Here is a list (which I aim to add to) of books (fiction mainly) that have a common theme - weight loss, perhaps the main character wants to lose weight, is dieting or dreaming of the perfect body? Some I have read and some I haven't. If you have any comments about the books I have listed that I could add please email them to me, also if you have read or heard about any good fiction books that have a slimming/weight loss angst. diet, wanna be thin type storyline to them, again please email them to me so I can ad them to the list THANKS!
Book
Description

Slim Chance by Jackie Rose
Published by Red Dress Ink 2003

Is her chance to have it all shrinking along with her waistline?
All Evelyn Mays wants is to be the perfect bride in a size 8 Vera Wang wedding dress. Call her superficial, but when your boyfriend has turned up at your office and dramatically proposed - your green-with-envy colleagues watching in astonishment - there's a certain image to live up to.
Evie senses that her supposedly fast track career is spiralling away from her, but at least there's something she can control: her Big Day. She just has to trnasform herself from cuddly brunette into a svelte blonde.
But changing her apperance proves addictive: Evie develops a taste for experimenting: new friends....new men? Her best friend, convinced that Mr Right is just an urban legend anyway eggs her on to have one last fling. Only is Evie discovering her true self, or playing a game of chance that will end with trouble?

Comments: Haven't read this one yet...but am looking forward to reading it soon.

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The California Club by Belinda Jones
Published by Arrow Books 2003

When Lara Richards jets off to glamorous California, the last thing she's expecting is to find her old friend Helen transformed from a clipboard-clasping frump into a shimmering surf goddess. The secret of her blissful new life? The mysterious California Club.
So the offer of guest membership - one wish, guaranteed to come true by the end of their stay - is one Lara and her friends can't resist. Could this be Lara's chance to win her best friend Elliot's heart after ten years of longing? Or does the fact that he's travelling with his brand new fiancee mean that Lara will have to come up with a new dream?

Comments: I really enjoyed this one, it made me dream of being far away and slimmer and made me wish I could have a wish come true also.

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Bad Manors by
Lisa Armstrong
Published by Hodder & Stoughton 2003

Struggling for air in a Darwinian shark pond at work and a house that is falling to pieces around her ears, single mother Cat McGinty dreams of a new job, a new home and a new life of rural bliss.
Jess, her unpredictable, sexually hyperactive au-pair and Lily, her ten-going on seventeen-year-old daughter would quite like to come with her.
When Cat unexpectedly inherits a run-down health farm in the glorious Dorset countryside, miles from memories of her feckless ex and the demands of her disapproving feminist mother, it seems their parayers have been answered.
Unfortunately, Butely Manor is damper than the English channel, its patients tighter than a bad facelift and she has to share it's ownership with a reclusive stranger who look at Cat as if she were a particularly nasty strain of foot and mouth. But Cat can never resist a challenge, especially when Toby MArks, the world's Most Handsome Man, is the one offering it.

Comments: I thoroughly enjoyed this one...I have always dreamed of going to a health farm (owning one might be better!!). This is a funny, warm and romantic book...great reading.

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Fat Chance by Deborah Blumenthal
Published by Red Dress Ink March 2004

 


A love story of food and fantasy.

As Americans throw themselves body, soul and pocketbook into the latest weight-loss craze, Maggie O'Leary's informed column about the pitfalls of dieting is the one sane voice crying out against the dietocracy. Plus sized Maggie, also known as America's Anti-Diet Sweeetheart, is perfectly happy with whi she is and the life she leads. Until she gets a call from Hollywoods most enticing bachelor, Mike Taylor.

At first MAggies thinks the call is one big joke put on by a particular obnoxious colleague. But when Maggie learns that Taylor is the real enchilada and that he truly does need her to come out to Hollywood to help him on an up and coming film about a diet doctor, she's in a pickle. Maggie can't possibly turn down this opportunity of a lifetime but she can't exactly go to Hollywood looking like...well, herself.

Swearing her trusted assistant to silence, Maggie embarks on a "secret" makeover. From showdowns with her boss, who suspects his star columnist is losing her edge - er, girth - and sends her Italian pastries to sabotage her efforts, to run-ins with her closest male friend, from walking through the famed red door of beauty to winding up on the wrong side of a positively lethal Elliptical trainer, the newly svelte Maggie finds herself navigating a new course. Full of doubts about abandoning the comfortable life she's known - not to mention deceiving legions of loyal readers who still think of her as their champion - L.A. bound Maggie is hell-bent on living out her most tantalizing fantasies.

Comments: I really enjoyed this book, it had humour, romance and a woman losing weight and all the things that go with it.

Size Matters by
Judy Astley
Published by Black Swan Books 2004

Big and Beautiful? Or thin and miserable?

Jay has always envied her cousin Delphone. While Jay was brought up in a large, noisey and chaotic family, Delphone was indulged, perfectly dressed with a co-ordinated bedroom, an immaculate wardrobe, dancing lessons and monogrammed silver-backed hairbrushes. Now Jay lives happily with her architect husband and their three teenage children, running a successful cleaning company and trying to keep some kind of order to her disorderly household, while Delphine has long since dissappeared to Australia with her second husband. But Jay does sometimes wonder whether she should be more like her cousin - utterly well-organised and with a size 10 figure/
So Jay decided to diet. But what should it be? High carb, no protein? High protein, no carb? High fibre? Wheat free? Fat free? Food free? She tries them all, with a variety of successes and failures. But then Delphine reappears, with a third husband in prospect and the same old air of apparently effortless superiority. Jay never considers that perhaps Delphine is the envious one..........

Confessions of a Reformed Dieter by AJ Rochester (2004)

The Dieter
by Susan Sussman (1989)

The Dieter is about gaining and losing pounds, husbands, habits and friends.
One bite won't hurt......Chocolate, doughnuts, fudge icing, deep-dish pizza with loads of extra cheese......the ememy pursues Barbra everywhere, invading her nostrils and seducing her tastebuds.
It all begins when Brabra as a gesture when her best friend dies of cancer, gives up smoking - overnight. At first it's hardly noticeable that she's gaining a little weight - after all, she always was on the thin side. The next few pounds, she reasons to herself, are just temporary. The next few? That's when it starts getting hard. And Barbras husband, her children, her friends - are all behaving quite differently towards her.
Driven into the clutches of Weight Watchers, Nutrisystems and Nautilus, Barbra finds her problems grow with her waistline. Until she goes back to work and meets Mac, a sexy rumpled crime reporter who helps her view of the world expand, too. So maybe thin isn't perfect....maybe a size 8 doesn't equal happiness.....after all, life does have riches to be savoured.....deliscious, spicy, sweet, scrumttious life......

Hungry
by Jane Barry (1994)

When Maggie Hapgood (Mrs) starts dieting, life takes on a new meaning. She no longer worries about being past the Big Four O, her children not needing her, and her husband no longer sleeping with her. Eating, she discovers, is not just a matter of staying alive. The right diet promises more than regained youth and physical perfection. The thin will inherit the earth...

Her quest seems set for rewards when she's choosen as the housewife in a before-and-after commercial for a miricle new slimming product, the Granny GArfunkel Chocolate Gateau with NO calories. Her life becomes full of excitement and glamour as she is wooed by Spike Bentley, the ad agency stud.

But, as Maggies's search for self-worth leads her into the cannabalistic world of multi-national marketing, she must cross the path of Fizz St Clair, account executive, a size eith style queen with the morals of an alleycat. Nobody. but nobody, os going to stand in Fizz's way. Soon Maggie's 'real' life threatens to fall in ruins about her........

The Cinderella Pact by Sarah Strohmeyer

NOLA DEVLIN HAS A SECRET IDENTITY. By day she is an overweight, frumpy, and overlooked editor at Sass! (the "celebrity magazine with an edge!"), but by night she slips behind her keyboard and into her alter-ego: Belinda Apple. Belinda is thin, gorgeous, British and the author of a trendy advice column— she is, in effect, the latest Carrie Bradshaw. Not even her two best friends or her self-absorbed sister (who worships Belinda as the "sister she never had") know her secret.

When "Belinda" jots off a column about how easy it is to lose weight, Nola is shocked when her best friends take her own lies to heart and urge her to follow Belinda's weight loss program. Since Nola can't reveal herself as the real Belinda Apple, she bites the bullet and joins her friends in making the "Cinderella Pact" — a last ditch attempt to lose weight (again!) and transform their lives for good.

But as the pounds come off, things don't turn out the way the three friends expect. Their journey of self-discovery leads to the rediscovery of an old love and the unmasking of new problems. Meanwhile, Nola finds herself torn between two different men as she stomps out fires caused by her deception as Belinda Apple and falls in love with the man who just might be her prince — or the rat in coachman's clothing.

DO I LOOK FAT IN THIS? by Jessica Weiner

Synopsis
Negative self-image and body criticism is a growing problem, especially among young women who vocalize their anxieties by speaking 'the language of fat'. Acclaimed motivational speaker and author of A Very Hungry Girl (Hay House, 2003), Jessica Weiner has spent years decoding this language and analyzing the destructive bonding sessions that women engage in every day. Written in a sassy, accessible tone that speaks to the MTV generation, this book shows women how to break the cycles of body loathing that affect all aspects of their lives: health, wealth, career, family and relationships. Filled with wisdom, guidance and stories of inspiration and triumph, the book is a step-by-step plan for creating a more fulfilling and positive life - and ending those negative bonding sessions for ever.

Does My Bum Look Big In This? by Arabella Weir

This is the diary of an ordinary, insecure woman in her thirties, Jacqueline M. Pane. Like all women Jackie knows that life would be perfect if only she had a small bum, sticky-up bosoms and didn't grow a moustache once a month.....Chart her progress as she perfects the art of feeling shitty about every little and not so little bit of herself. The potential for self-doubt lies in everything - and it's all her fault!

Sweet Temptation by Lucy Diamond

Maddie’s getting it from all sides. Her bitchy new boss at the radio station humiliates her live on air about her figure, her glamour-puss mum keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints that Maddie should lose weight and her kids are embarrassed to be seen with her after the disastrous Mums’ race at their school sports day. Something’s got to change…

Maddie joins the local weight-watching group expecting more humiliation but instead finds two unlikely allies – bitter divorcee Lauren who, despite running a dating agency, has signed off romance for ever and shy Jess, the beautician, who’s desperate to fit into a size 10 wedding dress for her Big Day.

Light As A Feather by Helen Dunne

 

Orla Kennedy, press officer in a City bank, is unhappy with her job and her weight. 'People always look at the wrapper first,' she explains, 'and in my case it's bubble wrap.' Of course, she knows how to lose those pounds - she just never gets around to doing it. Then her best friend Liz asks her to be a bridesmaid, and the threat of being swathed in pink satin makes Orla think blancmange! Spurred on by this prospect, she sets up a website chatroom, LightAsAFeather.co.uk, as a support group for 'larger ladies'. Things are going swimmingly until Orla is invited to appear on daytime television, and is persuaded to let a stick-thin model be her double. As if she doesn't have enough problems, her boyfriend Sebastian is behaving most oddly, and her brother, the chanting Buddhist, has decided to move in - permanently. But divine inspiration does come - from another, unexpected source ...

The Next Big Thing by Johanna Edwards

It's a plot torn from the pages of TV Guide: six overweight women live in a house of temptations and compete to see who loses the most weight. But it's far more satisfying than your average prime-time fare. The main character, Kat, always believed that life begins when you're thin. When her best friend, Donna, reads about a casting call for "From Fat to Fabulous," Kat decides she has nothing to lose but her belly. Of course, fame comes with a price. The tabloids dub her "Kat the Brat," and the show's surprise guest, her online boyfriend, dumps her on national television. Not to despair, however; Kat's story does have a happy ending. Edwards addresses image issues with wit and candor, and what's most refreshing is that losing weight doesn't make Kat's life perfect.

He Loves Lucy by Susan Donovan

 

Marketing exec Lucy Cunningham is thrilled when her firm lands The Palm Club account. The campaign concept for Miami's hottest fitness club was Lucy's idea: take one fitness-challenged woman, put her in front of TV cameras, and into the hands of the club's top personal trainer, Theo Redmond. And there's a big cash reward for each pound shed. It seems like a brilliant idea-until Lucy gets picked to be the guinea pig. It's obvious she needs to drop the pounds, but the idea of letting it all hang out in front of some Malibu Ken jock has her choking on her Milk Duds before she even begins!

After one meeting, Theo knows Lucy will be his toughest client and one of the most unforgettable women he'll ever meet. Smart-mouthed and stubborn, it's clear she isn't fond of marching to anyone's drumbeat but her own. But she shocks Theo by rising to the challenge like a pro. And he finds his heart in jeopardy long before Lucy starts to slim down and turn heads.

As Lucy sweats her way into a whole new life, things start to heat up between her and Theo. But trust doesn't come easy for either of them. They've both been burned by romance in the past. Now Lucy and Theo are about to discover that appearances can be deceiving-and in the end, true love lies somewhere between pizza and Pilates..