cover image Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal

Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal

Janice Taylor, . . Viking Studio, $19.95 (253pp) ISBN 978-0-14-200508-8

Taylor has maintained a weight loss of 50 pounds for more than five years. Her secret? Her work as a "weight-loss artist." Taylor says her turning point came during a meeting at a weight-loss center, when she decided to stop obsessively tracking the food she ate. Instead, she would create food-centric art whenever she had the urge to eat. She quit her job and combined her artistic leanings with a childhood fascination with nuns (she lived near a convent as a kid; the kindly nuns never commented on her chubbiness) in a creative homage to Our Lady of Weight Loss, an inner voice that provides inspiration and support to Taylor. The book offers a refreshing take on weight. Sure, there are recipes, and discussions of nutrition and self-image and exercise, but Taylor gets that most overweight folk already know they need to eat less and exercise more. In chatty, supportive prose, Taylor highlights her book with "weighty confessions" that offer absolution and cute "fat-oids" ("It takes twenty-two muscles to smile and sixty-two to frown"). And there are clear, witty instructions for art projects, including sewing, collage and lamp makeovers—most projects call for glitter glue, and lots of it. (Aug.)