In my review of Eating Animals, I mentioned something about how books on veg'nism need to be a little on the deceptive side if anyone other than those with veg tendencies can ever be expected to pick them up. Thus a friend recommended that I check out the book Skinny Bitch, which is just that.
I'll admit that I already had an idea of what this book was about. I've been known to stick my nose into it from time to time at Chapters, and have seen it mentioned countless times on vegan food blogs. I was always a bit turned off by the abrasive title, fearing that the book would make me feel even worse than I usually do about not being the picture of skinniness. The fact that Skinny Bitch rose to fame when Posh Spice was spotted with a copy only added to this impression.
As a result, it didn't really surprise me that the authors lay in on readers from the first page, claiming that one has to use her head about food and stay away from crap. Ok. Crap constitutes meat, dairy, and refined sugar. Sure, I'm with you. In the end, though, Skinny Bitch turns into yet another "eat less calories and exercise" routine, with a few unsettling factory farm images thrown in. Of course, I thought, since that's really the only way one can succeed at becoming a skinny bitch.
I mean honestly, if a woman eats a thousand more calories per day than she needs, she will most certainly gain weight, even if all she eats is vegan food. Last time I checked vegan food still includes evils like sugar, chocolate, peanut butter, and french fries. Sure they tell you not to eat these things too, but then how does this diet really differ from any other? (Aside from the further restricting principle of abstaining from meat and dairy. But then most of those foods contain a lot of fat and calories too.) All these restrictions advocated for apparently different reasons render the book more than a little disjointed. Is it a diet book, or a book on veganism?
So, you need to eat fewer calories to lose weight, and factory farms are terrible places. Who could dispute those points? But then Freedman and Barnouin go and throw in all these "facts" about the evils of caffein, synthetic sweetners, etc, claiming that such foods will inadvertently make you fat. Hmmm. Maybe I just objected to this part because I know I will never, ever be able to give up coffee, and I will never, ever believe that it makes people fat.
Kudos to that authors for slamming low-no carb diets, but then they turn around and advocate fasting which to me does nothing for their credibility. True, it may turn you into a skinny bitch. (The bitch part manifesting as a result of the fact that YOU'RE STARVING.) I hate it when people claim that the headaches, nausea, etc they experience while fasting are simply their bodies detoxifying. Clearly you're sick because YOU'RE STARVING!!!
Obviously, the content of Skinny Bitch annoyed me. I quite enjoyed the sassy, tough love writing style, but advocating common sense only to repeatedly break your own rule does not an effective book make. For a book that does a much better job of marrying veganism with a weight loss plan, see Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet.
