Mika Brzezinski can be seen on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" where
she speaks about improving America's eating habits through
diet and exercise. It's not widely known that Mika herself
has dealt with a battle against unhealthy eating habits,
food obsession and a distorted body image, along with a
lifelong struggle to be thin. She wants us to look at the
food we eat and our addiction to it. Her belief is that we
all need to break through the walls of silence and shame,
that we should talk openly about how the country became
overweight and how we can become healthy. She teamed up with
her friend Diane to work on goals such as helping Diane lose
75 pounds and helping Mika's obsession to stay super thin.
There are insights from notable people in relevant subjects
included in each chapter.
Mika aims to have us talk about the problem. At the core of
her message is pretty much the same message we've been
hearing for years -- you must exercise more and eat less.
Mika polls a lot of people during this book, some are what
you might call experts or have specific knowledge about the
subject, while others are more on the line of pop culture
icons or celebrities. This is not to say that it's not
interesting to read what they think of the subject. It is.
It's just not to be taken as a hard science answer. I admire
Mika for revealing her own struggles. It makes her seem more
human.
You can take her advice or not. Either way, maybe OBSESSED
will help shed some light if you are struggling with your
own weight issues.
Mika Brzezinski is at war against obesity. On Morning Joe,
she is often so adamant about improving America’s eating
habits that some people have dubbed her “the food Nazi.”
What they don’t know is that Mika wages a personal fight
against unhealthy eating habits every day, and in this book
she describes her history of food obsession and distorted
body image, and her lifelong struggle to be thin. She
believes it’s time we all learned to stop blaming ourselves,
and each other, and look at the real culprits—the food we
eat and our addiction to it. Mika feels the only way to do
this is to break through the walls of silence and shame
we’ve built around obesity and food obsessions. She believes
we need to talk openly about how our country became
overweight, and what we can do to turn the corner and step
firmly onto the path of health. So Mika made a deal with her
very close friend Diane: they would work together on this
book and on their personal goals, to help Diane drop 75
pounds and to break Mika’s obsession with staying superthin.
As she did in her bestseller Knowing Your Value, Mika has
packed each chapter with insights from notable people in
medicine, health, business, the arts, and politics. Singer
Jennifer Hudson, the late writer and director Nora Ephron,
TV host Gayle King, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and
many others open up to Mika about their own challenges and
what works for them when it comes to food and diet. It’s
time we stopped whispering the F-word (“fat”) the way we
used to shun the C-word (“cancer”).
This book—with its trademark Brzezinski smarts, honesty, and
courage—launches us into a no-holds-barred conversation with
family and friends, in schools and kitchens, in Congress and
the food industry, to help us all find ways to tackle one of
the biggest problems standing between us and a healthier
America.