Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir »

Jennifer Joyner has been a television reporter, radio show cohost, news director, and writer in North and South Carolina for more than sixteen years. She anchors morning newscasts for two Fayetteville radio stations; gathers news for the Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville markets for WRAL-TV, one of America’s largest CBS affiliates; and is a featured writer for WRAL.com. Joyner also chronicles her personal journey at jenniferjoyner.com. She lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

A brutally honest memoir of life as an obese woman—
the pain, humiliation . . . and hope

Jennifer Joyner was slowly killing herself with food. She didn’t know what to fear more: dying, or knowing that she was causing her own death. She was powerless to stop. She weighed 336 pounds. She had uncontrolled diabetes and high blood pressure. She’d lost jobs and friendships, and her marriage was hanging by a thread. She disgusted herself. She couldn’t even attempt a sex life. She’d never felt so desperate or alone.

Designated Fat Girl tells her story. It is a painfully honest account of Joyner’s experiences as an obese woman—of always having to buy new clothes that fit, pretending to order for two people at drive-through fast-food joints, the constant cycle of binge and regret, not fitting into her wedding dress, the cruel comments. It’s a story about her decision to have gastric bypass surgery and the resulting complications. In the end, it is also a story of recovery and survival.

Publishers Weekly

According to Joyner, a former TV reporter and radio host, American society doesn't take food addiction seriously, and in her engaging memoir, she reveals the incredible toll morbid obesity took on her life. Joyner paid dearly during her 16-year battle with food. She tallies the costs in ruined friendships, stalled professional advancement, rocky family relationships, and shattered self-esteem. ("Temptation would take over my will, and I would find myself eating, and I couldn't stop. I consciously knew that my actions were going to cause my death, and yet I couldn't force myself to abstain.") Finally, reaching 336 pounds, and her health in serious jeopardy, Joyner opts for gastric bypass surgery. The procedure resulted in serious postoperative complications; still it proved to be a turning point in her life. Joyner wrote the narrative as part of a healing process, no matter how humiliating. She gamely explores circumstances in her life accounting for her twisted logic surrounding food and happiness. She also explains that she hopes "that someone hanging on the edge like I was will read this and feel hopeful." (Sept.)

Prologue ix

1 Death Via Drive- Thru 1

2 Bingeing and Hiding 16

3 I'm Jennifer Joyner, and I'm Not on TV 28

4 The Tale of Three Weddings 46

5 Vanity Is a Luxury I Can't Afford 59

6 Work It Girl, Phase 10,280 76

7 Sex and the Fat Girl 104

8 Skulls and Crossbones 118

9 Life in the (Fat) Mommy Lane 145

10 Last Straws 165

11 Making It Up 182

12 Shipwrecked 214

13 Finally, the Dawn 225

Acknowledgments 248

About the Author 250