Lisa Ireland: Macmillan Australia $29.99
FOUR women, one challenge: to lose unwanted weight.
In all four cases obesity is an issue – but is it the root of the quartet’s problems or merely a scapegoat, deftly deflecting attention away from the truly dysfunctional aspects of unhappy lives?
While pregnant, Kat ate for two and then some, in the process accumulating a layer of padding that her body now, almost two years after daughter Ami’s birth, refuses to shed. Her boyfriend seems not to have noticed – then again, Josh hasn’t noticed much at all about Kat in recent months.
Cupcake chef Jewels and husband Matt have a pregnancy-related complication of a slightly different kind: being obese is compromising Jewels’ fertility. Although neither is dissatisfied with her appearance in its own right, their desperation to conceive is putting pressure on Jewels to downsize.
Isolated from family members and friends in her native London and left alone for ever-longer periods as her girlfriend pursues a high-flying career, Ellie has found companionship in food. Alone in a foreign country and with her professional aspirations as an art curator stagnating, she consoles herself by eating badly.
For GP and mother-of-three Mezz, being the ‘fat’ doctor in a small rural practice is mortifying. Surely her patients are judging her, she tells herself, just as the ponytailed women at the school gate seem to do as they eye off the father of her boys, the still-handsome Sean.
All four are adamant that they want to trim down yet before they can begin to make progress they must first acknowledge and then overcome the psychological hang-ups that are white-anting their efforts.
After meeting in an online weightloss forum and exchanging increasingly detailed revelations about their existences in Canberra, Melbourne, western Victoria and North Coast NSW, will Kat, Jewels, Ellie and Mezz become each other’s best supporters of worst saboteurs?
FOUR women, one challenge: to lose unwanted weight.
In all four cases obesity is an issue – but is it the root of the quartet’s problems or merely a scapegoat, deftly deflecting attention away from the truly dysfunctional aspects of unhappy lives?
While pregnant, Kat ate for two and then some, in the process accumulating a layer of padding that her body now, almost two years after daughter Ami’s birth, refuses to shed. Her boyfriend seems not to have noticed – then again, Josh hasn’t noticed much at all about Kat in recent months.
Cupcake chef Jewels and husband Matt have a pregnancy-related complication of a slightly different kind: being obese is compromising Jewels’ fertility. Although neither is dissatisfied with her appearance in its own right, their desperation to conceive is putting pressure on Jewels to downsize.
Isolated from family members and friends in her native London and left alone for ever-longer periods as her girlfriend pursues a high-flying career, Ellie has found companionship in food. Alone in a foreign country and with her professional aspirations as an art curator stagnating, she consoles herself by eating badly.
For GP and mother-of-three Mezz, being the ‘fat’ doctor in a small rural practice is mortifying. Surely her patients are judging her, she tells herself, just as the ponytailed women at the school gate seem to do as they eye off the father of her boys, the still-handsome Sean.
All four are adamant that they want to trim down yet before they can begin to make progress they must first acknowledge and then overcome the psychological hang-ups that are white-anting their efforts.
After meeting in an online weightloss forum and exchanging increasingly detailed revelations about their existences in Canberra, Melbourne, western Victoria and North Coast NSW, will Kat, Jewels, Ellie and Mezz become each other’s best supporters of worst saboteurs?
