Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can't) Help - Hardcover

Ellin, Abby

3.24

54 ratings by Goodreads

9781586482282: Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can't) Help

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586482289 ISBN 13: 9781586482282

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2005

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We've been inundated lately with books and articles about childhood obesity. Most offer cultural critique or nutrition and exercise advice — in tones that are alternately appalled and patronizing. Few address the psychological, medical, cultural and developmental complexities affecting overweight kids. The truth is, many parents already know that Whoppers are fattening. What they don't know is how to effectively help an often discouraged, often reluctant kid on what will be a difficult, life-long journey.

Abby Ellin, a journalist and former fat-camper whose parents' attempts to "save her" from fatness proved counterproductive, has had a lifelong interest in figuring out how they might have done it better, and an abiding compassion for overweight kids. In Teenage Waistland she shares the story of her own adolescent struggle with food and weight, and journeys with hope, skepticism, and humor through the landscape of today's diet culture. She visits camps and community programs, and talks to experts, kids and their parents, seeking to answer these questions: What can parents say that kids will hear? Why don't kids exercise more and eat less when they're dying to be thinner? What treatment methods actually work? Willpower, or surrender? Shame, or inspiration?

Teenage Waistland is ultimately clarifying and provocative for anyone who's ever wrestled with weight issues. One size does not fit all when it comes to weight loss, and the better we understand that, the more likely we are to be able to help our kids.

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About the Author:

For five years, Abby Ellin wrote the "Preludes" column, about young people and money, in the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times. She also regularly writes the "Vows" column in the New York Times Sunday Styles section, as well as feature assignments for the New York Times Magazine. Her work has appeared in a range of publications, including Time, the Village Voice, Marie Claire, More, Self, Glamour, the Boston Phoenix, and Spy (RIP). She's an editor-at-large for Gotham magazine and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. But her greatest claim to fame is naming "Karamel Sutra" ice cream for Ben and Jerry's.

Review:

"A thoughtful, provocative and valuable account of subject that is too often beset by prejudice and hysteria." -- Paul Campos, Professor, University of Colorado and author of The Diet Myth

"Abby Ellin has written a necessary road map for parents and their children who struggle with eating issues." -- Betsy Lerner, author of Food and Loathing

"Ellin's funny, intimate and unblinkingly honest book is sure to help parents and kids wrestling with this issue." -- Alissa Quart, author of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers

"Its straight-forward perspective challenges our current views about weight loss, body image, and the manipulative societal pressures on our children." -- Emme

"TTTTeenage Wasteland'" is not just about Ellin's personal experiences...It's about the emotional effects of the various solutions." -- Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2005

"Written with candor, curiosity, and compassion... [and]reflects our own grown-up and insecurities around body and beauty, health and happiness." -- Wendy Shanker, author of The Fat Girl's Guide to Life

"[Ellin] addresses the situation from a psychological, medical, cultural, and most important, understanding standpoint." -- Gotham Magazine, August, 2005

AAA unique, empathetic perspective on this issue [Ellin] writes with compassion and humor about the trials of overweight kids. -- Bookpage, August 2005

An honest, grimly funny report from a world that's lost all sense of proportion about fat. -- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 6, 2005

One part investigative journalism, one part self-help, and one part personal narrative, Waistland is intriguing...both eloquent and moving. -- The Boston Globe, September 18, 2005

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