Review by New York Times Review
MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE We all just slogged through a presidential campaign rife with body-shaming that I was so bothered by the fat phobia that permeates "The Secret Life of Fat." It bills itself as a science book that will make you appreciate fat's central role in keeping the body humming as it "secretes essential hormones, ... keeps us safe from disease, and may even help us live longer." But too often the author, Sylvia Tara, reveals herself to be seriously uncomfortable with fat - especially when it ends up on her own hips. Her interest in the subject began when she and her friend Laura went to lunch together after exercise class. Tara had spent most of her life on a diet, and she watched in amazement as willow-slim Laura actually finished her salad (Tara always brought home half of hers), and was amazed that Laura's typical dinner was "what her kids were having," steak or tacos or "whatever." Tara's typical dinner was the other half of her lunch salad. "I was fed up with watching everyone around me eat more, choose food indiscriminately, exercise sporadically, and yet have less fat than I did," she writes. "There must be something more to weight gain besides 'eating right' and exercising." There sure is. There is the protein leptin, which fat cells secrete to suppress appetite. And the hormone ghrelin, also secreted by fat cells but with the opposite effect, making a person ravenously hungry. There are imbalances in the various microbes in your gut that lead some people to extract more calories from food. There are various genes that help determine your tendency to gain weight, such as a gene variation that makes you crave high-calorie food, or another that makes it harder to benefit from exercise. There's also a good side of fat. It secretes adiponectin, which removes glucose, fat molecules, and toxic lipids from the bloodstream. Adiponectin helps explain why it's possible to be fat and healthy. Doctors label it the "obesity paradox." But it's only a paradox if you accept the conventional wisdom that it's the excess weight itself that is a health risk - rather than the bad habits, poverty and stressful lives that often accompany the excess weight. Biology explains why it's so hard to keep off the weight once you've lost it: People who are at a particular weight because of dieting metabolize food differently than people who are at that same weight naturally. "Somehow, the remaining body fat of the reduced-obese," Tara writes, manages "to survive on fewer calories than before, as though it had found another means to thrive." BUT WHILE LEARNING about the myriad ways fat manipulates our bodies in order "to preserve itself" might lead to the conclusion that we should all just adopt good health habits no matter what we weigh, Tara has a different bottom line. Even after everything she finds out about the resiliency of fat, she comes away with the firm conviction that obesity is all about willpower - and that weight loss is the ultimate goal. So about three-quarters of the way in, "The Secret Life of Fat" turns into a hard-core dieting book, with lengthy passages quoting internet weight-loss gurus like Karron Power and Mark Sisson, and a jaw-dropping description of Tara's own quest to lose 30 unwanted pounds. Her program involves restricting her intake to no more than 1,000 calories a day, exercising for 30 minutes daily, and eating only between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. to assure herself a 17-hour fast every day. (She's already told us that "intermittent fasting" releases fat-burning hormones overnight, though what's recommended is usually a 16-hour fast for women, 14 hours for men. Later in the diet she lengthens her fast, holding off breakfast until 10.) She goes to bed every night fantasizing about club sandwiches and pizza. A number of hellish months later, she has lost the weight she wanted to. "I win," she crows. "Fat has conceded territory on my body. My skinny jeans are back on. It took a battle of wills but it is done." I can't help wondering what she'll be saying a year from now, after the book tour is over. If Tara had stuck to the science, with information about how fat can be a "benevolent friend when it functions properly," this might have been an enlightening book. (Though then I would have felt compelled to point out how her endnotes are inadequate for anyone who really wants to follow up on some of her citations.) But as a weird hybrid of popular science and extreme how-to dieting advice, it's harder to judge. Especially when the author herself ends up with an attitude toward her own fat that is no more sophisticated or nuanced than the one with which she started out. ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Her most recent book, written with her daughter, Samantha Henig, is "Twentysomething: Why Do Young Adults Seem Stuck?"
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Blubber. Flab. Even fat's alternative names sound disgraceful. Adipose is surely the most scorned, obsessed with, and misunderstood tissue in the human body. Billions are spent battling it. Yet fat is positioned somewhere between friend and foe. Biochemist Tara gives readers the skinny on fat in a lively discussion that incorporates sumo wrestlers, a bloated diet industry, genetics, and leptin (the satiety hormone). Fat is an organ and a component in the endocrine system with multiple functions: storing energy, releasing hormones, facilitating puberty, generating heat, and providing insulation. Tara explains that too much fat is linked with lots of health problems (diabetes, heart disease, even cancer), and she covers methods of controlling fat, including exercise, proper eating, intermittent fasting, and managing your microbiome. She summarizes current adipose research; for example, infectobesity is the theory that some viruses and bacteria can cause excess fat production. Tara emphasizes the importance of keeping body fat in a normal range and appreciating adipose for its physiological worth. Readers will discover that, regardless of body size and shape, fat does some heavy work on our behalf.--Miksanek, Tony Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Finally, a book that sheds some light on understanding body fat-specifically, its role, why it is so difficult to fight, and how it works differently for different people. This debut book by biochemist Tara takes a hot topic and explores every avenue regarding the causes of obesity: genetics, microbes, lifestyle, race, gender, and so on. Although an incredible $60 billion was spent in the U.S. in 2014 battling fat, Tara posits that fat is actually a critical organ with an essential role to play in the endocrine system. She frankly describes her own struggles with weight, which led her to realize "we are not all created equal, at least when it comes to fat." Peppered with individual case studies, the book meticulously explains why fat isn't "one size fits all," particularly in terms of dieting. Tara recommends persistence as the main tool for dieters, combined with a diet "customized for you biologically, psychologically, and socially." This genuinely enlightening book will be a revelation to those engulfed in self-blame and shame about their weight. Hopefully, individualized weight loss will become the way of the future, leading to effective new treatments for those desperately seeking them. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Americans spend more money on the war against fat than the war against terror. As Tara writes, we are indeed a nation at war with a body part.After the birth of her second child, the author, who has a doctorate in biochemistry and has served as a consultant for major biotech companies, struggled to hold her weight in check with a combination of diet and exercise in order to pass what she describes as the skinny jeans test. From her adolescence, dieting and exercise had become an obsession but not a solution, and Tara was on a roller coaster, losing extra pounds on a starvation diet and then gaining them back just by eating dinner. Her professional training fueled her determination to find out why she gained weight while her friends, who ate more and exercised less, remained thin. Examining a variety of scientific studies, she made a surprising discovery. Experiments revealed what she calls the obesity paradox, which showed how fat plays an important part in maintaining our overall health. While obesity is a contributing factor to heart disease, the survival rate after heart failure is better for people with a higher body mass index and higher fat. Tara also discovered new reports suggesting the possibility that obesity is the result of a viral infection. Ongoing research has identified people with an antibody to the virus who gained significantly greater body mass over a 10-year period. Researchers have also found that fat stores stem cells, which play a vital role in replacing bone, muscle, and cartilage in the body. For Tara, this provides a convincing explanation of why there is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of maintaining a healthy weight. The author ably combines an accessible explanation of how the bodys metabolism works with a clear survey of the latest research on obesity. A book that should have wide appeal, not only to those fighting the battle of the bulge. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
