Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Jennette Fulda
Publisher: Seal Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.48
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Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 16079
Media: Paperback
Pages: 250
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1580052339
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.1963980092
EAN: 9781580052337
ASIN: 1580052339
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 You should read this!!! October 23, 2008
Leah Smith (Knoxville, TN)
I borrowed this book from a friend and I dont know that she will get it back!! I haven't related so well to a book in my entire life. I hope she writes some more!
Food for thought September 30, 2008
Basbenee (USA)
Fulda lost around 200 pounds and details her weight-loss journey in this book. It's peppered with some facts, along with her slow start (she didn't just get serious and go-go-go) but it took a year to really get losing. She doesn't detail a diet plan but mentions cooking more and making smarter choices and exercising more. This is fine by me because I know how to cook healthier, I know the smarter choices in restaurants and grocery stores and I know I need to exercise. I just need to do these things to succeed. I don't need a plan to follow. She is good at detailing the little day-to-day observations, like buying a top in a size large for the first time in years or huffing and puffing and sweating after walking a few steps or any number of details that plague the life of someone who is too fat or someone who is losing weight. Anyone who has been in either pair of shoes can relate. She's a good writer and it's good food for thought for anybody who wants to lose, who is losing weight or who wants to try and understand a fat person's struggles.
 Inspiring Memoir September 6, 2008
Eclectic Booklover (Any Town, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found out about this memoir by accident, and decided to give it a try. It was a great memoir: a story about the real pain experienced by a morbidly obese person (360++ lbs ) before she began her weight loss journey and lost half her body weight. This book is not a story of her self loathing or self pity. It is a straight forward memoir where Jeanette shares her emotions, her successes and some failures along the way. This book is not an instruction manual as to how she lost the weight, but rather it's a very witty book about a mindset and the stick-to- it attitude required for success. Enjoyable.
Review of book August 11, 2008
Love to Learn (Ovid, MI United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book and the writer is so entertaining, it's like you're sitting down talking with her. For anyone that has a significant amount to lose, this book is inspiring.
A Gutsy, Bold, and Honest Ass-Kicking August 2, 2008
Rachel Kramer Bussel (New York City)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Jennette Fulda's Half-Assed is not your average weight loss memoir. Not only did Fulda lose over half her body weight, but she does not offer any apologies. In some ways, the book is as much pro-fat as pro-thin. This book, based on her blog Half of Me, chronicles how she got so fat, and, to some extent, what she did to lose the weight. Some of her struggles, such as finding clothes and getting around, are obvious, while others were more hidden, which she explores with humor and wisdom.
Fulda's is an easy read, one that I'm glad I read in part on the treadmill. There is no whining here, even when Fulda presents evidence about why it may be harder for the severely overweight to lose weight. She covers the highs and lows of her journey, as well as the way, as she lost weight, readers and others turned to her for advice as she blogged every step of the way.
Though it seems hard to believe that someone could just happen to wind up weighing 372 pounds, she shows how her lack of education about nutrition spiraled into a weight gain that she didn't truly recognize as a problem, let alone know how to handle, until it had reached such massive proportions. "The fat lost its shock value. It didn't scare me like it scares a skinny girl who's just put on ten pounds and can't fit into her favorite jeans. Ten pounds was a trivially small percentage of my overage." This is but one of the ways that even conceptualizing losing weight was a challenge for Fulda, one she wound up meeting head-on. Both her writing and her weight loss path show a woman with determination, independence, and the ability to sort out what worked for her and what didn't on her own.
Fulda also doesn't give you a saccharine "and now I'm thin and happy" ending. She makes the reader feel the true pain of her weight gain, as well as the not-always-perfect life she leads now. While losing the weight (and blogging about it) drastically changed her life, it was not a panacea, and Fulda doesn't try to spin it that way. She also admits that, yes, there is a chance she might gain weight again, and boldly asserts that being fat is not the worst thing in the world (a fact you might not realize from, well, living in the United States). About her former fat girl life, Fulda writes, "Given the choice between that life and the life of a skinny starlet in rehab, I'd put the fat suit back on fast enough to jam the zipper."
I also must add that this book is published by Seal Press, a feminist press (one I publish with as well), and I think adds a feminist spin to the topic of weight loss. Fulda is not talking about trying to conform to some mediagenic image of perfection, and in fact sounds like she had a pretty good sense of self-esteem when she was overweight (before she got obese), one which aids her as she starts to lose weight. To even have the vision that she could lose half her body weight in a healthy way is a provocative idea at a time when many people simply opt for plastic surgery. She reveals her own issues without pandering to the sexist ideal of ultra-skinnyness at all costs.
My one quibble is that she did not elaborate on the specific diet she chose to use (she has revealed on her blog and in interviews it was the South Beach diet), which made some parts of the book less informed than they could be. Though she explains that this would be like "asking Yo-Yo Ma what kind of cello he played and then expecting to buy one and become a brilliant cellist," I think it could have informed her memoir, but that's a small quibble. Anyone who's ever struggled with their weight, or just wants to read an inspiring story of one woman who forged her way through the world of weight loss, should check out Half-Assed.
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