Rating: 
Summary: A myopic look at obesity
Review: I read this book twice, in horrified fascination. Rosemary Green's diary is a strangely compelling personal narrative which probably does give some insight into the compulsive eating habit of some fat people...but it by no means speaks for all fat people. If represents any group, it represents unhappy people who turn their unhappiness on themselves. Rosemary Green does it by overeating and harshly criticizing herself for being fat, lazy and useless (this while raising 6 children while her husband is often away on business).Green's self-hate is heartbreaking. She won't go to her children's school because she's afraid other kids will make fun of her (that's a realistic fear, but she isn't making things better for anyone by hiding at home.) She won't ride a bike because she's afraid of showing her big butt. Get over it! I want to scream. She berates herself for her failures at dieting, even though she sets unrealistic goals (as mentioned above) and seems to enjoy little support and endure quite a bit of criticism from her (thin) husband. She calls her book "a love story," but I didn't see much love in it. Rosemary Green is the last person I would turn to for advice on diet, self-acceptance, or anything else. A former beauty queen who later weighed up to 300 pounds, Ms. Green purports to have found the secret of weight loss and tries to sell her "Winning at Thinning" plan to readers. Her diary portrays her yoyoing up and down the scale over a period of several years, setting highly unrealistic goals (over 5 lbs/week) for weight loss and consuming a dangerously low 800 calories a day at one point along the way. This is winning? Ms. Green displays little or no insight into our culture's obsession with thinness and no sound medical/scientific insight into proper nutrition or the causes of obesity. (Granted, she is not a health professional, but there are plenty of good books on the subject written for laymen...she does not seem to have read any of them.) She seems to have not the slightest clue that thinness has not been admired in all places at all times. What is particularly galling is her characterization of the fat acceptance movement as "propaganda." She is apparently oblivious to the fact that all the ads for weight loss programs and fat-free food, pictures in fashion magazines, and so on ad nauseam (so to speak) are also propaganda, and more dangerous because they are so pervasive and virtually unquestioned. Green also displays a strange ambiguity about beauty and sexuality. On the one hand, she condemns "Playboy" and its ilk, and even gets a package of lingerie with an "offensive" photo of a partially-clad woman removed from prominent display at a local department store (how a woman should be clad on a lingerie package is anybody's guess). On the other hand, she obsesses about how to get thin enough so that she feels comfortable displaying her own body and is thrilled when men start giving her admiring looks again. Whether or not she stays thin (she's now down to 135 lbs), Green would benefit from deeper insights into the cultural roots of our war on obesity, and yes, even some "fat acceptance" propaganda. Read this book as a novel or a psychological case study, but don't expect to get any good advice about healthy eating, exercise, or self-acceptance from it.
Rating:
Summary: DEPRESSING!
Review: I read through ths book when it first came out. I can't agree with the author's method of losing weight and unfortunately, she applies this method within her relationship with her young daughter. Calling names is what we have to deal with when connected with strangers. How Ms. Green thinks we should put ourselves down is beyond me. Please, take the time to find another book for motivation. (Slow but Sure is a good one!)
Rating:
Summary: Foolish and uniformed
Review: I will begin this review by stating that I HAVE had a weight problem and I have overcome it, for the most part- but I certainly would not have if I believed that the only important thing I would accomplish in life was weight loss. We all have our ups and downs, but all Mrs. Green has really enlightened her readers on is self loathing and, strangly, arrogance. Arrogance because she refused professional help and ALWAYS assumed that she
knew the best way to overcome her weight problems. It took her 20 years, she did not know what she was doing. As for the much anticipated sequel- it isn't coming. I not sure how many of you who write glowing reviews of this book realize this- but her GOAL was reached 6 years ago, and I very much doubt that a woman who went on such absurd low calorie diets could keep the weight off. Wake up folks, you aren't hearing from Rosemary because she IS fat again. If you want inspiration, try some self love and self compassion, and you will be amazed that not only will the weight matter less, but you WILL begin to lose weight when you focus on more gratifying and less self obsessional goals. If you can't do that without help- GET IT. 60 pounds lighter and happier signing off, thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Is fat really her problem?
Review: I've had this book for years and have read it countless times. It's a great motivational tool; just seeing what she's gone through and experiencing the events through her words is enough to put you back on track with whatever eating plan you may currently be on. I've been on yo-yo diets for close to ten years and can relate to every single emotion she has in the book. A lot of people on here have criticized her for blaming her husband and family for some of her problems, being weight-obsessed, and showing no real insight into the problem. People have also said that we didn't hear anything else from her because she's fat again, which is a spiteful comment--I guess she was at least partially right when she wrote that thin people look at fat people and all they see is a lardo, because those people are likening her to a lardo who can never succeed at anything because she's fat. I agree with another reviewer that it's easy to see who was fat and who was thin amongst the reviewers. To thin people, her writing may seem repetitive but contradictory and she may seem self-centered, depressed and angry, and I would suppose that some of that isn't too far off. Fat people know that when you're hundreds of pounds (or even fifty pounds) overweight, your body is all you can focus on. Being that fat does cause depression; you feel like you'll never get anywhere in life because all anyone can see of you is a fat shell, not your true talents. She does blame her family a lot for things that she does (like overeating) and when you have thirtysome years of bad habits to overcome, it's a lot easier to say that if your kids kept their rooms picked up you wouldn't overeat. For those of you who say that Rosemary shows no real nutrtional insight in this book, she does say several times that she plans on eating fruits, vegetables and grains, the "good things that God put on this earth" if I recall correctly. Also, the diary started in 1985. As far as I know, it wasn't terribly popular to live "healthy" as we think of it today; you followed the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet or the Scarsdale diet instead. As for it being repetitive and contradictory, how many people don't experience the same emotion one or two times in a ten year period, and if you're dieting or overweight it's usually the same one or two emotions. I know that I've certainly changed my mind on more than a few things in the past ten years, so I understand that aspect. For all the thin people out there who look at an overweight person and think "lazy," read this carefully, without prejudice. If, after reading, you go on thinking that all fat people need to do to lose weight is stop eating (as commented by another reviewer) then you obviously haven't paid that much attention to what she spent ten years of her life writing.
Rating: 
Summary: To be carefully read by thin people
Review: I've had this book for years and have read it countless times. It's a great motivational tool; just seeing what she's gone through and experiencing the events through her words is enough to put you back on track with whatever eating plan you may currently be on. I've been on yo-yo diets for close to ten years and can relate to every single emotion she has in the book. A lot of people on here have criticized her for blaming her husband and family for some of her problems, being weight-obsessed, and showing no real insight into the problem. People have also said that we didn't hear anything else from her because she's fat again, which is a spiteful comment--I guess she was at least partially right when she wrote that thin people look at fat people and all they see is a lardo, because those people are likening her to a lardo who can never succeed at anything because she's fat. I agree with another reviewer that it's easy to see who was fat and who was thin amongst the reviewers. To thin people, her writing may seem repetitive but contradictory and she may seem self-centered, depressed and angry, and I would suppose that some of that isn't too far off. Fat people know that when you're hundreds of pounds (or even fifty pounds) overweight, your body is all you can focus on. Being that fat does cause depression; you feel like you'll never get anywhere in life because all anyone can see of you is a fat shell, not your true talents. She does blame her family a lot for things that she does (like overeating) and when you have thirtysome years of bad habits to overcome, it's a lot easier to say that if your kids kept their rooms picked up you wouldn't overeat. For those of you who say that Rosemary shows no real nutrtional insight in this book, she does say several times that she plans on eating fruits, vegetables and grains, the "good things that God put on this earth" if I recall correctly. Also, the diary started in 1985. As far as I know, it wasn't terribly popular to live "healthy" as we think of it today; you followed the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet or the Scarsdale diet instead. As for it being repetitive and contradictory, how many people don't experience the same emotion one or two times in a ten year period, and if you're dieting or overweight it's usually the same one or two emotions. I know that I've certainly changed my mind on more than a few things in the past ten years, so I understand that aspect. For all the thin people out there who look at an overweight person and think "lazy," read this carefully, without prejudice. If, after reading, you go on thinking that all fat people need to do to lose weight is stop eating (as commented by another reviewer) then you obviously haven't paid that much attention to what she spent ten years of her life writing.
Rating: 
Summary: I Identify with Rosemary Completely, but...
Review: I, too have felt self hate and misery over being fat. Rosemary's story is an accurate description of an obese person's struggle with dieting. All the reviewers who couldn't understand her self loathing probably never had 100 pounds to lose. But...a daily diet of 800 calories is too stringent and certain to fail. Dieters will always binge when deprived for too long, usually on sweets. With everything we know about losing weight now, there's no need for severe hunger on any diet.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding! A must for anyone fighting to loose weight.
Review: I, too, felt as if I were living Rosemay's life. Oh how her childhood memories brouhgt back my own! I am hoping a new book is on the way as the copy of "Diary" that I read did not have an update on Rosemary's current success. Is e-mail to the author possible?
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, the way a train wreck is hard to look away from
Review: My first impression, upon reading was "You know, this woman just isn't very bright." For me, she came across as whiny, grotesquely self-absorbed, and lacking any kind of sense of "self" beyond what the scale showed. An earlier reviewer noted that the key word in the title was "housewife" rather than "fat", and I agree. I also agree that she lacked any kind of sociocultural insights into the whole issue of body image. Perhaps she *should* have had more outside interests. Please, don't get me wrong: I believe that being a wife and mother is a noble, difficult and demanding job. But Rosemary, what about your own interests! Couldn't you have found something that was *your* hobby or *your* interest that didn't centre around the family and church? Instead, she presents a picture in which she is essentially wandering around her unkempt house constantly thinking about dieting. No wonder her weight yo-yoed so much! Eating/not eating occupied her every waking moment, it seemed. That's not healthy for your body or your mind. Her claims that she's too fat to go to a doctor seem very petulant. I felt terribly sorry for her husband. People who are fixated on one topic are dreary to live with, no matter how much you love them. She whines about him not supporting her enough, but how much love and support did she provide for him? It's interesting that she was a Rose Bowl princess--yes, she was beautiful when she was young and slim, but then, weren't we all? :) It seems to have been the only thing in her life (other than her marriage and children) that she can look back on as an accomplishment of any note. Of course, she's thrilled when her daughter is chosen as a Junior Princess. Looks are, for her, an indication of merit. She's terribly catty about her friends and relatives and their weight, and competitive about it to boot. Again, if she's thinner than someone (even at, say, 240 lbs) she "wins". This is the attitude that made her so miserable in the first place! I wonder what her friends and relatives thought when they read her book and learned how she *really* felt about her--musta made the next get-together rather tense, and if it didn't, it should have. Rosemary's own self-hatred is evident in the loathing she feels towards other overweight people. She complains, for instance, about fat people eating junk in public (although she, of course, as done this herself). Appearances are everything to Rosemary--not just weight but the illusion of respectability (the incident with the lingerie package made me dislike her even more; I agree with the other reviewer--what kind of picture do you expect! ). If you look good and can excite the admiration and envy of onlookers, then you've "won", just like when she was a Rose Bowl princess. There's a delusion at work here, and a lot of hypocrisy. Finally, I hope for her own sake and that of her family that Rosemary has had some counselling and possibly gotten some medication. Thin or fat, she comes across as a sad, pathetic, self-centred ninny who writes execrable poetry. I saw nothing here to admire or emulate.
Rating:
Summary: Is fat really her problem?
Review: Or is it her general mental health? Oprah and psychologists talk a lot about toxic people, and Rosemary definitely falls into this category. Look at how she not only abuses herself but also her husband and others around her. This book was painful for me to read, not because she's fat, but because she really needs mental help for her depression or whatever she has. There are plenty of fat people who are also happy, one of my friends weighs about 215 and I KNOW her diary wouldn't sound gloomy and depressing like this book. Another thing I didn't like was it was the same old thing over and over again. The elation when her scale moved and the defeat and self hatred when it didn't. Couldn't she see that she needs to fix herself from the inside before going to the surface? And she hates the people who think "big is beautiful" but though fat may not be beautiful nothing is worse than a fat depressed psychotic woman who is in desperate need of some Prozac. Wait, there is something worse: reading her diary!
Rating:
Summary: Good, but flawed
Review: Rosemary is obviously a very bright, gifted woman. Many times I did laugh and cry along with her. However, her repeated criticism of herself and her fat family members does become extremely tedious to read. I have a theory about Rosemary's parents: that they probably went hungry for long periods of time during the Depression. Rosemary describes them as hoarding food, eating as much as they could as fast as they could, being extremely anxious about having enough food, getting up in the middle of the night and binging. Her father even steals food from his children. This behavior sounded bizarre until I remembered reading that it is all consistent with research findings on people who endured semi-starvation. For example, many concentration camp survivors exhibit similar behavor. I suspect this theory is true for three reasons: Rosemary's parents are of the right age to have lived through the depression, their behavior is consistent with that of people who have endured semi-starvation, and Rosemary repeatedly states that her family never had much money. If they were poor in the 50's, they were probably even worse off in the 30's. I say this not to offer an excuse, but to offer an alternative to the blame and criticism that fill this book. Her parents' behavior is probably based on their experience of hunger. They taught this behavior to Rosemary. Her parents are probably not bad, out-of-control people, but (if my theory is true) are individuals who experienced poverty and deprivation like most of us have never known. Perhaps this realization would help Rosemary to stop hating her fat family - and herself.
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