How can obesity be treated in a society that both creates it and condemns it?

This firsthand account focuses on the words of the patient, woven together with the author's own; the words of the practitioner, whose expertise helps the reader understand the inner workings of addiction; and the words of those around the patient, particularly their families, who bind patients up in an inextricable knot. Claudine Hunault describes the desire to lose weight and the fear of coming out of obesity, the home we find in our skin for want of finding it elsewhere, and how suffering can paradoxically seem to provide reassurance. She also points to the culpability of an economic system that makes people easy prey for all kinds of consumerist fads, including diets.