative thoughts. These thoughts far exceeded those about family, sex or money (which she also tallied), which convinced her of the need for a complete overhaul. Before the Not Diet could work, however, she had to confront the sources of her negative emotions. She started with her "fatphobic" mother, followed by her bully tormentors in junior high school. She explored how a weight-obsessed culture at Mademoiselle, where she worked for years, validated and enhanced her own preoccupations. As part of her self-acceptance process, she posed nude for Self magazine and got a wardrobe makeover from friend Stacy London (of What Not to Wear fame), who helped the author make the connection between looking good and feeling good. Frankel's attempts to shift her focus toward love, personal success and even the pleasure of food prove galvanizing, and the journey is relevant and even inspiring. Infused with humor and refreshing candor, the book will resonate with anyone who's counted carbs or tried to subsist on rice cakes and grapefruit. A self-aware, witty exploration of a woman's body issues. Agent: NancyYost/Lowenstein-Yost
101 Workouts: For Women: Everything You Need to Get a Lean, Strong, and Fit Physique
Author: Muscle Fitness Hers Magazin
There are 101 fully photo-illustrated workouts presented here, with each workout generally occupying a two-page spread. This concept allows enthusiasts the opportunity to glance at the photos during each workout to check their faithful following of the routine.
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