cover image The Incredible Shrinking Critic: 75 Pounds and Counting: My Excellent Adventure in Weight Loss

The Incredible Shrinking Critic: 75 Pounds and Counting: My Excellent Adventure in Weight Loss

Jami Bernard, . . Avery, $22.95 (286pp) ISBN 978-1-58333-262-7

Bernard, New York Daily News film critic and author (Breast Cancer There and Back ), chronicled the first year of her journey back from 230 pounds in a weekly newspaper column. In this book, she recounts not only the initial year but the second year as well, culminating in a total loss of 75 pounds. Along the way, the comical, quirky Bernard describes her ongoing battle with weight, her aversion to popular fad diets ("they all suck, on a sliding scale of suckage"), and her gradual realization that the only way to lose weight and keep it off is through strategy, not will power. Though she did opt to give up trigger foods such as chocolate and ice cream, Bernard embarked on a two-year weight-loss odyssey that succeeded because she made better food choices, began working out, set reasonable goals and explored her emotional issues. Readers struggling with weight loss will be entertained and inspired as Bernard chronicles her setbacks, visits to gyms, dating mishaps and shrinking clothing size. Readers might be tempted to jump to her "cheat sheet" at the end of the book, but they would miss out on all the zany quips and quotes that make this volume both endearing and hilarious. (Sept.)