Food and Loathing : A Life Measured Out in Calories

by Betsy Lerner

• ISBN13: 9780743221832
• ISBN10: 0743221834
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-28
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

With warmth, wit, and not a trace of self-pity" ("Entertainment Weekly"), Betsy Lerner details her twenty-year struggle with depression and compulsive eating in "Food and Loathing," a book that dares to expose the insidious nature of women's secret life with food. "Alternating between hilarious and heartbreaking" ("People"), "Food and Loathing" gives voice to one of the last taboo subjects and greatest stigmas of our time: being overweight. Lerner's revelations on the cult of thinness -- from the dreaded weigh-in at junior high gym class to the effects of inhaling Pepperidge Farm Goldfish at Olympic speeds -- are universally resonant, as is her belief that this is one battle no one should fight alone. Essential reading for anyone who has ever wielded a fork in despair or calculated her self-worth on the morning scale, "Lerner's lament is a triumph" ("Publishers Weekly").

Author Biography

Betsy Lerner holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Thomas Wolfe Poetry Prize from New York University and an Academy of American Poets Prize, and was selected as one of PEN's Emerging Writers in 1987. A former book editor who is currently a literary agent, she is the author of The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Contents

One You Should Feel Lucky

Two My Lonely Country

Three The Watery Floor

Four Crying Wolf

Five The Most of It

Six Shooting the Moon

Seven Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Eight Watch Out Birds!

Nine Food and Loathing

Epilogue Starting Tomorrow