The diet book "Skinny Bitch
" by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin has been getting quite the attention lately so I took a look at it. Rory is a former agent with the uber Ford Models agency, and Kim is a former model who has an MS in Holistic Nutrition. From their picture, they both look like you would imagine, thin and gorgeous, and right away the bias starts to pop up because the title of the book lends itself almost to what you could expect from former modeling types. Sorry to be cliche but those were the first things that popped into my head. They don't say, but I wonder if Rory or Kim have ever been overweight or yo-yo dieted like many of us.
Upon reading the book, the ladies make it clear that they wanted to add some fun and snark to weight loss. Right there, I can agree with them and appreciate their efforts because most weight loss books and sites are pretty medicinal and are lacking in wit and humor. I'm trying to do a similar thing here at Back in Skinny Jeans except that my perspective is from someone who's had weight loss and gain issues their whole life.
The diet is basically a vegan menu. In order to become a skinny bitch, you have to become vegan. In a few chapters they get a bit Michael Moore and Kevin Trudeau
-like by sharing how the government and corporations don't give a damn about our health and want to keep us fat an ignorant because it helps them make big profits. By eating meat, we are basically consuming, "The dead, rotting, decomposing, flesh of a dead animal diet." Nicely put, eh? (more after the jump)
Some people are turned off by the book's use of smart-ass language, but I was turned off more by the heavy political and philosophical retoric used to try and repulse and scare me out of my evil carcass consuming ways. Just focus on the positives of your lifestyle suggestions and what I gain from it. I'll be so convinced of the benefits that my old evil ways will be a thing of the past. But, in this way, I will make the change out of benefit instead of fear. As well, if you want people to be vegan like yourselves, don't use "skinniness" as a way to motivate. All the vegans I know made the change out of value issues surrounding animals not as a means to get skinny.
After all the politics and philosophy, there are some pretty good lists of food to buy from specific organic food brands, some sample menus for the week, and a dictionary of common food ingredients that are bad or potentially bad meaning they are derived from some "dead, rotting, decomposing flesh of a dead animal" like whale intestines and hog guts. Oh and there's even stuff made from "crushed female cochineal insect." Yummy?
My two cents, if this book had been written by two gay guys like Jack McFarland and Will Truman, the same snarky skinny bitch language would have come off funnier and less "finger waving in my face." Some how I could not get the image of wicked modeling agent out of my mind because those folks are not known to give the most healthy advice to aspiring models about their weight or nutrition. However, there are some interesting points of information in the book, and it is worth taking a gander at it the next time you're at the Barnes & Borders.