FAT FREE: Common Sense for Young Weight Worriers

Before they run to the scales and calorie counters, Gilbert urges young people to weigh their feelings about fat. Since worries about fat are far more common than fat itself (50 percent of all teenage girls think they are overweight, only 15 percent are according to one study), Gilbert begins with objective tests -- the mirror, the ruler, the family doctor, and then encourages those who fail the obesity test to do some subjective probing into when and why they eat. Gilbert reviews the popular diets (she approves of the low carbohydrate plan in its more moderate forms, but not of the Atkins/Stillman ketogenic plans) and discusses the debate over heredity/environment factors and the likelihood that some of us may carry extra, greedy fat cells from babyhood. But this differs from other treatments, such as Barbara Benziger's Controlling Your Weight (KR, 1973) in its emphasis on self image, and in Gibson's conviction that everyone must first decide what he wants to weigh and that diets motivated solely by social pressure are bound to fail. Sensible, sympathetic advice from one who admits to having had a weight problem of her own -- advice that asks the individual to accept the responsibility for a diet that is self help and not self punishment.