The weight-loss diaries

From Shape magazine’s hip “Weight-Loss Diary” columnist comes an “uncut” look at the daily struggle to dietLosing weight doesn’t happen in that nice, linear way you read about in magazines and books. It’s messy and complicated, and you’re going to screw up a whole bunch of times before you get it right. That’s OK. Busy, social, and successful, Courtney Rubin was also tortured by a dysfunctional relationship with food that began in childhood and continued into an adulthood of binging, starving, and secrecy. Now she shares what she learned about dieting--and herself--over two years of chronicling her battle to keep food from consuming her life. As engaging as Rubin’s famous column, The Weight-Loss Diaries will strike a chord with anyone who has struggled to keep his or her resolve in the face of an overwhelming obstacle. From her most ridiculous excuses for ending a diet to her dark days of flirting with eating disorders, Rubin’s memoir gives you what she and other dieters have always wanted--a brave and brutally honest account of what it’s like, day after day, often year after year, to try to lose a significant amount of weight. And after countless “I’ll start tomorrows,” the wiser, slimmer Rubin lets you in on why--and how--this time went differently . . . including the ways she’s found to be nice to herself that don’t involve buttercream frosting. She explores diet and weight issues--including self-sabotage--with insight, humor, and courage. With this empowering book, she reminds you that you’re not alone.Courtney Rubin has written for the New York Times, Marie Claire, Time, and other publications. Formerly a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine, Rubin is now a correspondent based in London for People magazine.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.