Description:

“Hunger is the loudest voice in my head. I’m hungry most of the time.”

William Leith began the eighties slim; by the end of that decade he had packed on an uncomfortable amount of weight. In the early nineties, he was slim again, but his weight began to creep up once more. On January 20th, 2003, he woke up on the fattest day of his life. That same day he left London for New York to interview controversial diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins. But what was meant to be a routine journalistic assignment set Leith on an intensely personal and illuminating journey into the mysteries of hunger and addiction.

From his many years as a journalist, Leith knows that being fat is something people find more difficult to talk about than nearly anything else. But in The Hungry Years he does precisely that. Leith uses his own pathological relationship with food as a starting point and reveals himself, driven to the kitchen first thing in the morning to inhale slice after slice of buttered toast, wracked by a physical and emotional need that only food can satisfy. He travels through fast food-scented airports and coffee shops as he explores the all-encompassing power of advertising and the unattainable notions of physical perfection that feed the multibillion dollar diet industry.

Fat has been called a feminist issue: William Leith’s unblinking look at the physical consequences and psychological pain of being an overweight man charts fascinating new territory for everyone who has ever had a craving or counted a calorie. The Hungry Years is a story of food, fat, and addiction that is both funny and heartwrenching.

I was sitting in a café on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 24th Street in Manhattan, holding a menu. I was overweight. In fact, I was fat. Like millions of other people, I had entered into a pathological relationship with food, and with my own body. For years I had desperately wanted to write about why this had happened — not just to me, but to all those other people as well. I knew it had a lot to do with food. But I also knew it was connected to all sorts of outside forces. If I could understand what had happened to me, I could tell people what had happened to them, too. Right there and then, I decided that I would do everything to discover why I had got fat. I would look at every angle. And then I would lose weight, and report back from the slim world.
—Excerpt from The Hungry Years

From the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Leith is a binger: when he starts eating, he can't stop—and he wants to know why. This question, and an interview with Dr. Atkins, leads him to explore fad diets, unhealthy food production and the ubiquitous media depictions of "perfect" human physiques. While some of British journalist Leith's facts have been reported elsewhere, his humorous anecdotes, compelling interviews and sobering statistics provide convincing arguments against processed foods, government nutritional requirements and other evils of the food chain. In his fast-paced, stream-of-conscious style, Leith molds a journalistic exposé, a food journal and a memoir into the personal exploration of a man consumed by a consuming society. Though he hardly exercises, the 236-pound Leith embarks on the Atkins diet to great success, but in the process realizes that denying himself carbohydrates brings up issues that go beyond his diet. Hungry for answers, he starts seeing a therapist, who suggests that he eats compulsively because he has "been running away from emotions." Leith's ups and downs will ring true for anyone who has tried to lose a significant amount of weight, and the revelations that come out of Leith's therapy sessions will undoubtedly have readers asking why they really want that doughnut.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The author, a journalist who writes about diet and health, has always had problems with his weight. As the book opens, he confesses to being hopelessly addicted to food and unable to do anything about it (the image of Leith, in a feeding frenzy, scarfing down partly toasted bread is unforgettable). Then he realizes that his upcoming interview with Dr. Robert Atkins--he of the beloved and belittled low-carb diet--could be the key to getting his life back on track. Part-journalism and part-memoir, his account combines the story of his post--Atkins life with fascinating analysis of the nature of food addiction and the role carbohydrates play in the steady expansion of humanity's waistlines. Some readers may be put off by the impression that the author is merely an Atkins apologist, but as the book develops, it becomes clear that Leith is speaking in broader and more contextual terms about our strange, often-desperate relationship with the food we eat. Readers with an open mind will be amply rewarded by this lighthearted yet thought-provoking book. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved