Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Skinny Bitch

While wandering aimlessly around my Super Target (again) for several hours, I found this book. It's called "Skinny Bitch", by Rory Friedman and Kim Barnouin. I am going to share with you some exerpts from the first chapter. It may be the most honest literature I have seen in a ling time. Knowing who reads this Blog, I suspect you might agree:

Chapter 1: Give It Up

Okay. Use your head. You need to get healthy if you want to get skinny. Healthy = skinny. Unhealthy = fat. The first thing you need to do is give up your gross vices. Don't act surprised! You cannot keep eating the same shit and expect to get skinny. Or smoke. So don't even try some pathetic excuse like, "But if I quit smoking, I'll gain weight." No one wants to hear it. Cigarettes are for losers. They are so 1989 and totally uncool.

Of course it's easier to socailize after you've had a few drinks. But being a fat pig will hinder you, sober or drunk. And habitual drinking equals fat-pig syndrome. Beer is for Frat boys, not skinny bitches. It makes you fat, bloated, and farty. Why do you think when kids go away to college they gain the "freshman fifteen"? Beer, duh. Alcohol isn't any better.

Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. The last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don't go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies. When methyl alcohol, a component of Aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Laboratory scientists use Formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don't fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass becuase you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. Say goodbye to soda and hello to a sweet ass.

"Don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee." Uhm...pathetic! Coffee is for pussies. Think about how widely accepted it has become that people need coffee to wake up. You should not need anything to wake up. If you can't wake up without it, it's because you are either addicted to caffiene, sleep deprived, or a generally unhealthy slob. It's not herolin, girls, and you'll learn to live without it. But don't go grabbing for the decaf. Coffee, wether regular or decaf, is highly acidic. Acidic foods cause your body to produce fat cells in order to keep the acid away from your organs. So coffee equals fat cells. Every single morning you are starting your day with a dose of poison. Add sugar or other artifical sweeteners, top it off with milk or cream, and you'll be fat forever. If you enjoy an occasional cup of coffee, fine. But if you need it, give it up.

Junk food will never go away. It becomes more alluring by the minute with laboratory-developed aromas, artificial flavors, chemical food colors, toxic preservatives, and heart-stopping hydrogenated oils. We know these are all impossible to resist, but no one ever got skinny on junk food. Use your head. Candy bars, potato chips, and ice cream taste like heaven, of course. But they will pitch a tent on your hips and camp out all year. Your junk food has so many preservatives that it has a shelf life of twenty-two years and will probably outlive your fat, sorry ass. Now before you decide you're so smart because you only buy fat-free snacks, get ahold of yourself. Whenever you see the words "fat-free" or "low-fat", think the words "chemical shit storm." Read the ingredients. If you'd drag your cankles to a health food store, you'd find aisle after aisle of "acceptable junk food". Guilt-free garbage that tastes so good, you'll do naked cartwheels around your living room. We are not saying you have to give up junk food to get skinny. You just have to trade your old junk food for new junk food.

This is not a diet. This is a way of life. A way to enjoy food. A way to feel healthy, clean, energized, and pure. It's time to reclaim your mind and body. It's time to strut your skinny ass down the street like you're in an episode of Charlie's Angels with some really cool song playing in the background. It's time to prance around in a thong like you rule the world. It's time to get skinny.


Now that's good shit. I feel like they are actually addressing me personally (except for the smoking, but most definitely about the coffee.) More to follow...


POST SCRIPT: Here is a review I found of the book. I haven't gotten to the anti-meat eating part of the book yet, but I suppose it's worth seeing things from the other side of the story. The reviewer actually sounds a lot like me too...

Do I want to be a Skinny B***h? Fat chance
It's the diet book Posh was spotted with in LA, but one serial slimmer is not convinced
By URSULA HIRSCHKORN

When that poster girl for the wafer-thin, Victoria Beckham, was seen reading a book called Skinny Bitch this week (no, it's not her autobiography), the unconventional U.S. diet book - by ex-Ford model Kim Barnouin and ex-model booker Rory Freedman - flew off the shelves.

It promises to give you the lowdown on getting skinny, and as one locked in a lifelong battle with my weight, I was intrigued to see if this book really held the key to turning one chubby charmer (me) into a so-called skinny bitch.

If the cover photo is anything to go by, two girls with their shiny, all-American good looks and skinny bods, I don't think either of them has ever fought much of a battle with the bulge.

Clearly they've looked down from their lofty perch and taken pity on us poor junk food-addicted fatties, to enlighten us with their Skinny Bitch wisdom.

But what seems to sail over their skinny little heads is that there's a world of difference between maintaining a superslim body, and carving one from within an obdurately fat frame.

These girls probably spent their 20s splitting their time between photo shoots and sipping skinny soy lattes in chi chi California cafes. The closest they've come to a size 16 is wafting past the plus-size rail of their local department store, so what gives them the right to lecture those of us less blessed in the waistline department?

The premise of the book is to tell it like it is, rather than sugar-coating the stark truth - that if only we ignorant grease munchers would educate ourselves about the food we put in our bodies, we would be so grossed out by it, it would be a pleasure to live off organic beans, pulses and tofu.

But what qualifies these two Californian air-heads to provide this education? Freedman proudly trumpets that she's a "self-taught know-it-all", while Barnouin has a degree in holistic nutrition, whatever the hell that is. Not exactly experts in the field of weight loss.

This is perhaps how they came to their laughably simplistic theory, that the secret of weight loss is just to eat healthy food. Oh if it were that easy, we'd all be size eight and they'd never have been published, killing two birds - and I don't mean them - with one stone.

The book spouts an extensive list of no-nos that you must avoid in order to become a "skinny bitch", including all the tired old suspects: booze; sugar; sweeteners; fat; caffeine; dairy; and refined carbs. In a nutshell, everything that makes our short, brutish lives that bit more bearable.

But what would they know about making life more bearable. Not for them the drudgery of a rain-soaked school run, only brightened by the prospect of eating the kids' leftovers.

They have all the time in the world to scour boutique organic stores for hard-to-find meat, dairy, egg, chemical and taste-free (OK that last one was me) healthy food, but most of us are lucky to find the time to dash to Sainsbury's.

These pampered LA princesses work hard to make us feel guilty for trying to make our lives a bit easier, making a trip to the supermarket sound more hazardous than a tour of duty in Iraq. They sanctimoniously lecture us on the cancercausing chemicals in wine, and the nasties lurking in diet sodas.

But where they really have an axe to grind is with meat eaters. This is when the real agenda of the book is revealed and it moves effortlessly from being potty-mouthed advice on how to adopt a fat-busting healthy diet, into a diatribe against eating meat.

It appears that scientists and archaeologists have been deluding themselves with the idea that all those charred animal bones that have been dug up around human dwellings since we lived in caves actually mean we are meant to eat meat.

Oh no, Ms MA in holistic nutrition knows better. According to her cod science, our blunt teeth and alkaline saliva point to our vegetarian origins. The skinny bitches then launch into a scathing attack on meat eaters, calling anyone who thinks they can lose weight while eating meat a "moron", and dismissing the protein-laden Atkins Diet as "the dead, rotting, decomposing flesh diet".

Please girls, don't insult my intelligence. Just because you choose a certain lifestyle doesn't mean you've discovered the secret of simple weight loss. There are so many reasons we get fat - depression, pregnancy, genetics - not just because we eat meat. I bet I could still pack on the pounds on a vegan diet if I really put my mind to it.

This isn't so much a diet book as a propaganda pamphlet for veganism, which is promoted with all the zeal of a convert. Since the super-slim authors think they know all about the allure of junk food, they are kind enough to point us to a whole host of healthy alternatives. How could I stop my mouth watering at right-on recipe suggestions, such as taking a slice of tofu, soy butter, salt, pepper and ketchup, and hey presto you have yourself a perfect "fried egg" to stick between two slices of sprouted grain bread.

Who do they think they are kidding? I will take my life in my hands and stick to the real thing, laced as it may be with "antibiotics, pesticides, and steroids". Skinny Bitch is just the same-old diet rules repackaged in an obnoxious and bullying tone. It's not exactly rocket science to work out that if you want to lose weight, you have to junk the junk food.

But they're the morons if they believe that by giving up meat you will morph into a skinny bitch like them.

If the choice is between swopping a balanced diet of food stuffs I can get at my local supermarket, for a faddish, fanatical diet cult favoured by the queen skinny bitch, Victoria Beckham, I'd rather be a fat pig.

2 comments:

amy said...

ah - lemme tell you. I have picked up and flipped through this book several times, while hanging out at bookstores, during layovers, etc. My first thought was the same - maybe this is the eye-opener I need.
No. It did nothing but piss me off.
That reviewer is right on the money - she articulated perfectly my problems with this book.
Don't tell me coffee is for pussies. Really, skinny bitch? You don't drink coffee? At all? You're so pure? I don't drink coffee because I'm too pussy to give it up. I drink it because I like it, and I know the exact nutritional content of what I'm putting into my body when I do it.
Whatever. I know what I should and shouldn't eat to lose weight. I don't always do it. I know that. I'm also smart enough and educated enough to make those decisions without some dumb ex-models calling me a pussy for drinking coffee.

amy said...

oh, and I used the word "pussy" or some variation thereof three times in my response, meaning I would never make it onto TV Land.