Hysterically funny and heart-wrenchingly honest, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF DIETGIRL follows the twists and turns of Shauna's lard-busting crusade as she curbs the calories and learns to love the gym. There are travel tales from Red Square to Reykjavik, plus romance and intrigue as she meets the man of her dreams during a pub quiz in Edinburgh. As her UK visa rapidly runs out, will she be deported back to Australia or will love triumph?"
Review: Like many readers, I picked this book up in the hopes of getting some inspiration from Shauna's story. It's hard not to be inspired by someone who lost so much weight the hard, old-fashioned way through diet and exercise. Shauna spent years and years, not weeks and months, to lose her weight, which feels more real than what we so often see in the media. In this blog turned book, Shauna chronicles more about the head space she was in over the course of five or six years. Yes, she learned to eat healthy. Yes, she started to learn to exercise and love it. However, the biggest factor always seems to be how she handled it when things went wrong.
This journey was not a fast one for Shauna, which I could appreciate. It seems like too many people yo-yo up and down with their weight at insane speeds. Realistically, it was nice to see what one person did, in a reasonable fashion, to lose a large amount of weight. In fact, I mostly appreciated that her life went on and she lived it! It can seem too unreasonable to expect someone to just stop their life to focus solely on weight (I guess that is unless you're on a TV show or something), so I thought the directions her life took--moving to the UK--was an interesting reality to her story.
On the whole, this is an inspiring book if you want a realistic look at the ups and downs of one person's weight loss journey. There isn't necessarily a lot about how she did it, outside of the common sense "eat less and exercise" mantra, but it does give you a lot about her mindset and how it changed over time. Overall, this was a much more entertaining read than a mere self help book. This is one of those books that anyone could read to appreciate.
*FTC Disclosure: This review was based on a personal copy of the book.
So this is like a memoir?
ReplyDeleteI like that this is a realistic account of how someone lost weight. Like you said, we don't often see or hear about people who worked their butts off (literally!) instead we hear of fancy diet pills and not eating certain foods, none of which work in the long-term. I've been trying to lose weight, though it is hard since while I love working out my fibromyalgia does not really allow me to do so as often or as hard as I would prefer. I wish it were as easy to lose it as it was to gain it, but since it is not it is good to know people like Dietgirl are out there to help us through.
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