Skinny Bitch – Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
From the back cover -
Stop being a moron and start getting skinny! If you can’t take one more day of self-loathing, you’re ready to hear the truth: You cannot keep shoveling the same crap into your mouth every day and expect to lose weight.
Authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin are your new smart-mouthed girlfriends who won’t mince words and will finally tell you the truth about what you’re feeding yourself. And they’ll guide you on making intelligent and educated decisions about food. They may be bitches, but they are skinny bitches. And you’ll be one too – after you get with the program and start eating right.
For the record, I did not read this book because I need to lose weight. I read the book because I have a very close friend who made a lot of changes in her life (health-wise) after reading it, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
Warning – if you read this book, you WILL want to become a vegetarian. You may not necessarily become one (I’m not planning on it), but you will learn lots of disgusting facts about the meat, dairy, and poultry industries and these facts will definitely make you want to stay away from these foods entirely. The book advocates a completely vegan diet, and I’m not going to lie, they put together a pretty strong case for why anything BUT vegan is just stupid. I mean, I totally bought it and am strongly motivated to give up red meat, pork products, and chicken, and to cut back on my consumption of dairy. And if I read Skinny Bitch with the preconceived notion of reading it in order to change my lifestyle, I’d be starting my vegan detox right now. It is VERY compelling. Personally, I’m ok with the way I look and feel and don’t plan on going vegan. However, the book did motivate me to take a closer look at what I do eat, and I plan to cut way back on the amount of meat, refined sugar, and bleached flour I eat as well as increase the amount of fruits and vegetables I consume. And I’m giving up soda completely… at least I plan on it.
I really enjoyed reading this book, even though it made me really uncomfortable at times. I like that the premise of the book is that if you want to feel healthy and happy and look your best, all you need to do is eat natural, good-for-you foods, and exercise a reasonable amount. No crazy diets, no starvation, nothing like that… just live a healthy lifestyle. Always. The program they put forward is very doable, but it would take TONS of willpower the first few months, as it would be a radical change for most people (myself included). If you need a kick in the pants about what to eat and how to maintain a healthy weight, this is the book for you. But I am warning you – if you don’t want to know about what really goes on behind the scenes of food production, the book is probably not for you.
December 22, 2008 at 8:30 am
Great review. I could easily be a vegetarian, but my hubby and son are definitely carnivores. Since I don’t think I’ll be giving up meat any time soon, I think I’ll skip this one.
December 22, 2008 at 10:29 am
I’ve been hearing about this book everywhere. It’s not surprising that it took every sorority on my campus by storm but when one of my otherwise rational friends started telling me that osteoporosis is some kind of conspiracy by the dairy industry (we supposedly get more than enough calcium from other sources), I became incredibly skeptical. It sounds interesting, but how much of it is just compelling propaganda?
I guess I’m always skeptical of these diet fad books, but maybe I can try it out without fear of being converted to being vegan…
December 22, 2008 at 4:28 pm
This reminds me of something someone once told me that there are only 7 deadly foods – but I can only remember that sugar is one of them, oh – and processed ‘flour’. I had not heard that osteoporosis was a conspiracy, but I guess ‘they’ say anything these days.
December 22, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I thought I’d weigh in here, as a vegan who has read this book. I was SO grossed out by the language! I thought the authors went out of their way to be as crass as possible. And I don’t mean the talk about factory farming – I mean the swearing and bodily function talk.
The recipes and nutritional information were fairly typical of any vegan cookbook, so if you are curious about the diet you wouldn’t necessarily have to read this particular book.
As for me, I’ve been vegetarian for 15 years and vegan for the last 11. I’m 33 and my doctor says, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!” It might not work for everybody, but it does work for me – I’m in the 37th percentile for weight and I have no health problems.
December 22, 2008 at 8:19 pm
A vegan lifestyle does seem like a healthy way to go, provided you eat a variety of foods. I don’t think I can handle the behind-the-scenes stuff you said this book includes, though. I watched PETA’s “Meet Your Meat” last year, and it was horrifying.