Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book to review for free. I also have the same literary agent as the author, whose name I will guard with the ferocity of a mother lioness. ROAR! So don’t ask. I ain’t telling.

I related a lot to author Kim Brittingham as I read her new book, Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. We both moved a lot as kids. We both had frizzy unmanageable hair that I have only recently learned how to tame. We both thought we might be having a heart attack at 23. We both have old “fat” photos from our teen years in which we don’t appear fat at all. And after weight loss and weight gain we’re both at places where we’re basically cool with our bodies. (Well, cool with the weight thing, anyway. I have numerous complaints about the chronic headache, crooked teeth, bad vision, flat fleet, five wisdom teeth, etc., etc.)

You might have heard of Kim after she got some media attention for riding the New York transit system while reading a book with a fake cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” (View a Today Show video interview here.) Each chapter in Kim’s book could probably stand on its own as an essay or narrative short story, but they’re linked together with the common theme of the book. That theme is Kim’s shifting attitude about her weight throughout life, detailing the sadly all too common stories of body self-loathing in her younger years to how she came to a place of self-acceptance in her 30′s and 40′s.

The most fascinating chapter describes her experience working as a weight-loss counselor for a company called Edie JeJeune. (I think this is a pseudonym to protect the innocent and the guilty since Google couldn’t turn up anything on it.) The company sold people diet plans that required pre-packaged foods and encouraged clients to buy motivational audio tapes. Most people know that the weight-loss industry exists to make money, but it was eye-opening to see how sales-oriented Kim’s managers were. The cutthroat atmosphere and pressure to meet sales goals at the price of compromising your morals sounds eerily similar to stories I’ve heard from friends with other sales jobs. This is frightening to contemplate since selling someone a new bathtub doesn’t affect their health like selling a diet plan could (unless they slip, fall and break a hip, I guess). The emphasis wasn’t on helping people either, just meeting sales goals. The counselors weren’t required to have any kind of certifications or degrees, and some were secretly binging on the foods in the warehouse, making the whole debacle seem like a case of the blind leading the blind.

On the positive side, Kim gives a speech during a work seminar that urges people to go for what they want now instead of waiting for something else first (like losing weight) that was so inspirational two of her co-workers decided to quit that day. Sounds like she could have a career as a motivational speaker if the writing thing doesn’t pan out.

The other chapters cover topics such as the fat prejudice she was subjected to from a PR company that represented a line of plus-sized clothes, the fat-person stereotypes she had to fight while filming a video with a major media corporation, and enough stories about the New York public transportation system to make me never want to ride the subway again.

Kim was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions I had after finishing her book.

One idea you stress in the book is that you shouldn’t wait until you’re thin to do things, that you should “Be. Do. Have.” instead of “Do. Have. Be.” That’s a philosophy I believe in too, but sometimes I find myself slipping into old thought patterns, like recently thinking that I should wait to take a martial arts class until I’ve lost some weight. Do you ever find yourself slipping into old patterns like this and if so what do you do about it?

Sure, I notice it happening all the time. I think it’s like anything else, it takes practice to change. The more you stop and recognize your old patterns and interrupt them, the easier it gets. For myself, I find I notice those patterns more readily now than I ever did before. It’s not as easy for negative self-talk to worm its way in and take hold. At one point I was frustrated and asking myself, “Well how the heck do I remember to remember to not have these thoughts?” I think it takes more than a single decision sometimes, and more effort than reading one good self-help book. You need to seek out multiple resources. Several books. Podcasts and videos, workshops. Reinforce those lessons for yourself in a variety of ways, then it becomes more second-nature.

Early in the book you talk about Glory Davis, a girl at school who lost weight over the summer. You try to get her to reveal the secret of her transformation, but she doesn’t seem to understand what you want and acts nonchalant about the change. It was at this point in the book that I thought you were going to reveal that you later discovered Glory Davis had an eating disorder. That doesn’t happen though, and it made me do some uncomfortable self-reflection on why I would assume that. Did you ever wonder if Glory had an eating disorder? Whether you did or not, do you have any thoughts on what it means about our culture that my mind immediately jumped to that conclusion?

You know, that’s an interesting point. No, it never occurred to me that Glory had an eating disorder. When she returned to school thinner, she had also blossomed in other ways. She had a self-assurance about her that transcended mere weight loss. It was like she’d discovered who she was. And I never saw any signs that her relationship with food itself had changed. She was always very much at ease with food, which is never the case with an eating disordered person. There’s always a tension. Guilt, resistance, desperation, uneasiness. All kinds of thinking about the food. Glory just seemed more interested in…well, boys than food, to be frank! And before she lost the weight, I never saw her overeat. So maybe for Glory, her chubbiness was a classic case of baby fat that sheds itself in good time. I remember a lot of kids like that, which is one reason I’m really disturbed by this growing trend of casting a floodlight on fat kids and stigmatizing them. From Michelle Obama framing her Let’s Move campaign as a fight against childhood obesity instead of a campaign in favor or healthy habits for children of ALL sizes, to billboards in Georgia making fat kids out to be freaks and their parents in denial. It’s going to cause a lot of damage to kids who would otherwise be fine without this holier-than-thou societal “intervention,” and we certainly won’t embarrass or shame any child into eating better and exercising more. If anything, we’ll accomplish the opposite. We’ll isolate fat children even more from their peers, and they’ll likely seek comfort in the one friend who’s always there: food. That is, if they don’t discover drugs first.

But I’m getting way off topic here, aren’t I? The fact that your mind jumped to that conclusion about Glory might say something about our cultural beliefs, I don’t know. We do cherish our preconceived notions about people and weight in this country, don’t we? Fat people are portrayed as unlovable, antisocial gluttons, whose greed must be condemned. Women who are rail-thin are assumed to be anorexics or purgers. Weight loss itself is always assumed to have been orchestrated on purpose and is uniformly praised. I remember seeing Tyra Banks’ show one day in the laundromat, and a guest mentioned she’d recently lost X number of pounds. The audience immediately took that as a cue to applaud. And I remember thinking, what if she fucking has CANCER, for God’s sake?

You recount a story about Marilyn Monroe in the book and how she could change from being almost invisible in a crowd to being the subject of attention simply by changing her body language and attitude. You have similar success attracting people to you by exuding an aura of confidence, though you admit it is hard to keep up all the time because it’s not 100% natural. Do you have any advice for other women on how they can try to access their inner Marilyn?

Well, it might be that we all have to be clumsy about it in the beginning. Like learning to ride a bike; like me when I first learned to carry myself with confidence. I could only sustain it for so long before it felt exhausting to me. Because it was unfamiliar. It felt like an effort, almost like an act. But after a while, if your experience mirrors mine, you’ll start to recognize who you really are, and you’ll fall into your own natural “strut,” so to speak. You won’t have to live every day of your life like you’re portraying a woman with better self-esteem than your own. You’ll simply have found your stronger self. Also, it’s not your job to put on an air of fabulousness if you’re feeling angry, frustrated, or otherwise unhappy. But giving yourself a chance to find your own inner Marilyn will help you find more presence when you’re in a shitty place, too. You and your feelings have every right to their space. You’re just as entitled as anyone else to every last inch you need.

You got a lot of attention for reading a book on public transportation with a fake book cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” Did you ever considering using that title for you book instead of “Read My Hips” to see if it’d generate more sales, since as you say body-loathing seems to be more popular than body-acceptance?

I did. Not from a sales-generating perspective, but I did shop my book to publishers as “Fat is Contagious.” But Random House suggested “Read My Hips,” which was the title of an essay I’d written for iVillage, and which wound up being a big part of the book’s introduction. It really seemed to fit — no pun intended. Much more so than “Fat is Contagious.” Because with “Read My Hips,” you really are reading my hips — everything that went into the creation of my hips. Everything I did to try and fight my hips and eventually accept them, along with every other part of me.

In the bio sent with the book it says you dream of “finding an affordable fencing school.” Have you taken up fencing like Inigo Montoya like you mentioned thinking of doing in the book? My brother started fencing in the past year and says they never have enough girls. He’d be happy to recruit you!

No, I haven’t taken up fencing and I’m heartbroken about it! The cruel truth is, there’s an excellent fencing school just fifteen minutes from my home, and they even have female instructors over 40, which I think is so cool. But their fees are well out of my league. Someone told me I shouldn’t be surprised, that fencing is one of those sports of the wealthy, like polo. Gee, I didn’t know! I did get a Wii gaming system, though, and my friend Peter gave me a Wii light saber for Christmas. It’s not quite the same thing, of course. You don’t get to perfect all that crisp footwork, and you don’t develop the same defensive instincts you would in working with a real person. But it’ll have to do for this pauper, for now. My pen will be my sword!

You can catch up with Kim on her site KimWrites.com and read her blog here. She can also watch her video series, Kim Weighs In. Watch the book trailer for Read My Hips below.

Disclosure: Wendy is a friend of mine and she gave me an advanced review copy of this book for free. I’ve done work on her web site. She also let me sleep at her apartment one weekend during a Wordcamp conference and left the unfinished manuscript in the room I slept in, which I was very tempted to read, but I restrained myself from doing because I apparently have ethics. One night that weekend we watched the orangutan episode of Little House on the Prairie. All of which I say to be totally transparent, not to be pretentious or drop names. (Whoops! Could you pick that up for me?)

Sometimes we have nostalgia for a life that wasn’t ours or for things that never happened. I felt this way recently when watching the 90′s TV show My So-Called Life on Netflix streaming and found myself back in the world of introspective Angela Chase who looked like she dyed her hair with Kool-Aid, illiterate Jordan Catalano who really knew how to lean, and openly gay Rickie Vasquez who loved guyliner long before Adam Lambert did. I remembered how much I loved that show and the guilt I felt for only watching it on MTV after it was cancelled, even though I wasn’t a Neilson family and my viewing habits probably had no bearing on the ratings. I started to wonder what happened to those characters. Did Rickie get to stay with Mr. Katimski? Did Angela’s dad sleep with Hallie Lowenthal? Did Brian Krakow ever get laid? Why did we call all these people by their first and last names? Who the hell was Tino?

Then I had to remind myself that, oh, by the way, NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WERE REAL. But I really cared about them, and in some ways they were more real to me than people who really existed that I never met. I found myself longing for something I could not really name. I think this is how Wendy McClure felt about the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder which she writes about in her book The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. Although Laura Ingalls Wilder really did exist and her books are based on her experiences growing up in the Midwest during the late 19th century, some of it is fictionalized and some parts are smoothed over or edited to leave out inconvenient truths. How much and by whom is one subject of Wendy’s book. Even if the stories aren’t 100% true, Wendy’s love for the books and the seemingly simpler life they portrayed is very real.

The book follows Wendy as she visits the different homes mentioned in the books. She also explores the emotions and questions these trips stir in her. Although I know of the Little House books, I honestly can’t recall if I read any of them. I never watched the TV series because it started before I existed and ended before I had the proper language skills to understand it. (That doesn’t really matter since Wendy’s book focuses on the books, not the show.) Despite all that, I was able to follow Wendy’s book without confusion, though I’m sure people who know the books will understand many of the references better than I did.

I had a meta experience reading this book because I know several of the people and places Wendy talks about. I can imagine her boyfriend Chris speaking the dialogue that’s written. I can visualize the kitchen where she churns butter. I know who the friends are that she mentions in Wisconsin. So, just as Wendy had entered the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I too had entered the world of Wendy McClure! I didn’t have any groundbreaking realizations about that though, and I doubt I could sell a book proposal about it. Sorry, Wendy.

I could give you a detailed review of the book, but I thought what was more important was the self-reflection it sparked in me (because really, let’s make this all about me). Even though I enjoyed the book and I recommend it, I also know that I would never take the trip Wendy took for three reasons:

1) The closest I’ve come to caring about prairie life was playing The Oregon Trail on the computer. I believe it sucked to have to churn your own butter, live in fear of Indian raids, and to make your own clothes instead of outsourcing them to China.
Please note that despite all this I liked Wendy’s book because her love of this world comes through, even if she admits it’s somewhat romanticized. Instead, I’ve always preferred fantasy or science fiction that lets you look into the future or imagine magical lands with dragons or hot vampires that are so into you.

2) My grandparents had a farm and visiting it sort of sucked.
My mom’s parents lived in a small town in southern Indiana. My grandfather was a salesman at Sears and my grandmother raised 14 children. A few years after my mother left home, they had saved enough money to buy a farm outside of town. It was their lifelong dream, which goes to show that some people’s dreams are other people’s nightmares. As a kid I assumed that every kid’s grandparents owned a farm, as if this were part of everyday life, like school and church and birthday parties at Chucky Cheese.

My grandparents’ farm was larger and better built than a log cabin, but their life was much closer to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life than mine ever was. They sold eggs from the front porch. They grew their own green beans and ate chickens they raised. They bailed hay. Also, their house was kinda gross. My grandmother let dirty dishes collect over every square inch of the counter, giving off a wretched smell. The bathroom was ostensibly better than an outhouse, but the toilet was old and smelled weird and I would do my business as quickly as possible and escape before the toilet was done flushing. Oh, and the home-grown green beans and chicken I mentioned? They tasted funky. I hated them. This was either because kids can be finicky eaters or because I’d been raised on frozen green beans and hormone-injected chickens, so my expectations of how these foods should tasted differed from what was served on my plate. I also hated that the farm fields were full of cow pies. My younger brother evidently hated it more, which was demonstrated when he barfed after seeing a cow take a dump. This made my grandfather keel over laughing so hard that I’m surprised it didn’t trigger the stroke that killed him several years later.

There were good things about the farm too. Seeing the box of baby chickens with newborn fuzz made it worth visiting the creepy basement with stairs as steep as a Mayan ruin. I enjoyed picking blackberries by the fence and licking the juice off my sticky fingers. A photo of me sitting on a tractor totally impressed my fourth-grade crush who was evidently into farm implements. My grandmother’s angel-food cake rocked my world of childhood obesity. I thought my grandfather was the most awesome badass before I even knew the word “badass” when he tossed a chicken across the coop to inspect the eggs in her nest. I didn’t know you were allowed to toss chickens! (My grandpa was a total trendsetter because he was doing this long before Angry Birds came out.) There are also many hilarious stories of trauma induced by farm life, like the time my aunt was chased by a chicken with its head cut off, squirting blood everywhere.

All of which is to say, I’ve seen farm life. I haven’t lived it, but I have a general impression of it. That impression has left me with no desire to go on a homesteading tour of the country.

3) I have lived in many houses, gone back to visit them, and similarly felt bittersweet about it, just as Wendy did and that Laura Ingalls Wilder evidently felt herself on a return trip. No need to relive that.
Wendy states in the book that she lived in the same house her whole childhood. There is part of me that wishes I could say the same, but instead I lived in at least six houses during my childhood in four different states. I also resided in an indeterminate number of apartments and one lake house between escrow transactions, one of which had a carpeted stairway that my older brother and I would body surf down despite the rug burns. No, I wasn’t an army brat. If examined, the reason for the multiple moves would resemble cracks in the fuselage of a plane representing our life that signal the impending destruction of the craft which came with the abrupt end of my parents’ marriage, as if we all got sucked out a gaping hole in midair and were left spinning and tumbling toward the earth unexpectedly.

But enough about that! I’ve lived a lot of places and I’ve gone back to visit those houses in Maryland and Indiana and Kentucky, though never the one in Virgina. I too felt that something was missing, like Wendy felt at many of Laura’s old homes. It’s as if I came looking for my eight-year-old self playing in the backyard but instead could only find my twenty-something self idling in the car outside like a stalker. Yeah, the shutters had been painted and they’d put up a fence and some stranger was sleeping in my old bedroom, but that’s not what was really different. What was different was me.

The things that remind me of my childhood are not the buildings I used to live in. It’s seeing spiky gumballs from a Sweetgum tree on my daily walk and remembering how they’d hurt my bare feet when I played in the backyard in Virginia. It’s seeing She-Ra in my DVD queue and remembering the year my parents spent searching for the Flutterina doll (who wasn’t even a major character) that I wanted desperately because her wings REALLY fluttered and that I wanted even more because I’d gifted one at a birthday party for a girl who’s name I can’t remember. It’s making brownies from scratch and remembering how my mom would let me stir in the sugar and flour as I stood on a chair to reach the counter although the flour made the batter so thick my little six-year-old arms could never finish stirring it all the way in.

I think that’s what Wendy was looking for when she set off on this journey and wrote this book. She was looking for a connection to the past that she hadn’t actually lived, but that she had often visited, as if it really did lay across a misty river. She was trying to travel back in time, but you can’t really do that. You can only get messages from the past left behind in books and letters that weren’t addressed to you, though really they were.

But that’s the best part about books, when someone reaches out from the page, grabs your hand, and takes you on a trip to someplace you didn’t know you wanted to go or to someplace you know far too well. It’s when you see yourself in them and become their friend, even if they never had a chance to become yours because of time or distance.

I think it’s ok to have nostalgia for a past that wasn’t yours. I think it’s ok to wonder what Angela Chase is up to or where the little house in the big woods really was. Books and TV and movies are the closest thing we have to a collective memory. You might remember Jordan Catalano too, and we could talk about how pretty his eyes were just as if we’d all really gone to high school together. It’s not that different from reminiscing with people I did go to high school with about that time someone set a fire in the girls’ bathroom on the last day of senior year. We remember it all like it was real, just as I remember Miss Agnes who lived next door and bought me sticker books, and my friend Stacey from two houses down who was allowed to stay up after her parents went to bed and scared the ever living God out of me by screening Gremlins at a sleepover. How do I know that any of it was real except that I remember it?

It’s ok to live in the now but also to know that one day this will be your past and someone else’s period drama. It’s ok to reminisce about something that didn’t really happen to you, but felt like it did. But if you do go digging through the past, be prepared to find out things you don’t really want to know, like learning that the adult you got bored with She-Ra five minutes into an episode. Be prepared to learn things you do want to know, like discovering Gremlins is actually pretty damn funny. Be prepared to wonder if it’s better to selectively remember just the good bits.

Know that those places you visit might seem smaller because you’ve become bigger. Sometimes you have to go there, though. Sometimes you need to know where you came from so you can better see where you are and who you love.

Sometimes you have to live The Wilder Life.

Disclaimer: I received the dresses reviewed in this post for free from Igigi in exchange for publishing a review and hosting a giveaway.

Last year I reviewed an Igigi dress and a few months later a reader commented to tell me she found the perfect wedding dress there. That made me feel rather good, particularly because I know how hard it can be to find pretty clothes when you’re plus-sized.

Igigi sponsored my friend Wendy‘s annual Weetacon party again this year and gave the larger ladies another opportunity to get a free dress in exchange for a review. Or at least that’s what Wendy told us when we sent in our top three picks a month beforehand. Then she took us out to the parking lot on the first night of Weetacon and pulled out all three dresses we’d each requested from her magical SUV which like a TARDIS must have been bigger on the inside than the outside. There was much squeeing and jumping up and down and the experience was as close to the “Favorite Things” episode of Oprah that I will ever get.

Anyway, you too might get to have a mini-Oprah moment if you enter the giveaway explained at the bottom of this post, but first here’s my review.

First choice: Carmella Lace Dress
Retail: $176

I’ve never owned a wrap dress before, so getting into this thing was a bit like a Westerner trying to put on a kimono. The ribbon goes through a hole in the dress and then you have to wrap it around in a certain way and tie it in the back, which was a bit tricky, but looked great once you figured it out. They say wrap dresses flatter every figure, and I think that’s true. I’m glad to have a little black dress in my wardrobe that I can wear in the evenings, or God forbid, to a funeral. (Nobody die on me, please. I don’t need to wear this dress that much.) I like the lace and the way the fabric flows when I twirl. I love to twirl. Do you love to twirl? It makes me feel like a six-year-old again in the best possible way.

(There is a scene in You’ve Got Mail where young Meg Ryan and her mom twirl in the book shop and it is my favorite scene in that whole movie.)

Second choice: Claire de Lune Dress
Retail: $152

This dress reaches almost to the floor, which makes it the longest dress I’ve ever owned. It made me feel like I was wearing a ball gown and I was dressed up to go somewhere super fancy. It would probably be good in the winter since it covers you up so well. I think it’s designed for a big-chested girl, but because this is also a wrap dress the top parts can be pulled tighter so there isn’t a gaping canyon of fabric falling off your chest. The ties in the back are really long, so be sure you tie a bow with big loops so you’re not dragging them on the floor.

This dress also twirls well.

Third Choice: Isobel Dress in Garnet
Retail: $112. On sale: $89.99

Ok, this is a pretty dress that looks great on the web site, but it did not look good on me. Had I paid attention to the “Shape Stylist” tab on their web site, I would have realized this and requested something else. I am a triangle shape and the site clearly says which shapes this dress flatters, but a triangle is not among them. Igigi knows best! Wiser women than I shall listen to them! So, instead of showing you how I looked in this dress, here’s how Wendy McClure looked because she is totally rocking it:

That said, I love the red color and the fabric is a nice and soft. It’s made from a jersey fabric, so I bet you could wear this all day and be perfectly comfortable. This dress doesn’t twirl well, but it has many other fine features.

Because there were several ladies running around in Igigi dresses, I also got to experience that Damn-it-why-didn’t-I-order-THAT-dress moment. For whatever reason, the Boulangerie Wrap Dress didn’t pop for me on their web site, but looked really great on the ladies who got it. In a perfect world I’d trade the Isobel dress in for that, but I already got several awesome dresses for free, so I will shut the hell up.

The Igigi web site does a good job of photographing their dresses from several angles and letting you see close ups. They’ve also got videos of models walking in the dresses for a few items, which gives you an even better sense of how they look and flow in real life. I used their size chart, but I think I should have requested the next smaller size than I chose. There you go. I’m not as fat as I think I am. It didn’t matter that much on the wrap dresses because you can adjust them. The Isobel dress isn’t a wrap dress, so the looseness in the wrong places was another reason it didn’t look so great on me.

Honestly, I probably would not drop $176 or even $152 on a dress no matter how pretty it is, but I’m kind of a cheapskate (which you know if you’ve read this blog, ever). I usually go to Macy’s and might find something in the $50-$80 range. But Macy’s does not have the fantastic selection Igigi has. I usually end up with only 1 or 2 real choices there, whereas Igigi has dozens of flattering options. Their clothes are really well made too, so if you do ante up for one of their dresses you definitely get what you pay for.

Giveaway! (What you really came here for.)
Igigi is letting me give away a $50 gift certificate to one of my readers. Anyone can enter, but if you live outside the US please be aware of Igigi’s shipping prices to your country. To enter, leave a comment below describing which item on the Igigi site you would wear to Prince Charles William and Kate Middleton’s wedding and why. One winner will be selected randomly. Giveaway ends at 11:59 Eastern time on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. Due to misbehavior in the comments, I decided to end the contest early at 11:40am Eastern time on Friday, April 1, 2011. My apologies to everyone who did behave respectfully.

There are also several other opportunities to win a $50 Igigi gift certificate on the other Weetacon attendee’s web sites. Here are the links so far:

• Susan reviews the Tres Chic and Bridgitte Sculpted dresses
• Jessi reviews the Igigi Estrella, Tres Chic and Florentia dresses
• Beth reviews the Audrey, Champs-Elysee, and Cybelle dresses
• Cari reviews the Vicenza Top, Montparnasse Dress, and Masterpiece Top
• Melinda Rae reviews the Tres Chic, Jackie 2-in-1, and Carmella Lace dresses
• Deb reviews the Elianne Top in Purple Magic and the Epiphany Top in Magenta
• Andrea reviews the the Carmella Lace Dress, the Bardot Pencil Skirt, and the Boulangerie Wrap Dress in Richelieu Blue

ETA at 11:00pm: Here are a few more links:

• Suzanna Danna reviews the Ingocnito Pencil Skirt, Tailored Pencil Skirt, and Sachi Printed Wrap Dress in Royal)
• Fredlet reviews the Francesca in black, Boulangerie in Richelieu blue, and Isobel in garnet dresses

ETA on 3/30/11 at 1:30pm: And a few more:

• Wendy McClure reviews the Isobel Dress in Garnet, and the Tres Chic in plum and black and white
• Veronica reviews the Mosaic dress

You can watch the @Weetacon twitter feed for announcements of any more reviews/chances to win. Actually, just visit this page for a complete list of the giveaways.

BTW, if you do buy an Igigi dress, tell them Weetacon sent you! They’ve been a very gracious sponsor, so I’d like for them to know their promotions are actually working.

The CHOCOLATE & VICODIN blog book tour reaches the end of the line today with its last stop. Check out the interview and review at Sheesh with The Merry, who you might remember better from Cranky Fitness. Big thanks to everyone who took part in the tour!

The blog tour has been lots of fun, and their are still a few opportunities to win a free book if you visit the posts listed in the full blog tour itinerary here. In addition to the blog tour, several other blogs have been kind enough to post reviews and host their own giveaways. You can find out more about them on this post and this post on my news blog.

Don’t forget, you might win an iPod or gift certificates to Amazon or iTunes simply by spreading the word about the book here!

I’ve got one last radio interview scheduled for tomorrow on LA’s public radio station KPCC during the Patt Morrison Program at 5:40pm EST or 2:40pm PST local time. Please note the time as it has been changed from the time I originally announced. I also want to thank Flyleaf Books in advance for letting me use their landline for the interview. They are the shiznit.

After that, the bulk of my book promotions will be done and I can catch up on all the web design work I’ve been neglecting. (Dear clients, I am so, so, so, so, so sorry.) I’m grateful for all the press and media attention the book has gotten, but talking about my headache so much has really made the headache flare up. So, I will be sorta glad to go back to my life of relative anonymity and quietly read all the nice emails chronic pain sufferers have been sending me. Those messages alone make the book worth writing.

Thank you to everyone who has helped support the book! I really appreciate it.

Disclosure: I was sent a free copy of this cookbook to review. Also, Roni is a cool chica I’m proud to call my friend.

Roni from Green Lite Bites (and a couple zillion other sites) published her first cookbook this year. It’s called Favorites from the First Three Years and contains—you’ll never guess!—her favorite recipes from the first three years of food bloggin’.

I’ve got to give Roni big props because her cookbook is beautiful. She put it together while raising a kid, incubating a new one, planning a blog conference and working for herself full-time, so honestly she’s making us all look bad. It’s got lots of large, full-color photos that make you want to eat the pages. Each recipe also has three tips or suggestions for variations on the recipe in case you don’t like one of the ingredients or just want to switch things up. She even calculated the calories, fat and fiber information for each recipe, which means she’s good at cooking and math. I also enjoyed the short introduction that explained what cooking and healthy eating has meant to her. The only thing that could have made this cookbook better is if it had come with the food it tells you how to make.

The cookbook is a paperback coming in at 80 pages, but she packs a lot of content into those pages. I prefer to have a smaller cookbook where you actually make the recipes instead of having a big, fat, heavy one that you use for 2 or 3 meals at most. You can buy the cookbook here for $19.95 and also view some companion videos. Tell ‘em PastaQueen sent you! (It won’t get you a discount or anything, but I sure will feel special!)

A few weeks ago I had lunch with Jennifer Joyner, author of the recently released Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. It turns out she lives in Fayetteville and I live in Chapel Hill, which means we’re only ninety-something miles apart, or 1 hour and 36 minutes according to Google Maps.

We had a good chat about the publishing industry, weight, and incompetent medical workers. (While I related to many of the fat-girl experiences she writes about in the book, it was her encounter with bumbling Nurse Bob before surgery that really hit home for me. He must be the same guy who assisted with a CT scan I had last year that I’m amazed didn’t turn me into a mutant superhero.)

Joyner’s book is a memoir about her life as a food addict. After years of morbid obesity, encroaching health problems like gestational diabetes, and lack of success with other weight-loss options, she decides to go through with gastric bypass surgery. This comes with its own complications and leads to a battle with dependence on painkillers in which she switches one addiction for another.

The book is very frank about the embarrassing moments and low self-esteem Joyner’s weight problem caused her throughout her life. She’s also honest about the fact that weight-loss surgery didn’t solve all her problems, and actually gave her ones she didn’t have before. So, it’s not necessarily a happy-feel-good book, but it does revel the emotional truth of Joyner’s life well. If you’ve ever felt bad about being overweight, you’ll probably relate to a lot of what she went through.

It also provides insight into how food can be an addiction for some people. After her surgery, she has a craving for Doritos and ends up eating an entire bag, causing her intense pain, heart palpitations, dizziness and sweating. Then, the next day, she eats another bag, despite the experience the day before. This behavior leads her to the revelation that she has an urge to abuse food that goes beyond normal hunger.

It’s also good to see a memoir that talks about weight-loss surgery, and covers both the good and bad aspects of the procedure. There are lots of weight-loss memoirs in stores, but so few of them are based on experiences with gastric surgery, which seems odd considering how many people are having that procedure these days.

You can find out more about the book on Jennifer Joyner’s web site. You can also read a Salon.com personal essay she wrote recently in which she shares how food addiction has shaped her life. And despite the negative self-image she writes about having for so many years, she came across as a positively nice lady! You can buy her book on Amazon.com here.

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, Jennifer was going to buy me lunch, but I used a coupon for a free meal instead, so she didn’t end up buying me anything. Which was sort of stupid of me in retrospect because I could have gotten a free lunch then and used the coupon later. I am a foolish girl, but at least that means there is no ethical shadiness about this review.

The title of this book made me wary at first, but I decided to give it a chance because I’d heard a segment on This American Life with the author a few years ago that I liked about the topic of his last book, Money for Nothing: One Man’s Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions. Thankfully, what I got was a light-hearted, self-deprecating, weight-loss memoir written from the male perspective, which is certainly the under-represented gender in weight-loss tales.

Ed Ugel’s weight problem becomes an issue when he gains 43 pounds in a year due to depression brought on by various life problems. After his wife complains of his loud snoring, he’s diagnosed with sleep apnea. His weight-loss is largely motivated by the desire to be rid of the CPAP machine that helps him breathe through the night, but is so uncomfortable and odd-looking that it frightens his daughter.

We follow Ed as he slowly eases into his new routines, loses weight over the holidays, suffers relapses and binges, pretends to order for two in the drive-through, but keeps seeing his trainer, playing racquetball, and struggling through it all in a way most anyone who’s lost weight can relate to. During the process, Ed realizes he’s a food addict who uses food like a drug. Ed is also a foodie, which his dietician says gives him the best chance of keeping the weight off because foodies have the skills to make their meals taste good. Ed’s comments about food addiction vs. being a foodie, and how one doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the other, were particularly interesting.

Superficially, this book reminded me of Jen Lancaster’s Such a Pretty Fat, which is another book that was pitched on the promise that the author would lose weight for it, though Lancaster and Ugel have their own distinct styles. Specifically, there are a lot more poop jokes in this one (it must be a guy thing?), and I admit I skipped the section about colon cleansing because I DID NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Ed was super-kind to take the time to answer a few questions for me below. You can buy I’m With Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks at Amazon and visit EdwardUgel.com for more reviews, upcoming book events and more.

Speaking as one author of a weight-loss memoir to another, did you obsess over looking as thin as possible in your author photo like I did? I found myself Googling the phrase “how to look thin in photos” the night before my picture was taken.

Oh. Lord. Yes. Not to mention, once I heard that I was booked on the Today Show…with the HD camera—nightmare. I thought long and hard about wearing a burka to the taping—that or hiring an actor to play the part of Ed Ugel for the national TV audience. Still, in the end, my book is about learning to accept that person looking back at you in the mirror every morning, no matter how many chins he/she might have. Doing all this media and book tour appearances has actually been quite cathartic. Standing there in front of people and saying, “This is me, for better or worse,” has been a long time coming. Frankly, it feels great.

How did you choose the title I’M WITH FATTY? At first glance I thought the title might be intended to bash fat people, but after I read the book I saw it more as a reflection of the negative feelings you had about yourself after your bout with depression and the 40-something-pound weight gain that came with it.

The title of the book is a hard one to wrap my arms around. That word, “FATTY” is so polarizing, so deeply rooted in a lot of folks psychology—especially mine. It’s meant to shock you, to catch your eye, to make you wonder what the heck this book is about. Moreover, it’s also a recognition, an admission of the character I’m often guilty of playing. Hey, look at me, the lovable chubby guy…. If I call myself Fatty, maybe you won’t say it and thus, you won’t hurt me. So, I’ve been with Fatty for a long time. I guess it’s safe to say he’s my alter ego.

Frankly, I think the title of the book may turn some people away from giving it a shot, which is obviously unfortunate. Moreover, I have a hard time with my daughters knowing that word in another context other than a negative one. You see, in our house, we don’t use that word, “fat.” I’m very sensitive to people throwing around a word that is hurtful to many folks—including people in my own life.

In short, I have a certain amount of guilt/baggage about the title. I hope my girls, when they’re older, will understand what I was trying to do with the title. But, it was NEVER meant to bash, hurt, or embarrass heavy people. To the contrary. Heavy folks are my people. And, quite frankly, I feel very protective of people with weight issues.

While you don’t explicitly say this in the book, it’s implied that you sold a book proposal to write about your year of weight loss, which is why the Fatty Project became your job. Accountability is one of the pillars of weight loss, but did this additional pressure to lose weight help or hinder you? Both?

I think it both helped and hindered my year. I was well aware of the fact that this was a very white collar approach to this issue. Most folks can’t take a week, much less a year, to focus on their health. Throw in a personal trainer and nutritionist, and expensive health club etc, and you really run the risk of making my story un-relatable to the average bear out there working full time, trying to make ends meet.

Still, I went to great lengths to make sure folks knew that this book wasn’t a “how to” or a guide to weight loss etc. If anything, this book is a how-not-to. This is a memoir, my story, my year. It’s a candid, unfiltered look into the chaos of my relationship with food and myself. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

What I wanted people to relate to wasn’t my method of weight loss, but rather my story, my situation, my emotional mindset. I think that’s why folks are having such a strong reaction to the book. No one is saying that they want to achieve their weight loss goals in the same way I did. They’re laughing at how much of themselves they see in my story.

You write about how your weight was causing tension in your marriage, particularly because of the snoring and sleep apnea it was causing. I sometimes have readers who ask me how they can encourage a spouse to lose weight or at least get them to be supportive of their own weight loss attempts. Do you have any advice about that based on your own experiences?

Do your very best to marry my wife.

I’m lucky to have a patient, psychologically minded, compassionate loving, wife. However, I’ve often said that she’s in quite an unenviable situation. No one wants to police their partner about what they eat. It’s a very touchy thing, telling your husband or wife that they don’t need another serving of potatoes. Those kind of comments are often shaming, embarrassing, and cause for either party to find themselves being stabbed in the hand with a fork.

What finally got me going in the right direction was when my wife was able to show me that my eating was becoming a medical situation. It took her off the hook, so to speak. She wasn’t just nagging me. She was trying to save my life. Finally…with a certain amount of kicking and screaming, I let her help me help myself.

The weight-loss blogging world is predominantly female, much like the Weight Watchers meeting you attend at the end of the book. Do you have any advice for guys who are hesitant to join groups like Weight Watchers or to start weight-loss blogs?

In the few weeks since the book was released, I’ve heard from a few handfuls of men who were drawn to the book because they’d heard it was funny, or had it handed to them by their spouses who all but demanded that they read it. To my great surprise and pleasure, men have ended up walking away with a lot more than they’d bargained for. Men are saying that its both funny and relatable. But they’re also thanking me for giving voice to these issues from a male perspective. There’s a shocking lack of male voices in this arena when it comes to published books etc.

Yes, issues of weight loss and body-image have always been dominated by female writers, TV personalities. But, I think that’s been a disservice to men and women alike. I’ve been praised for giving a male voice to this issue, but there are several male weight loss bloggers who I’ve become aware of, that are writing interesting, thought provoking stuff about their own journeys in this space.

As far as men joining a group like Weight Watchers, all I can say is that it changed my world view about this entire issue. And, I couldn’t have been more wrong in my belief going in that Weight Watchers was a place for women. To the contrary. Men are not only welcome, but we also have a lot to learn about our own body image issues from those very same women with whom we believed we had so little in common.

By the end of your project, you’ve learned new things about yourself, like that you’re a food addict. Do you think you would have come to these realizations without having written the book? Or did writing serve as some sort of therapy, much like weight-loss blogging can be?

Incredible therapy! As you well know, writing, especially long form (books), is a very lonely enterprise. To say the least it’s a marathon and you literally need to train yourself to be able to do it. However, one of the benefits of spending all this time alone is having the luxury of being able to really think about this issue from all the angles. You’re literally being paid to think. And, despite all the things I’ve said about it being lonely and missing having colleagues etc., what a wonderful gift, to be able to look inward like that about something that’s so important to me. Was it therapy? Yes. Would I have come to these conclusions on my own? Perhaps in time. Although, looking at yourself and telling yourself the truth is not one of my strengths. I think I needed the time this book gave me to find my way to those deeper questions…much less the answers.

Ok, seriously, how did you lose weight over the holidays?

Can you believe that? Insane. For me, the holidays came at a time when all hell was breaking loose on this project. As you know from reading the book, I didn’t get out of the gates very well. Frankly, I’d fallen on my tushy a few times and, by the time the holidays came around, I was running out of mulligans. I’d run out of excuses and time. I simply had no choice.

Thanks again for your time, Ed! Good luck with all your book promotions!

Disclosure: I received a free Omron GOsmart Pace/Distance tracker for this review, as well as a free t-shirt, water bottle and ear buds.

I figured if I walked up the big $&%^-ing hill to the bakery shop, I deserved to have a cupcake at the top, so I set off on my walk. Then I turned around on my front porch, went back inside and grabbed the Omron GOsmart Pace/Distance Tracker I was sent to review because this seemed like the perfect time to see if it could actually measure my pace, distance, steps, calories burned, and all that fancy stuff it claimed to do.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m not really a pedometer person, but I was interested in this device because it calculates your pace, which I *am* interested in. Over the past year I haven’t been running, but I’d like to get back into a run/walk routine now that I’ve moved to a walkable neighborhood. (Yes, I know I made up the word “walkable.” I don’t care if Merriam-Webster gets pissed at me. Nevermind! Merriam-Webster says it *is* a word. Microsoft Word is in the wrong here, with its erroneous red squiggly.) It’s always encouraging to get positive feedback, so I wanted to track my pace and hopefully be encouraged when I get better and faster times.

When I turned on the pedometer pace/distance tracker, I had to go through a quick setup where I entered the time, my height, weight and other info which helps the pedometer tracker estimate how many calories I’ve burned. What I loved was that by entering my height, it estimated my stride length for me automatically. I really don’t have the patience to get out a measuring tape and try to calculate the length of my average pace. It makes me have flashbacks to marching band where I had to learn eight-by-ten and six-by-ten stride lengths and no amount of practicing in a marked-off section of my basement could make me get it right. Marching band is hardcore y’all! Don’t be fooled by the silly tassels on the hats!

Once all that info was entered, I had the option of using the device as a straight-up pedometer that would track my steps, distance traveled and calories burned. But, if you hold down the “Mode” button for two seconds, you go into workout mode where it will also track the amount of time you’ve been walking and calculates your pace for you. It’s got a clip so you can attach it to your waist, or you can just put it in your pocket and pull it out occasionally to check your results as you’re walking. There’s a 7-day memory too which saves your previous workouts so you can compare your results.

So, I huffed and puffed and made it to the top of the hill, which my pedometer tracker said was 1.3 miles. I checked later with my car’s odometer and this seems to be a fairly accurate measurement. However, I probably should have paid less attention to my pedometer tracker and more attention to the red exclamation mark that popped up on the weather app on my new smartphone. It started to get dark on my walk up the hill. I heard the crash of thunder in the distance and the winds started whipping up so hard I got smacked with a dry leaf right in the eye. OUCH! All of which meant—horror of horrors—I had to turn around before I made it to the cupcake shop. IT WAS AWFUL!! I walked up this huge $%&^-ing hill thinking I’d get a hit of frosting and moist, velvety cake as a reward, and all I got was a chance to do my pedometer pace/distance tracker review. *sigh* I made it back down the hill safely, and was able to note my pace time increased because going down a hill is much easier than going up it. I was also motivated to walk faster when I feared an imminent lightning strike. Luckily, I made it back to my apartment literally right as the rain began to fall.

Overall, the Omron Pace/Distance Tracker is a handy little device. I had to refer to the manual to complete the setup, but I was able to figure out the device pretty quickly after that. You can also visit TeamGOsmart.com, a site that’s designed to be community for their users. They’re pitching their other new product there too, the Omrom Pocket Pedometer with Activity Tracker. If you buy a device, you get a free 8-week training program too that you can use on the Active Trainer web site. I signed up for one and it sends you e-mail reminders of your scheduled exercise for the day, and also lets you enter your results online. I wasn’t a huge fan of the site’s interface, which could have been cleaner and a bit better organized, but hey, it’s free, so I shouldn’t complain.

Ok, now as a reward for reading to the bottom of the review, here’s the information regarding the giveaway. You can win your own pace/distance tracker, which retails for $49.99, as well as an Omron T-shirt, water bottle and earbuds. To enter, leave a comment on this entry telling me where you’d walk with your pace/distance tracker. Contest ends at 11:59pm on Sunday, August 1 July 25, 2010. Winner will be chosen randomly. Only one entry per person.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

You remember Dara Torres, right? She’s the forty-something, mom who has six-pack abs. You know, the one who swam her way to three Olympic medals two years ago, beating kids who hadn’t been born yet when she attended her high school prom. Depending on your outlook, she might inspire you to be fit despite your age or just make you feel depressed that you’re not in as good of shape as her. If it’s the latter, you now have a better chance at trying to keep up. Dara’s revealed some of the secrets of her training regimen in a book titled Gold Medal Fitness: A Revolutionary 5-Week Program written in collaboration with writer Billie Fitzpatrick.

The book has a conversational tone that intermixes Dara’s personal experiences with the technical information of her routine, making it an easy read. The program is based on what Dara’s learned about training smarter as she ages, and thus is targeted at women. As a swimmer, Dara’s program is focused on creating a lean yet strong body that is capable of explosive bursts of strength. The first section, “You Can Do It!” serves as a mini-pep talk and covers the mental attitude you’ll need as well as reviewing some basic nutrition. The second section, “Your Body as a Power Source,” covers the meat of her plan divided into sections on strength, stretching, cardio, and recovery. If there is a “secret” to Dara’s plan, it seems to be the section about Ki-Hara stretching. This is a technique that stretches and strengthens your muscles at the same time. This is also the section that features lots of pictures of Dara demonstrating stretches, like this one, which made me wonder if the Torres table would be coming soon to IKEA:

And this one, where you could sprinkle salt on her and call her a pretzel:

Now, no one is promising that you’ll make the 2012 Olympic team by following this program, but it is filled with good advice. I really liked the positive tone that emphasized fitness over skinniness. Dara overcame an eating disorder in her twenties and as she says now, “I’m not a dieter. I don’t even like the word.” Dara also encourages you to find the part of yourself that enjoyed running around as a kid, when exercise wasn’t called exercise, it was just fun. Be aware that some of the exercises require gym equipment and a stability ball.

Dara was also kind enough to answer a few of my questions, which I emailed to her. You can also follow her on Twitter at @daratorresswims. That’s where Dara tweeted that she will sign your book if you mail it to her with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The address is 12441 Royal Palm Blvd; Coral Springs, FL 33065.

Q: For people who aren’t naturally athletic, it can be hard to imagine themselves achieving a fitness goal like running a 5K. You’re naturally athletic, but is there something else that you started out naturally unskilled at which you’ve gotten better at by applying the same training philosophies you mention in the book?

Yes, I was naturally unskilled at volleyball when I first tried it but I have definitely gotten better at it.

I like that you stress the importance of taking recovery time in training. I’ve noticed that when some of my readers start a fitness plan, they are so excited that they’ll burn themselves out in the first few weeks and then abandon the plan. How do you occupy yourself on the days you aren’t working out? Can you recommend any ways to turn off feelings of guilt that some of my readers might feel on rest days?

I used to go for a run on my off days but eventually I realized that rest days are needed. You should not have feelings of guilt because rest and recovery enables your body to get stronger and leaner so you won’t break down.

I know you travel frequently to compete and to give motivational talks, like you tweeted about at HP this week. When I’m traveling for work or on vacation, I sometimes use it as an excuse to vacation from healthy choices. Do you have any advice on how to bring your inner athlete with you on the road so you continue to eat well and maintain a fitness routine?

It’s all about discipline. When you have been eating well and have maintained your fitness routine up to a point, it’s important to allow yourself to cave into your cravings, not over-indulge, but to give your body what it wants and needs. When you’re on vacation you should enjoy yourself, rest and recover. Just don’t allow yourself to fall out of a routine completely so you can remain motivated after vacation.

Many of my readers have said they developed body image problems when they were young which still stick with them today. As a mother of a young girl, do you worry about her forming a negative body image like so many women do? And if so, how to you hope to guide her towards a positive view of her body?

I think every parent probably worries about their children falling prey to low self esteem or forming a negative body image. You have to reiterate to them that what they see on TV and in magazines isn’t real life. I try to remind my daughter that it’s not what is on the outside but what is on the inside that counts. It important to help her create confidence in her inner beauty.

You’re an inspirational figure who has motivated many people to exercise and take care of their bodies no matter what their age. Who motivates and inspires you?

My daughter motivates and inspires me the most, but I also draw a lot of my motivation from within myself.

Disclosure: I was given free access to the Workout Box training programs and was compensated for this review.

When I joined the YMCA a few years ago, the shiny workout machines scared me, the guys lifting weights intimidated me, and I still have no idea how to work a rowing machine. I ended up on the elliptical or the treadmill most nights, going nowhere literally and not making as much progress as I could have with a better training program.

Sometimes you just want a professional to tell you what to do. There are several ways you can get a training program together, either by hiring a certified trainer, buying a book, reading expert bloggers’ sites, or purchasing a plan from a web-based service like WorkoutBOX. I was asked to review the latter and decided to take them up on the opportunity. I’ve been craving a bit of variety in my program, but I don’t really want to hire a trainer, nor do I feel like I have the expertise to figure out a plan on my own.

Several aspects of the WorkoutBOX site are free, such as their forums, blog, exercise demonstrations, and training logs, though you do have to create a free registered account to access them. If you browse around for a bit, you’ll get a pop-up that advertises the meat of the site, the WorkoutBOX Training Programs. They currently offer six programs that fall into two categories: losing weight and gaining muscle. Within those two categories there are three programs, a beginner, intermediate, and advanced plan. Each plan takes six months to complete and is broken into four-week periods as illustrated in this graphic.

A video on the Getting Started page explained the difference between a workout and a training program. A workout is a collection of exercises for a single day’s work. A training program is a collection of workouts that changes frequently. This variety prevents your body from getting used to any single exercise, which helps you avoids plateaus and ends with better results. All the programs are developed by Travis Steffen. The team page states that he is a personal trainer and mixed martial artist who is completing a Masters in Exercise Science (pending spring 2010).

Once you purchase a program, you can log into the site and access all the information for every week of that program. You can click on tabs to view each day’s routine and you can click on links to display inline videos from the site PhysicalFitnet which demonstrate each exercise. There is also a print-friendly option so you can print out the program to bring to the gym. Please note, these programs are created for use with gym equipment, so it’s not something you can do solely in your living room.

Obviously, I wasn’t able to do all three-years worth of programs in the past week. Also, I’m not a certified trainer myself, so I can’t give any expert opinion on that angle of the plans. I did look through the programs though, and from my amateur perspective here are the good and the not-so-good things I saw:

The Good

• The videos are filmed on a solid background, making it easy to see the proper form the models are using.
• The three levels of expertise let you start with a program you’re comfortable with, instead of throwing you into the deep end of the pool. (That’s figuratively, not literally. There are no actual pool exercises :) ) For example, the beginner’s program starts you out on weight machines before moving to free weights, which are more effective but require better technique.
• Each four-week period starts with a summary of what goals you’ll be striving for this week and what changes to expect in your body. This lets you know why you’re doing what you’re doing instead of expecting you to mindlessly follow a program. Each exercise is also tagged with the area of your body you are targeting with that movement.
• There appears to be a genuine emphasis on becoming fit, not just thinner.
• The routines add reps, increase weight, and up your cardio through the weeks, keeping you challenged. The variety also helps fight boredom, which I have found to be one of the biggest enemies of weight loss and weight maintenance.
• They mandate rest periods and the occasional rest week to give your body time to rebuild after you’ve broken it down.
• They provide definitions of terms like set, reps, supersets etc. for newbies
• If you’re too intimidated to hire a trainer or can’t afford one, this is a cheaper alternative that will probably freak you out less.
• When I browsed through the forums, it appeared that everyone’s questions were answered by a WorkoutBOX team member. It looks like they have good support if you run into troubles.
• If you’re unsatisfied with the program, they offer a full refund.
• Once you buy the program, you get to keep it forever.

The Not-So-Good

• Although the programs are divided into two categories called “weight loss” and “muscle gain,” this seems to be code for “girls” and “boys.” The images on the weight loss pages are mostly of fit, slender women like her:
  
  and, granted, a few buff guys like him. (Can I lick him? Please?)
  

  Whereas the “muscle gain” section only had photos of ripped guys. I wish the muscle building programs were more female-friendly. Even the text says the muscle building routines will help you develop a “bigger and more defined physique,” but I don’t know too many ladies who want to get bigger. They do want a defined physique though. We can have one without too much of the other, right?

• The use of words like “toned” and phrases like “burn fat” annoy me. The word “toned” stirs up much controversy among female weight lifters and is really a whole entry unto itself, so I won’t get into that. But if anyone actually burned my fat, I’d run screaming to the closest emergency room with a burn unit. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if these words are proven effective in marketing, so I can’t ding them to harshly for it.
• The videos typically display an exercise from only one angle. It would be great if you could see at least two angles to make sure you’re using correct form. Since you presumably won’t have a trainer with you, this can be important so you don’t injure yourself.
• The programs are really, really light on nutritional information. I hope in the future they develop more content in that area. Eating the proper foods before and after a workout can greatly increase your results.

Each program is pitched as costing $1.50 a week, which really means you pay $38.95 for the program upfront and then use it for 26 weeks. That appears to be a decent price when you compare it to other programs available from trainers online. (Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulance Training program that I’ve seen mentioned on Skwigg’s site costs $77.00.) It sounds like they’re working on adding more programs in the future too. An iPhone app is also in the pipeline which you’d be able to use on your phone at the gym.

If you’re interested, you can sign up at WorkoutBOX. Let us know how it goes!