Amazon
Top Customer review: Rebecca Hartong ( a fan of Carol Lay's work and long time reader of her work ) 2 out of 5
I like Carol Lay's cartoons. I've been enjoying them for years so, when "The Big Skinny" included a lot of personal information about Lay's childhood and her relationship with her mother, I wasn't all that surprised. Her cartoons are often autobiographical. Sometimes reading them is like sitting in on someone else's therapy sessions. Interesting -- and occasionally pretty weird.
I liked the idea of a cartoonized weight loss story from someone with Lay's snarky sense of humor. I like very much how well she explained calorie counting. The calorie totals she's got in the back of the book are useful and some of her recipes look really tasty.
BUT...
It turns out that Carol Lay wasn't actually fat when she began her weight loss program. She weighed about 160 pounds and, at 5'9" -- pretty much every responsible authority agrees -- she would have been, at worst, only slightly overweight. Now her weight averages 125 pounds. Even for a small-framed person, that's just plain skinny.
Her message of eating reasonable portions of healthy foods really gets lost when placed in the context of her, apparently very unhealthy, obsession with thinness. Instead, what comes across is a sad story of one woman's daily preoccupation with eating the small number of calories necessary to keep her (at 5'9"!) in a size 4. That's sick -- and it's not an example anyone should be following.
Interesting review here, finding out that Carol's entire success from this book could be contributed to an eating disorder is very disconcerting. Her readers could admire her drive and in consequence develop a very poor self esteem.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting observation to make. Learning how to eat healthy is very important at any age but it's fascinating to see how people can and reasons why it's terrible for her to give healthy eating advice.
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