What distinguishes Jane King's Trick Yourself Thin from other diet books is her voice. It's direct and funny and lacks the typically didactic, clinical and often condescending tone of the vast slew of other diet books out there. Her viewpoint, too, is unique. As she sets out in the book: A. You can continue to eat a lot and still not get fat.B. There are three simple, but profound, reasons why people gain weight, so that, when you lose it, you will always gain it back unless you understand and cope with the reasons you gained it in the first place. C. The book is very funny. 1) What's the principal idea? Let's face it. People often eat for reasons besides sating their hunger. This book doesn't demand that you stop, it shows you how to get away with doing just that, still enjoy food . . . and do it without gaining weight.2) Who's the audience? This is a book for regular people. Written not by a fitness expert, but by a woman who has been overweight sometimes, thin sometimes, but mostly in-between. She's not perfect, she's not aiming for perfect, she's aiming for not-quite-perfect, all the while still indulging in the deeply, deeply, totally satisfying pleasure of eating. 3) Who else will love this book? People who don't really want to be preached to, people not into rules or a regimen. The book describes how each person customizes their diet to suit themselves. It's about exploring who you are, what works and doesn't work for you. 4) What's the book not about? It's not about getting to some perfect weight. If you don't get it right one day, no big deal. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Every day you start again and do what you can that day. 5) What else is great about this book? It's filled with lots of real-life stories of dieting scenarios that people can relate to.
Jane King grew up in Santa Cruz, California. Since then, she has traveled quite a bit.In Cleveland, she and two friends helped the punk movement gain a foothold in the United States. One of the friends, Johnny Dromette, used his rather sizeable trust fund for this purpose. In Chicago, she manufactured novelty items, including political buttons that were featured on the covers of Time and People magazines; a series of ôToaster Postcards,ö which depicted toasters dressed as people on vacation in Chicago; ôI Like To Have My Heart Brokenö t-shirts; posters from a political campaign supporting Jane Byrne called ôTelevotionists for Janeö; ôThis Bill is Meaninglessö stamps; two magazines û Little Girl Games and The Exact Opposite of Wishful Thinking and Euphemistic Speaking; and finally, a book: The Guide to The Best Public Ladies' Bathrooms in Downtown Chicago. In New Mexico, she wrote her first work of fiction: Some Stories of Love and Romance. In New York, for MTV, she and then-partner Todd Mueller wrote and produced promos and ads and they co-created a late-night techno music show called ôAMP.ö They also did a redesign of the Sci-Fi Channel, which won a 2000 Broadcast Design Award. She also created the copy concept for a rave girl catalog company called Delia's. Also in New York, Jane published three more novels, Junie Smith Experiences Fear, Memory Loss and the Movies; Not Quite Perfect; and Crazy Little Bird. In England, she wrote the diet book Trick Yourself Thin, the first in the ôTrick Yourselfö series. She currently lives in New York. (For now.)
