Confessions of a Reformed Dieter

By A J Rochester

How I dropped eight dress sizes and took my life back.

"Yesterday for breakfast I had pancakes with golden syrup. Then for lunch I had cheese and potato chips on white bread, my son's unfinished peanut butter sandwiches, two caramello koalas and some seaweed crackers with cheese. For dinner I had a large barbecue meat lovers pizza, six deep-fried chicken wings, garlic bread and a bottle of Pepsi. Dessert was ice cream with chocolate topping. Today, waking up and telling myself I was going yo eat well, I had a bacon and egg muffin for breakfast and, as I write, I am still licking the oil off my fingers from the KFC I had for lunch. Can't wait for dinner - I'd better go have a snack..."

When A J Rochester is singled out for a television show on obesity, she is at first appalled and then resolved. Enough is enough. She vows to change her ways and lose weight - not because she yearns to become a pretzel, but so she can keep up with her little boy and turn her life around at last. But after years of fighting a losing battle against her weight, A J knows she needs a miracle. So she volunteers to be a human guinea pig and record her weekly progress in front of a camera for a television program on body image.

Confessions of a Reformed Dieter charts the highs and lows of A J's incredible journey, from her first close encounter with a nutritionist, personal trainer and psychiatrist to overcoming an early setback - waking up in hospital with a broken leg after downing an illicit cocktail on an empty stomach - and the triumph of shedding the first, and last, kilo.

The result is a funny, insightful and inspiring account of a woman who lost 40 kilos without losing her sense of humour - and discovered a whole new life.

292 pages