Half-Assed : A Weight Loss Memoir

Jennette has lost almost 200 pounds. She has one of the best personal weight loss blogs out there and a few months ago she was approached by publishers about writing a book about her story.

I'm excited the book will be available soon. But I was disappointed to read that the publisher didn't accept Jenette's title suggestion; Half of Me: The Last 200 Pounds are The Hardest.

Instead they picked a title which I don't find half as appealing; Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir
Even worse, I wonder why they didn't include her whole picture on the book cover? Why just include her lower half? It's so much less appealing, don't you think?

Height: 5'9"
Age: 26

Starting Weight: 372 lbs
Current Weight: 176 lbs
Goal Weight: 160 lbs

Total Loss: 196 lbs
Left to Lose: 16 lbs

Starting BMI: 54.9
Current BMI: 25.9
BMI Lost: 28.9

Jennette already has such a large online following that I wonder if it wouldn't have been better for her to go the self-publishing route. She could have created her book with Lulu.com, sold it on Amazon, and attracted a lot of attention through word-of-mouth reviews around the net. I wonder if her book would have been an even larger success if she was in control of the marketing herself.

Jimmy Moore interviewed her last week. Here she talks about how surprising it has been to have such a great affect on other people. She mentions that;

I once got a comment from a woman who had spent several days secretly reading my blog at work. Afterwards she said she didn't feel like she wanted to die anymore. I was stunned that words typed into a text box could do that to someone. I felt a heightened sense of responsibility afterwards to remain honest and open about my experiences. Words have a lot of power.

I write a post about once a month where I try new fruits and vegetables and people have told me they've tried golden kiwi or mangoes because I wrote about them. It's funny to think I'm influencing the profits of the mango farmers of America in some small way. I learn a lot from my readers too. An entry might start about one topic and spin off onto something else, like how to cook radishes that sound really tasty or discussion of what a super-taster is.

See the very interesting interview here.