by Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, M.D.
2002

What industry makes billions of dollars from products that, more than 90 percent of the time, don't work? The weight loss industry - not only do most diets and diet supplements fail, the blame is put on the consumer. If you're not able to whittle your figure down to the size of the latest supermodel-waif, then it's your fault. Anywhere else, this would drive business away in droves, but in the diet industry, the consumer returns time and time again for more punishment. There's something very, very wrong with this picture, and Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt addresses it in what may be the only book you'll ever need about weight loss.

Dr. Oliver-Pyatt's book comes from both research and personal experience - she is both a practicing psychiatrist and a recovered bulimic. We all know that images of rail-thin actress and buff manly physiques are unrealistic, but emotionally many of us feel less-than because of our inability to achieve a supposedly perfect body. And even worse, the bodies force-fed us by the media aren't even real - they're airbrushed and digitally modified into fantasyland. Our exposure to theses images have warped our own self-images to the extent that we don't even know how to eat normally anymore. Dieting has become so much the norm that we no longer can recognize true hunger. More than half of Americans have starved themselves into obesity. Fed Up is an indictment against the media and the diet industry. In place of diets, Dr. Oliver-Pyatt offers a way to return to a normal way of eating, a normal weight, and sanity.

This book isn't a new diet. It doesn't offer an eating plan. Instead, it shows you how to change your relationship with food so that you neither eat obsessively nor feel the need to diet anymore. It offers facts on why diets are bad for you physically and emotionally, and why they inevitably cause you to gain back what you lost (and then some). In ten steps, it helps you reassess your relationship with food and your body and gives you the tools to gain self-acceptance. If you are overweight - or hate the way your body looks - and are contemplating yet another diet, read this book first. It may change your life.

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