Elephant in the Room: Weight Loss Journey for Obese Men in America - Perfect for Fitness Motivation & Body Transformation
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Product Description
ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 A “warm and funny and honest…genuinely unputdownable” (Curtis Sittenfeld) memoir chronicling what it’s like to live in today’s world as a fat man, from acclaimed journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who, as he neared the age of fifty, weighed 460 pounds and decided he had to change his life.When he was almost fifty years old, Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change. In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay’s Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg’s All Over but the Shoutin’. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a Fitbit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take to lose weight by the end. “What could have been a wallow in memoir self-pity is raised to art by Tomlinson’s wit and prose” (Rolling Stone). Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is an “inspirational” (The New York Times) memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. “Add this to your reading list ASAP” (Charlotte Magazine).
Customer Reviews
I couldn’t put this one down. This is a memoir that’s partly about Tommy Tomlinson’s life as a journalist, but mostly about his struggle with food. He was over 400 pounds when he started on a path over the course of a year to work on his weight. This man can write!There are so many things that I love about this author – his love for his wife and his incredible heart. He’s ever so open and genuine without being whiny or indulging in self-pity. He’s amiable and now that I’ve finished the book, I miss him so much.Although I’m nowhere near Tomlinson’s weight, I have struggled with weight for most of my adult life and will struggle forever since I love food like you wouldn’t believe. I could relate to many of the challenges he described. This book is a fabulous read whether you struggle with weight or not. If you have never struggled with weight or any addiction for that matter, you probably know someone who does. This book will help you to gain insight into how hard it truly is. More than anything, it’s such an enjoyable read.Here are some of my favorite quotes. There were so many.“At some point we have to own our choices. If not, we’re eternally children.”“Most of the time what I feel is sadness over how much life I’ve wasted.”“In our fractured country, we all agree on one thing: second helpings.”“Every fat person, and every fat person’s family, pays with anger and heartache and pain. For every one of us who can’t shed the weight, there are spouses and parents and kids and friends who grieve for us. We carve lines in their faces. We sentence them to long years alone.”“Here are the two things I have come to believe about diets:1. Almost any diet works in the short term. 2. Almost no diets work in the long term.”“A diet is no good if it works for just a week or ten days or a month. It has to be something you can live with (apologies to Shakespeare) tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”“Losing weight is not the hard part. The hard part is living with a diet for years, maybe the rest of your life. That’s why almost no diets work in the long run.”“The body’s metabolism slows down as people lose weight, which means they have to eat fewer and fewer calories to keep losing. But this study showed that, for the contestants who lost weight quickly, their metabolism kept slowing even when they started gaining weight again. Basically, however fat they had been, that’s what their bodies wanted them to be.”“Making a fundamental change of any kind is the hardest thing an adult human being can do.”“Telling a fat person Eat less and exercise is like telling a boxer Don’t get hit. You act as if there’s not an opponent.”“I’m almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I’m always craving an emotional high, the kind that comes from making love, or being in the crowd for great live music, or watching the sun come up over the ocean. And I’m always wanting something to counter the low, when I’m anxious about work or arguing with family or depressed for reasons I can’t understand.”
