After a high-stress day, I came home to a box of ice cream in the mail. Was the universe sending me hate mail or a love letter? I couldn’t tell. I was sent the ice cream so I could sample it and write about it on the blog. I usually turn down offers like these because I don’t want to be seen as a corporate shill. However, she among us who can turn down chocolate fudge brownie is a better woman than I.

Only, the ice cream wasn’t at my front door. It was at the FedEx depot.

All I had was a claim sticker stuck to my door and the knowledge that a box of dry ice was sitting on a shelf somewhere near 90th street and I-69 (the highway of love). So, I drove about 8 miles, missed my turn and got lost in a corporate office park until I finally found the FedEx depot tucked behind a landscaping company that had a sign taped to their door which said, “This is not FedEx.”

When I [...]

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I got nine bug bites while reading Stephanie Klein’s book Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, so I felt fully immersed in her camping experience even though I never attended a fat camp myself. I suppose that’s what I get for reading on a wet bench in the park after a rain storm. But reading outside was the only way I could stop myself from eating after reading the vibrant descriptions of food in some of the earlier chapters. She has a way a with words. In fact, I stole picked up the phrase “happy weight” from this book which I used in an entry last week.

I was particularly happy to get a copy of Stephanie’s book because she is a blogger, writing regularly at Greek Tragedy. She’ll also be one of the keynote speakers at the BlogHer conference in two weeks, which I’m also speaking at, so hopefully we’ll bump into each other. Until then, the PastaQueen and the former Porno Queen conducted an email interview about her latest book, though you’ll have [...]

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Hungry Girl: Recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World by Lisa Lillien

I think I first became aware of the Hungry Girl web site and mailing list when someone linked to her Rome Apple + Diet Dr Pepper recipe. Cooking with soda seems so inherently wrong that I had to try it. The baked apple itself was rather underwhelming, but I liked the upbeat, fun attitude of the site and the cute illustrations. Plus, all the recipes are low-calorie and aimed at healthy eaters.

Earlier in the month I was trolling around the Amazon best-selling books list, by no means doing anything as self-centered and vain as checking my own book’s Amazon ranking every hour (it was more like every day), when I saw that Hungry Girl, aka Lisa Lillien, has a book out too. How cool! I love to see writers who started on the Internet getting books published. Only, it wasn’t coming out until today. Eager to get my hands on it, I threw what’s left of my weight around and [...]

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Today I’m starting a new series called “Reading burns calories” in which I’ll review health and fitness books. You need something to read on the treadmill, right? Actually, I’ve never mastered the art of reading on a treadmill. It’s hard to read words as I bounce along my merry way and I’m usually going so hard that it’s hard to ignore the suffering of my body and focus my brain on a magazine. I prefer to use running as my meditation time. However, if you do read on the treadmill, I’ll be reviewing books that you might like. I probably won’t be doing it too often though because I read even slower than I run.

The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women: Get Off Your Butt and On with Your Training by Dawn Dais

Full disclosure: My publisher, Seal Press, sent me this book for free a month or two ago asking me if I’d like to review it on the blog. Since my publisher has been nothing short of awesome and since I’m running half-marathon in May, [...]

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It’s the day after Thanksgiving, so I know you’re not hungry today and probably won’t be hungry for weeks, but I’m going to review Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin by Allen Zadoff anyway because his publicist sent me a copy of his book and asked me very nicely.

Full disclosure: I got a free copy of this book to read. After I got the book I learned it’s published by Da Capo Press which is part of the Perseus Books Group just like my own publisher Seal Press. However, I don’t know Allen, his editor, his book jacket designer, or even his therapist, though I probably know someone who knows someone who does, you know?

I really liked the cover. It went downhill from there.

Zadoff was a chronic dieter and overeater who topped out at over 350 pounds twelve years ago at the age of 28, before overcoming his food addiction to lose about 150 pounds. His book is “part memoir, part how-to,” but it’s heavier on the how-to. The chapter titles [...]

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