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Weighing It Up
When Ali was 14, she started to exercise obsessively & limit her food intake - all following an incident which completely undermined her self-confidence. By the time she was 18 her weight had fallen to below 6 stone & she was on the brink of death. This is a frank & compelling account of her struggle to overcome anorexia.
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 16, 2018
The intentions behind this book are great but it gets really repetitive and doesn’t give a thorough enough insight into the illness. As someone who had a close encounter with anorexia, I was really hoping for more.
April 3, 2016
Weighing It Up has some good points—namely, that Valenzuela is pretty positive about recovery and appears committed to it in this book—but there's not a lot to distinguish it from others like it. Not nearly as organised as I'd like, with a fair amount of repetition (exacerbated by the structure, which is basically journal entries interwoven closely with present-day writing—back and forth every few paragraphs). I also find it quite frustrating when books suggest that everything's fine once things are physically no longer dire; while that's overstating it a bit, I will point out that it's a 183-page book, and it's page 159 before she's allowed to not use a wheelchair. It means a lot less time on the also-difficult later stages and that the book kind of...totally skims over any struggles that happened later, when she was out of hospital. (The author writes at the beginning that she wrote this in the gap year that I was forced to take because my anorexia was too severe for me to go to university (2), suggesting that, yeah, she wasn't entirely at the end of the road.)
The author was a teenager when she wrote this, and I give her credit for a lot of things,* such as that pretty positive spin on recovery and having the drive to write this kind of book. I am quite surprised, though—this is a huge part of why my rating is two stars rather than three—that beat (an eating disorder charity) collaborated** on the book. There are numbers and details all over the place—weight, height, calories, things eaten. Really unnecessary, and while it might not be fair to expect a teenage author to know better, an org like beat should know better.
*I will note that I also saw an interview or two with Valenzuela, and she seemed thoughtful and on-point; the book didn't work for me, but I don't take that as a reflection of the author.
**Not sure that's the right word, but the back of the book says 'in collaboration with beat', and there's a little 'about beat' bit at the end
Originally written April 2015; edited in April 2016 to fix a rather appalling typo.
The author was a teenager when she wrote this, and I give her credit for a lot of things,* such as that pretty positive spin on recovery and having the drive to write this kind of book. I am quite surprised, though—this is a huge part of why my rating is two stars rather than three—that beat (an eating disorder charity) collaborated** on the book. There are numbers and details all over the place—weight, height, calories, things eaten. Really unnecessary, and while it might not be fair to expect a teenage author to know better, an org like beat should know better.
*I will note that I also saw an interview or two with Valenzuela, and she seemed thoughtful and on-point; the book didn't work for me, but I don't take that as a reflection of the author.
**Not sure that's the right word, but the back of the book says 'in collaboration with beat', and there's a little 'about beat' bit at the end
Originally written April 2015; edited in April 2016 to fix a rather appalling typo.
June 3, 2015
As someone who has suffered from anorexia I found this book quite easy to relate to but I don't agree with how everything seemed fine afterwards when I am still struggling after many years of getting over the initial struggle.
The positives are that at least this book helps raise awareness of the problems and show how one person tackled all the challenges but, I don't know, it could have been better written and have had some more description or stuff.
I partly read it to help me recover but in a way it made me feel more depressed despite the positive attitude she showed.
In all, it was a good read but I don't really think I'd be recommending it to other people. It's really a bit of a hit and miss novel for who it will appeal to in my opinion. Please feel free to disagree with this but that is just my personal opinion.
The positives are that at least this book helps raise awareness of the problems and show how one person tackled all the challenges but, I don't know, it could have been better written and have had some more description or stuff.
I partly read it to help me recover but in a way it made me feel more depressed despite the positive attitude she showed.
In all, it was a good read but I don't really think I'd be recommending it to other people. It's really a bit of a hit and miss novel for who it will appeal to in my opinion. Please feel free to disagree with this but that is just my personal opinion.
December 14, 2018
A powerful novel - it really made me think.
August 16, 2019
This could have been so great and important but it fell short and was disappointed
January 13, 2016
Really interesting to see what anorexia is like on the victim. All, we see it as is when a person is too thin. Though it's so much more than that. This book really opens your eyes about anorexia and I urge you readers to give it a go.
September 2, 2019
Interesting. Liked the diary entries, but the reflections on them were a bit repetitive
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews