ME AND MY SLEEVE

This memoir recounts an Australian woman’s experience with weight-loss surgery and aims to pass on knowledge to those in similar situations.

In her nonfiction debut, registered nurse Yanik starts with an account of her childhood, which she spent mostly in the beautiful Blue Mountains area, west of Sydney. Although she was generally happy, she became distressed by negative comments that others made about her weight: “I started to become acutely aware I looked quite different to other kids my age.” Eventually, she decided that the right approach for her was weight-loss surgery—specifically, a sleeve gastrectomy that would reduce the size of her stomach to a tubelike structure. In these pages, she describes the physical and psychological aspects of the process; she also provides readers with interactive elements along the way, including checklists and journaling spaces where they may record details of their own weight-loss surgery experiences (with prompts such as “Take a few minutes and write down all the positive and negative aspects you can think of living life as a sleever”). She also effectively and strongly pushes back against the stigma that’s typically associated with weight-loss surgery: “To view bariatric surgery as an easy option,” she writes, “is ignorant and complete nonsense.” This forthright tone is one of the book’s most memorable elements, but it’s the author’s informed encouragement that readers will find most valuable. Yanik stresses that such surgery is not a simple procedure but a lifelong process and one that’s entangled with everyday behavior: “Knowing why we rely on our habits is fundamental in making the choice to keep or eliminate them from our lives,” she writes. The result is an eye-opening guide to a major life decision.

An informed and deeply personal remembrance and self-help guide.