First published 2008
Jen Lancaster approaches her fortieth birthday with a stark realization. She's tired of stories about women who hate themselves into starvation, chasing the fantasy that skinny jeans equal happiness. Those narratives miss the point entirely. She wants to tell those heroines that inner work matters more than outer appearances, to buy them champagne and cheesecake and explain what really counts. But Lancaster faces her own harsh truth. Her weight isn't just about society's beauty standards or self-esteem issues. It's become a medical problem that threatens her future. She can finally afford life's small luxuries like pedicures, but what's the point if diabetes might cost her a foot? At nearly forty, she must confront the reality that her health depends on changes she's long avoided. Lancaster grapples with the gap between body positivity ideals and medical necessity, between the life she wants and the one her body will allow.
Genres: self-help, autobiography, adult, memoir, non-fiction, biography-memoir, health, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-journey, self-acceptance
Period: 21st-century
400 pages · Paperback · Penguin Publishing Group