The Drunk Diet: How I Lost 40 Pounds... Wasted

This memoir of a drunken overweight metalhead’s transformation into a drunken healthy-eating metalhead is sometimes so funny that you forget how average it is overall. Carl is a self-described “Whiskey Rock-a-Roller” who colorfully describes a life equally divided between managing a New York City bar, drinking, and eating cheeseburgers before passing out. But after he has a Spinal Tap–style epiphany (“It’s when you don’t remember things like throwing up—on a regular basis—that you realize, maybe it’s time to reevaluate my life”), Carl develops his own weight-loss plan after deciding that “diet books are really a whole bunch of crap written by a whole bunch of assholes who think they know more about your body than you do.” But before a reader can shout, “Fuck, yeah!” in expectation of some rocking new idea, Carl turns into Rachael Ray. The bulk of the book basically provides good but unoriginal basic diet and health information: “I quickly learned that salads are key for weight loss—leafy greens, aside from being very low in calories, are packed with vitamins and energy that keep your metabolism running at full speed.” Even his various sidebars (“What the fuck is aspartame?”) read like notes from a health nut. (Mar.)