Book Review: Fit2Fat2Fit

Fit2Fat2Fit_Cover

I picked up this book on the clearance rack of my local book shop a few weeks ago.  Once I got around to reading it, it only took me about 2 days to finish it.  I’ve seen a number of mixed reviews online for it and figured I should put in my two cents.

Summary

Fit2Fat2Fit is a book about a trainer (Drew Manning, the author) who doesn’t seem to understand the struggles of being overweight.  He had been fit and healthy for as long as he could remember, beginning with a love for activity when he was young.  As he began to take on clients as a personal trainer, he found he struggled with helping some of the overweight clients and couldn’t understand what was happening.  In order to better understand what it is like to be overweight, he began a journey to gain weight over a span of 6 months and then lose it all again in the next 6 months after.  He documented his entire journey on his blog and website Fat2Fit2Fat.

Layout

The book starts off with a section on why he started the project and what his plan and expectations were for it.  It eventually transitions to how he gained all the weight and how this affect him, physically and emotionally.  Finally, of course he wraps up he lost it all again and his struggles to do so.  The appendix includes recipes, meal plans, exercises, and workouts for weight loss which he used himself.  Recipes are also littered throughout the book that correspond to the topic he is discussing.

First Impressions

This guy is a jerk.  Yep, that was my first impression.  He sounded like my worst nightmare of a trainer.  Someone who thinks “If you want to lose weight, just do it.  What’s the problem?”  Someone that just doesn’t understand the emotional struggle that comes along with being overweight.  Now, my motto is that you have to decide to do it and then commit to that decision but along with that comes lots of other decisions and struggles every day.  Drew just didn’t seem to grasp this in the beginning.  When he couldn’t help a family member lose weight, he needed to figure out why.  So really, his intentions were a bit selfish at first but it eventally morphs into something else…

Midway Through

The book started to grow on me.  His easy writing style, while not literature, was easy to follow.  I had kept reading because I wanted to see this pompous trainer suffer, but still wasn’t expecting much.  Eventually though, he started to talk about the emotional struggles he was being met with as he gained more and more weight (ended up with a total of 65lbs).  You can see this section in two ways:

  1. He still really doesn’t understand what it is like to be overweight because he was only that way for a few months.  Or…
  2. He finally got a small glimpse of the struggles that some overweight people deal with on a daily basis for their entire lives.

I went with the second interpretation.  I admit, he was a little whiney I think but maybe that is just the way his personality came out as he gained more and more weight.

This section of the book though seemed a little short.  I was left wanting a “deeper” connection with the writer but I think that is more.  Maybe he just doesn’t know how to get it across in a book?  There was a chapter written by his wife that I thought was pretty enlightening but it was less about living with an overweight person and more about the man you are married to becoming a totally different personality.  That is a different subject entirely.

I did also wonder how much of his emotional stuff was exaggerated for publicity purposes since he knew this experiment wasn’t going to be forever.  He knew he would soon be fit and trim again in no time.  That is not so for most overweight and obese people.

Final Thoughts

So, I really did enjoy reading this book but I want to warn that it’s not really a weight loss book.  I think this is a good book for trainers who have never been overweight for them to better understand it from the perspective of another fit and trim personal trainer.  It is not an inspiration story.  It doesn’t have clues on how to get over the emotional issues of weight gain/loss.  He definitely admitted that it was more of a struggle than he had anticipated but he still had that “Just Do It” attitude (I think that’s just his personality, Type A thing).  The book does provide his workouts, recipes, and meal plans though so you could try using that if you like.  He doesn’t talk about why his plans are the best though or why they work.  They are just what he uses with his clients and for himself when he lost the weight.

Conclusion

I think if you are looking for a fun read and interested in how he handled the journey from being extreme fit to gaining 65lbs and then struggling to get his body back, I say go for it.  If you want an inspiring book to read to motivation you to finally lose the weight, I’d say there are some better ones out there (I would recommend Secrets of a Former Fat Girl).  I also think that maybe his blog was probably a lot more thorough and fun to read so maybe you could look there for supplement information and inspiration after reading this!

Have you read Fat2Fit2Fat?  What was your impression?

2 thoughts on “Book Review: Fit2Fat2Fit

  1. Sounds like an interesting read–it really is more of an emotional/spiritual battle to me than a physical one. It took me 6 months-a year to be ready to say “Yes, I’m overweight; yes I want to lose weight, and finally yes, I’m ready to do something about it.”

  2. I heard the story and found it insulting. Perhaps his heart was in the right place but it’s not the same. The emotion, the confusion, the life long struggles are things he won’t ever know.

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