Living Large

December 19, 2005
Berman, a political strategist, is a "fat man," having weighed as much as 332 pounds, and as little as 217. He is also a self-proclaimed happy man; content with his life, at peace with his weight and itching to let the world know how he got to this place of equanimity. Berman tells a familiar tale of being a big kid forced by his mother to clean his plate lest children overseas go hungry. As he balloons, his parents react by picking on him for his weight. Shunned at home and laughed at in the gym locker room, Berman feels an ever-escalating crush of humiliation and self-loathing. While chronicling his numerous attempts to diet, Berman doles out shopworn wisdom and dubious insight gained in doctors' offices, gyms and "fat farms" from coast to coast. His tone is heartfelt and genuinely self-effacing, yet Berman never gets beyond what is already known: weight is a direct function of calories consumed versus calories burned. Readers are left with the exact impression Berman is trying (and failing) to correct: overweight folks are doing themselves in and all the talk of accepting one's self is not going to make them healthier.