In her debut memoir, a Greek-American woman chronicles her lifelong struggle with weight and the desperate measures she took to combat it.

For years, Angeliades had suspected that she had started to pack on the pounds around the time she started kindergarten. When she was in her 20s, however, she discovered a piece of video evidence that proved otherwise: A family tape showed her shoveling up small pieces of steak when she was just a toddler. Whether or not that early enthusiasm for meat led to her dangerous overeating, Angeliades became obsessed with food. At the age of 15, she was 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighed 187 pounds, and had been diagnosed by her doctor as morbidly obese. Over time, she slipped into a worsening cycle of weight gain and overeating, a problem that eroded her self-esteem: “Being fat wasn’t exhausting. What really drained me were my efforts to distract the world from noticing my being fat. A good day was when no one called me ‘Fatso’ or otherwise commented on my largeness.” Angeliades movingly describes a childhood marked by trying desperately to fit in—not just into her clothes, but with her peers. The teen years are rough on any child, but hers were made worse by her size. A black leather belt used to re-create Madonna’s style, for example, looked like a “tourniquet that forced my blubber to move both north and south.” By the time she reached her late 20s, Angeliades had tried seemingly everything in vain: diets, spas, Weight Watchers, fat farms. She eventually turned to spirituality as a way to accept herself and now, nearing 40, only carries a few extra pounds. Angeliades injects welcome doses of humor into her story, which includes a hilarious aside about her childhood summers on the Greek islands. The book contains some unnecessary material that distracts from its focus, such as the author’s dating advice and perhaps too much on her spirituality. Nevertheless Angeliades’ struggles are real, and her voice is strikingly authentic.

A revealing look at the self-sustaining cycle of food addiction and weight gain and the heart-rending consequences that occur when it takes over a life.