#88 of 2011: Fat Camp by Deborah Blumenthal
There couldn’t have been anything else fitter for what I needed to read that very day of September 1. I was mulling about how it has been almost two years since I truly cared about how much I weighed and what I ate, and this book reminded me that I should be happy with what I have achieved so far, be it closer or still far from my goals. It also didn’t hurt that this was YA novel (of course), which includes a lot of things I still am going through, such as societal, peers and even familial expectations - not only weight-wise but also in the other aspects of my life. Although, I thought Deborah Blumenthal could have done a better job by pushing her setting to a more conventional/acceptable sociable environment, like maybe school, instead of just “hiding” the characters or the story in the fat camp because the variety of her characters (there’s one who was bulimic, one who was at peace with her weight, one who was anorexic, etc.) just seemed to beg for just more, more, more action and I really believe they could have made it. (On second thoughts, maybe Blumenthal was portraying how fat in this society has always been more of something you are ashamed of, hence the fat/boot camp.) She at least made up for what I think was a gap by providing tips on weight loss and how to deal with its joys and pangs, which were all legit given that she’s a nutritionist, without turning it into those 100 Ways To Lose Weight By Eating More! or Work Your Way to Thin! handbooks and compromising the story as still dominantly fictitious/fiction.
