Food and Loathing: A Life Measured Out in Calories [Paperback]

As post-modern recovery memoirs go, Food and Loathing, Betsy Lerner's account of compulsive overeating and decades' worth of yo-yo dieting, may strike the casual reader as considerably less compelling than, say, Elizabeth Wurtzel's similarly toned though far more solipsistic and seemingly endless diary of her affair with Ritalin, Now, More, Again. (The editor of Wurtzel's breakthrough Gen X memoir, Prozac Nation, Lerner figured prominently as a character in the sequel.) Lerner's admission that "I am powerless over Hostess cakes, and my life has become unmanageable", may not seem to equate with the far more harrowing revelations recounted in so many gripping first-person dependency confessionals. But there are potentially hundreds of thousands of readers (both men and women, though there is a bit of a Bridget Jones-like assumption here that Lerner is writing primarily for the former) with whom the author will strike many a poignant chord as she charts a lifelong battle with her weight.

Lerner takes us from those all-too-familiar and universally mortifying school days (the book opens in 1972, when she was a 12-year-old being weighed in front of her sixth-grade class in the gymnasium), through twentysomething years filled with sadness, unrequited love and a pioneering membership in Overeaters Anonymous, to a bout with suicidal depression that resulted in a six-month stay at New York State Psychiatric Institute. Like Wurtzel, Lerner is at her best when she is turning her sarcastic and unsparing sense of humour on herself. ("In college, when I first encountered Descartes, it took me no time to translate his famous dictum into something I could relate to: I weigh x, therefore I am shit", she writes.) But she also shares with her celebrated protégé a recurring confusion between trying to relate with her readers via unflinching honesty and simply sharing too much uninteresting or irrelevant information. --Jim DeRogatis, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This sharp memoir is a must (OK! MAGAZINE )

This book recounts her experiences with warmth and wit (IRISH EXAMINER )

The subtitle, 'A Sad and Funny Memoir Of A Life Counted Out In Calories', says it all. (GOOD HOUSEKEEPING )

A powerful memoir about food obsession and depression, aimed at every woman who's ever tortured herself over food and weight loss. (WOMAN'S OWN ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

‘This book recounts her experiences with warmth and wit’ --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

a witty and cautionary tale about where calorie counting can lead --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

sparky humour and deadly perceptiveness --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

FOOD AND LOATHING is a deeply moving yet funny memoir about food obsession and depression. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This book recounts her experiences with warmth and wit. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

‘The subtitle, ‘A Sad and Funny Memoir Of A Life Counted Out In Calories’, says it all’ --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

In FOOD AND LOATHING a bright, chubby girl believes that thinness is next to godliness, and so attends one of the first meetings of Overeaters Anonymous in 1975. Her twenties are marked by yo-yo dieting, depressive episodes and a sadistic shrink. Then, just as her dream of being a writer is within reach, entering Columbia's prestigious MFA program, she spirals into a suicidal depression and lands for a six-month stay at New York State Psychiatric Institute. There a young resident helps her take her first steps towards selfhood, unravelling the self-loathing of an eating disorder coupled with a paralysing mood disorder. He also helps her confront a tragic family secret whose silence had enveloped an otherwise average Jewish middle-class family. FOOD AND LOATHING is a book about how people use food to narcotise, to love, and to escape. It's about therapy - the good, the bad, and the down right destructive - and about every woman who spends too much of her life thinking about her weight, and how she can forgive herself for living -- and even learn to love. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Betsy Lerner holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Thomas Wolfe Poetry Prize and an Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize. She is a former editor and is now a literary agent with The Gernert Company. She lives outside New York City. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.