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Summary
Summary
Mika Brzezinski is at war against obesity. On Morning Joe, she is often so adamant about improving America's eating habits that some people have dubbed her "the food Nazi." What they don't know is that Mika wages a personal fight against unhealthy eating habits every day, and in this book she describes her history of food obsession and distorted body image, and her lifelong struggle to be thin. She believes it's time we all learned to stop blaming ourselves, and each other, and look at the real culprits--the food we eat and our addiction to it. Mika feels the only way to do this is to break through the walls of silence and shame we've built around obesity and food obsessions. She believes we need to talk openly about how our country became overweight, and what we can do to turn the corner and step firmly onto the path of health. So Mika made a deal with her very close friend Diane: they would work together on this book and on their personal goals, to help Diane drop 75 pounds and to break Mika's obsession with staying superthin. As she did in her bestseller Knowing Your Value, Mika has packed each chapter with insights from notable people in medicine, health, business, the arts, and politics. Singer Jennifer Hudson, the late writer and director Nora Ephron, TV host Gayle King, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and many others open up to Mika about their own challenges and what works for them when it comes to food and diet. It's time we stopped whispering the F-word ("fat") the way we used to shun the C-word ("cancer"). This book--with its trademark Brzezinski smarts, honesty, and courage--launches us into a no-holds-barred conversation with family and friends, in schools and kitchens, in Congress and the food industry, to help us all find ways to tackle one of the biggest problems standing between us and a healthier America.
Author Notes
Mika Brzezinski is co-host of Morning Joe , an MSNBC anchor, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers All Things At Once and Knowing Your Value . She is the mother of two daughters, Emilie and Carlie, and is married to investigative journalist Jim Hoffer. Diane Smith is an Emmy award winning TV journalist, radio talk show host, and author. The Globe Pequot Press has published six books based on Diane's "Positively Connecticut" TV series. Diane has been honored with the Governor's Award for Excellence in Culture and Tourism for her outstanding lifetime achievements and contributions to the arts and tourism in Connecticut. In October 2012 Diane was honored by the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this multifaceted overview of the widespread, and unhealthy, fixation on food, Brzezinski (Knowing Your Value) shares her personal story of disordered eating that began with binges in her high school years. As she reviews the merit of a "healthy thin", she considers not only obesity's direct blows to personal health but also its toll on one's earning potential and health care costs. Co-author Smith's personal story of food struggles, which for her culminated in obesity, serves also to summarize some of the country's most popular diets, pills, and surgeries throughout the years. Research revealing the highly addictive nature of processed foods is woven with personal tales over-consumption. Effortlessly shifting from a biochemical focus to a spectrum of other harmful inputs, with dips into food philosophy along the way, the book addresses matters like self-soothing with food following trauma. The inconsistency of format and narration proves mildly distracting; however, this does not the tales of their power. When Brzezinski tackles large-scale solutions, she endorses specific governmental action, particularly that undertaken by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The authors have produced a thorough compendium to benefit those embattled with food as well as readers curious about the background of a dangerous epidemic. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Svelte and fit, Brzezinski is the envy of millions of women who watch her on MSNBC's Morning Joe, a bully pulpit she uses to forcefully admonish viewers about the importance of proper diet and exercise. Few would suspect that her vehemence stems from a personal addiction to junk food and binge eating that has plagued her all her life and that her ironclad willpower actually borders on an unhealthy obsession to stay thin at any cost. Only when she candidly confronted a friend, coauthor Smith, who was morbidly obese, did Brzezinski come to realize that her famously stringent attitudes toward food and fitness were just as harmful as her friend's more indulgent lifestyle. With personal and professional input from celebrities such as Jennifer Hudson and public officials such as Governor Chris Christie, whose weight-loss battles are headline-generating events, Brzezinski and Smith polls the worlds of medicine, media, entertainment, and business to analyze our nation's obesity epidemic and offer advice about adopting healthier habits.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and the daughter of Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, comes into the open about her lifelong eating disorder - bingeing and overexercising coupled with orthorexia nervosa, "an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods," as one doctor put it. Her hope is that sharing this story will help others avoid her fate, but her good intentions backfire when she recruits language from the cold war in her zeal to reform America's eating habits. She suffers from mission creep, escalating her personal battle into a national one. "It's time to declare war on obesity," she exhorts, which "threatens our health, our wealth and our national security." Granted, obesity is a serious problem, but when confronted with more than 200 pages of similarly overheated admonitions, one's reaction is not to eat sensibly and exercise but to duck and cover.
Kirkus Review
The co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe parlays her lifelong preoccupation with food into re-educating an increasingly corpulent nation about smarter eating practices. Best-selling author and mother of two, Brzezinski (Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You're Worth, 2011, etc.) honestly discusses her history of food addiction, from teenage years indulging an insatiable urge for junk food in a family of overachievers to early days in her entertainment career binging on the fat and sugar in "hyperprocessed" fare. It's no surprise to her, she writes, when people immediately draw eye-rolling conclusions based on her outward appearance, dubbing her a "privileged skinny bitch with food issues." In fact, her past has been one torturous battle after another with food and a lifelong "determination to be thin," yet it seems the struggle to control her weight and increase her vitality has kept the author surprisingly grounded. Longtime best friend, award-winning news anchor and co-author Smith joins with Brzezinski to share their dietary failures and triumphs in knowledgeable, accessible parlance. The pair also enlists notable media personalities and celebrities to offer their own observations on weight, diet and the obesity epidemic. Among those sharing experiences and fresh perspectives are New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Gayle King, Jennifer Hudson and the late author/director Nora Ephron, plus numerous dieting experts and clinical researchers. An additional section advises on how to address food and nutritional balance gracefully and tactfully with children. Brzezinski and Smith's timely message of healthy harmony makes a smart, personalized complement to the brilliant journalistic advocacy of Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat (2013). A motivational, inspirational addition to the ever-expanding library of total-health guidebooks.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. ix |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 Mika's Story | p. 21 |
| Chapter 2 The Value of a Healthy Thin | p. 38 |
| Chapter 3 Diane's Story | p. 55 |
| Chapter 4 Fat: Whose Fault? | p. 83 |
| Chapter 5 Fighting the Food Demons | p. 108 |
| Chapter 6 Mika and Diane: Making Progress, Still Struggling | p. 118 |
| Chapter 7 It's How You Think | p. 136 |
| Chapter 8 It's What You Eat, and How You Eat It | p. 149 |
| Chapter 9 It's How You Move | p. 168 |
| Chapter 10 Leading the Conversation | p. 180 |
| Chapter 11 Teach Your Children Well | p. 206 |
| Onward: What I've Learned Today | p. 222 |
| Notes | p. 229 |
| Index | p. 233 |
