Breaking rules

Press, 13 December 1986, Page 28

Breaking rules

Breaking AU The Rules. By Nancy Roberts. Viking/Penguin, 1986. 220 pp. Illustrations. $39.

Nancy Roberts began dieting at age eight, and claims to have spent 25 years working on various diets. Now her approach has changed: diets don’t really work, she argues, so why suffer? Lie back, enjoy your fat, don’t be ashamed. Flaunt it and feel good. That may be fine if one has managed to become something of a television star in Britain by flaunting one’s size.

Roberts is determined to have her overweight readers say to themselves, and everyone else, “I like myself like this.” She offers a variety of causes that can be blamed for being fat — almost anything will do, provided one does not blame oneself.

Along the way she comes up with useful ideas — good colour pictures on how to make the best use of make-up, for instance; patterns for clothes for larger figures, even if the results have a tent-like appearance; even exercises in which the models are fat and not much is 'required of the exerciser. An encouraging book for those who have had enough of diets. But the sad fact remains that no-one ever lamented, “I wish I was fat.” Would anyone who is overweight really say “No” if, somehow, they were offered a chance to become effortlessly slim? — Lorna Buchanan.