Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir

by Jennette Fulda

Overview

After undergoing gall bladder surgery at age twenty-three, Jennette Fulda decided it was time to lose some weight. Actually, more like half her weight. At the time, Jennette weighed 372 pounds. Jennette was not born fat. But, by fifth grade, her response to a school questionnaire asking what would you change about your appearance was, "I would be thinner.” Sound familiar? Half-Assed is the captivating and incredibly honest story of Jennette’s journey to get in shape, lose weight, and change her life. From the beginning dusting off her never-used treadmill and steering clear of the donut shop, to the end with her goal weight in sight, Jennette wows readers with her determined persistence to shed pounds and the ability to maintain her ever-present sense of self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580052788
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/29/2008
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	395 KB

About the Author

Jennette was born in Indianapolis, but raised in Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and then Indiana again by a family of corporate gypsies. A graduate of Indiana University, she works full-time as a web developer and started the popular weight-loss blog, Half of Me, in January 2005.

After several weight loss attempts (during which she consumed well over two dozen donuts), she finally got her ass in gear in January of 2005. She is now thirteen pounds away from her goal of losing half her body weight.

When not blogging, Jennette can be found working her way through her Netflix queue, crocheting items that might be too fugly to wear, and sewing curtains that make her living room look only somewhat like a circus tent.

Editorial Reviews

Blogger Fulda explains how she lost 186 pounds. In January 2005, she weighed twice that. A year earlier, after having her gallbladder removed at the age of 23, she'd realized her weight was threatening her life and vowed to get into shape. "Only I didn't," she writes. "I stayed fat for at least another year. Wake up call received. Snooze button pushed." Fulda did eventually take control, changing her eating habits and taking up exercise: first walking, then jogging, then a combination of jogging, pilates and weight training. She started a blog, "Half of Me," to chronicle her progress. As of February 2007, she had lost half her body weight; in the final chapter, she writes that she's within 15 pounds of her goal weight (160 pounds) but warns, "I may have lost the weight, but it could still find me again." Fulda provides a fair amount of weight-loss information only the diet-and-fitness-obsessed could really love, but the book is redeemed by the engaging account of her personal history interwoven throughout. In a conversational and honest voice, she describes tackling the age-old paradox of trying to accept herself while also trying to change. This dialectical process caused her to run afoul of online "fat acceptance" communities, which work to decrease the marginalization of the overweight and the obese. "If I really accepted myself as I was, it meant I'd recognized who I was to the best of my ability, flaws and all," writes Fulda. "It didn't mean I was necessarily satisfied with all the materials that made the house of me."A winsome, charming memoir of personal discovery.

Kirkus Reviews