The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude

by Carol Lay

Book Overview

Here's the skinny: After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting with pills, hypnosis, and ill-informed half-measures, Carol Lay finally shed her excess pounds and kept them off. Now this California cartoonist... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345504046
• ISBN13: 9780345504043
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.3" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

Funny and informative

This is a very entertaining book that gives very practical advice on how to take off weight and keep it off.

excellent procrastinator help

Has good ideas both new and old stated in a good and refreshing way. If you are a procrastinator as I am, any help is a good help. This was good enough to buy.......

A sane, practical message delivered in a pleasant way

I've read a number of books/articles/blogs over the years that focused on dispensing advice about how to lose weight. Some of them were unreasonable, extreme, or outright lies; you'll find none of that in Carol's book. Others gave quite sound advice, but in the most boring, preachy way possible; that's also not Carol's style. "The Big Skinny" manages to dispense sound advice in a way that's so interesting and entertaining that the important messages will slip into your mind without a fight. The book combines mini-autobiography, miscellaneous anecdotes, and direct practical advice in cartoon format. There's also a large section in the back that may be the most lovingly crafted guide to nutrition on Earth (hand-drawn/lettered calorie count charts for a wide variety of foods, etc.). While I can't think of a section I didn't enjoy and benefit from, the anecdotes from Carol's life (and those of her friends) have to be the best: they tended to shed light on the self-damaging behaviors we also sometimes fall into and show how ridiculous and counter-productive they are without a moment of lecturing. "The Big Skinny" is a fun read about an important and practical topic for many people. I recommend it highly.

Funny, fresh and fun way to approach permanent weight loss!

I loved reading this book. Carol Lay not only gives you many easy ways to control your eating, she points out that choosing healthy foods can be a pleasure--for example, fresh fruits are delicious, come in many attractive colors, are healthy and most are fairly low-calorie compared to processed foods. This book provides very detailed instructions on how to figure out how much you need to eat to get to and maintain a healthy weight without following some tedious and boring diet plan on which certain foods are never allowed. Carol's attitude towards changing how she eats is funny and catching. I would consider this book required reading for anyone who wants to change the way they eat but doesn't know how (or thinks healthy eating means they can't have excitingly delicious foods.) Thank you, Carol Lay!!

The funniest and most original diet book ever!

I bought this book with the hope that it would help me lose weight, and if laughing makes a person thinner, this book is the answer. THE BIG SKINNY has to be the most original concept for a diet book. In the form of a beautifully illustrated graphic novel, Carol Lay serves up her personal weight loss experiences in a humorous and poignant manner. However it's not all stories and laughs, she also dishes up tasty recipes, includes a plan based on calorie charts, simple exercise suggestions, and tops it off with gorgeous drawings of all the food groups. This is I believe, is one of a kind, a diet book that is fun to read.