Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large
$12.00
by Kimberly Brittingham
Kim Brittingham struggled for years with her weight and body image before she learned how to love her self unconditionally, find her confidence, and fully enjoy her life. In this unflinching, humorous, and uplifting memoir, she openly explores her complex relationships with food and dieting, sex and dating, and exercise and health, ultimately inspiring every woman to live life to the absolute fullest, no matter what your jean size. "Brittingham's memoir has a unique voice. With engaging, well-written prose...Brittingham's style is lively...her message is powerful." --Kirkus Reviews Kim Brittingham is a writer and blogger whose personal essays have been published on iVillage, Salon and Fresh Yarn. She received widespread national attention, including appearances on the Today Show and NPR , when she created a mock self-help book jacket with the title, Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat , wrapped it around a real book, and pretended to read it while riding the buses of New York City as an informal social experiment. She divides her time between New York City and Ocean Grove, New Jersey. KimWrites.com 9780307464385
excerpt Brittingham: READ MY HIPS part one ditching dieting When we lose twenty pounds...we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty. —Woody Allen ring dings I’d dreaded this day. Dread like a belly bruised from the inside, swirling puke green, putrid purple, and horrid yellow, and dripping black droplets like lead. At five years old, I wasn’t sure I knew how to pray, but the night before in the quiet of my mind, I’d given it a whirl and pleaded with God, “Please don’t let us move to Michigan tomorrow. Please.” Maybe God was more powerful when you were sleeping under a picture of Jesus, I mused. Jesus tacked to the wallpaper with a neat red pushpin. Jesus in a white tunic with outstretched arms seated on a rock, beckoning to children and snowy lambs drawn with shy, humanlike smiles. Maybe he was most potent when you prayed to him from the bed of your religious grandmother, and prayed with an aching heart. The night before was our final night in Philadelphia. With our furniture already loaded onto a big green-and-white Bekins truck and motoring toward Detroit, we spent the night at my grandmother’s. I insisted on sleeping with her. I snuggled against her back and was serenaded softly by the radio playing “church music,” as she called it—a spiritless choir delivering correct and measured hymns. Its blandness soothed me. When my mother roused me in the morning, Grandmom was already up and I found myself alone in her bed, wrapped in the worn-soft cotton sheets dotted with tiny blue flowers. It was five o’clock, that eerie time of day when the world seemed painted in watercolor and sound was shrill, as though delivered through a too-loud television. A teaspoon clattered on a metal stove top, a rustling bag chafed my ear. The air smelled of wet tree bark and coffee. “Come on, sleepyhead.” I was in no mood to cooperate. I didn’t want to contribute to anything that would hasten my separation from Grandmom. I adored that chubby, sweet-smelling lady more than anyone in the universe. What I wanted was to stay right here with her, forever, in this ugly rented sand-colored bungalow on Solly Avenue. She appeared in the doorway behind my mother. “You better get up, there, kiddo,” she scolded gently, and reluctantly I sat up. As much as I objected to our imminent departure, and would’ve been willing to handcuff myself to the radiator had I the resources, I still couldn’t bring myself to disobey Grandmom. The thought that I might cause her grief in any way shattered me. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, propped up like a rag doll, groggy and limp, when my mother told me to lift my arms. She pulled my cheap, staticky nightgown over my head, the tag that ensured its inflammability scratching up my side. She slid a turtleneck back over my head. I squinted at myself in the dresser mirror. My grandmother came and settled at my side and smiled at me in the glass, then reached out to pat my knee. I leaned irresistibly into her and she curled an arm around me. “Sit up straight so you can put your pants on,” my mother commanded. “I don’t want to go to Michigan!” I cried. “I want to stay here with Grandmom.” “If you want to come back and see Grandmom again at Christmas, you’ll be a big girl and stop making such a fuss.” Why not leave me here with Grandmom, and you can come back and visit us both? I wept, my face bunched stiffly up and glowing a bitter pink, my lashes heavy with clinging tears. I wanted to beg her, Please, Mommy. I can go to the school around the corner, where the playground is. My little heart throbbed inside my chest and my stomach heaved, as though my organs were squeezing out tears of their own in there. My chin tensed and my bottom lip trembled a
excerpt Brittingham: READ MY HIPS part one ditching dieting When we lose twenty pounds...we may be losing the twenty best pounds we have! We may be losing the pounds that contain our genius, our humanity, our love and honesty. —Woody Allen ring dings I’d dreaded this day. Dread like a belly bruised from the inside, swirling puke green, putrid purple, and horrid yellow, and dripping black droplets like lead. At five years old, I wasn’t sure I knew how to pray, but the night before in the quiet of my mind, I’d given it a whirl and pleaded with God, “Please don’t let us move to Michigan tomorrow. Please.” Maybe God was more powerful when you were sleeping under a picture of Jesus, I mused. Jesus tacked to the wallpaper with a neat red pushpin. Jesus in a white tunic with outstretched arms seated on a rock, beckoning to children and snowy lambs drawn with shy, humanlike smiles. Maybe he was most potent when you prayed to him from the bed of your religious grandmother, and prayed with an aching heart. The night before was our final night in Philadelphia. With our furniture already loaded onto a big green-and-white Bekins truck and motoring toward Detroit, we spent the night at my grandmother’s. I insisted on sleeping with her. I snuggled against her back and was serenaded softly by the radio playing “church music,” as she called it—a spiritless choir delivering correct and measured hymns. Its blandness soothed me. When my mother roused me in the morning, Grandmom was already up and I found myself alone in her bed, wrapped in the worn-soft cotton sheets dotted with tiny blue flowers. It was five o’clock, that eerie time of day when the world seemed painted in watercolor and sound was shrill, as though delivered through a too-loud television. A teaspoon clattered on a metal stove top, a rustling bag chafed my ear. The air smelled of wet tree bark and coffee. “Come on, sleepyhead.” I was in no mood to cooperate. I didn’t want to contribute to anything that would hasten my separation from Grandmom. I adored that chubby, sweet-smelling lady more than anyone in the universe. What I wanted was to stay right here with her, forever, in this ugly rented sand-colored bungalow on Solly Avenue. She appeared in the doorway behind my mother. “You better get up, there, kiddo,” she scolded gently, and reluctantly I sat up. As much as I objected to our imminent departure, and would’ve been willing to handcuff myself to the radiator had I the resources, I still couldn’t bring myself to disobey Grandmom. The thought that I might cause her grief in any way shattered me. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, propped up like a rag doll, groggy and limp, when my mother told me to lift my arms. She pulled my cheap, staticky nightgown over my head, the tag that ensured its inflammability scratching up my side. She slid a turtleneck back over my head. I squinted at myself in the dresser mirror. My grandmother came and settled at my side and smiled at me in the glass, then reached out to pat my knee. I leaned irresistibly into her and she curled an arm around me. “Sit up straight so you can put your pants on,” my mother commanded. “I don’t want to go to Michigan!” I cried. “I want to stay here with Grandmom.” “If you want to come back and see Grandmom again at Christmas, you’ll be a big girl and stop making such a fuss.” Why not leave me here with Grandmom, and you can come back and visit us both? I wept, my face bunched stiffly up and glowing a bitter pink, my lashes heavy with clinging tears. I wanted to beg her, Please, Mommy. I can go to the school around the corner, where the playground is. My little heart throbbed inside my chest and my stomach heaved, as though my organs were squeezing out tears of their own in there. My chin tensed and my bottom lip trembled a