Weight Loss Fiction

Did you make a New Year's resolution to lose weight this year?  Here are ten novels where weight loss is a part of the story.

Camp Utopia and the Forgiveness Diet by Jenny Ruden - Sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern knows the only way out of spending her summer at Camp Utopia, a fat camp in Northern California, is weight-loss. Desperate, she tries The Forgiveness Diet, the latest fad whose infomercial promises that all she has to do is forgive her deadbeat dad, her scandalous sister, and the teenage magician next door and (unrequited) love of her life. But when the diet fails and her camp nemesis delivers the ultimate blow, Bee bids sayonara to Camp-not-Utopian-at-all to begin what she believes will be her "real" summer adventure, only to learn that running away isn't as easy--or as healing--as it seems. Her wry and honest voice bring humor and poignancy for anyone, fat or thin, tired of hearing "you'd be so pretty if-- [insert unwelcome judgment about your appearance from loved one or perfect stranger]."

The Curvy Girls Club by Michele Gorman - Meet best friends Pixie, Ellie, Katie and Jane. Fed up with always struggling to lose weight, they ditch the scales and start a social club where size doesn't matter. Soon it's the most popular place to be - having fun instead of counting calories - and the women find their lives changing in ways they never imagined.
But the club can't stop real life from mucking things up.
Sharing offices in a taxidermist's garage with Pete the bear, together they've got to manage more than their new club - dodgy colleagues, a waste-of-space husband and sabotaged romance - while learning the most important lesson of all. In the Curvy Girls Club, confidence is the new black.

Fitness Junkie by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza - When Janey Sweet, CEO of a couture wedding dress company, is photographed in the front row of a fashion show eating a bruffin--the delicious lovechild of a brioche and a muffin--her best friend and business partner, Beau, gives her an ultimatum: Lose thirty pounds or lose your job. Sure, Janey has gained some weight since her divorce, and no, her beautifully cut trousers don't fit like they used to, so Janey throws herself headlong into the world of the fitness revolution, signing up for a shockingly expensive workout pass, baring it all for Free the Nipple yoga, sweating through boot camp classes run by Sri Lankan militants and spinning to the screams of a Lycra-clad instructor with rage issues. At a juice shop she meets Jacob, a cute young guy who takes her dumpster-diving outside Whole Foods on their first date. At a shaman's tea ceremony she meets Hugh, a silver fox who holds her hand through an ayahuasca hallucination And at a secret exercise studio Janey meets Sara Strong, the wildly popular workout guru whose special dance routine has starlets and wealthy women flocking to her for results that seem too good to be true. As Janey eschews delicious carbs, pays thousands of dollars to charlatans, and is harassed by her very own fitness bracelet, she can't help but wonder: Did she really need to lose weight in the first place?"

Good Luck With That by Kristan Higgins - The newest heartwarming novel from the New York Times bestselling author tells the story of two friends who make a promise to face their deepest hopes and greatest fears by agreeing to stop waiting to lose weight and start living now. Marley, Georgia, and Emerson met at fat camp as teens, and they never would have survived it without each other. They bonded against the disapproval of their family and friends by loving each other for who they were and dreaming together of when things would be better--something they formalized by writing up a list of all the things they'd do once they lost the weight... Now, seventeen years later, Emerson is morbidly obese and on her death bed from the strain of her weight on her heart. She calls Marley and Georgia to her side one last time and makes them promise her to stop waiting to live, and do the list now.

Jemima J by Jane Green - Jemima Jones is overweight. About one hundred pounds overweight. Treated like a maid by her thin and social-climbing roommates, and lorded over by the beautiful Geraldine (less talented but better paid) at the Kilburn Herald, Jemima finds that her only consolation is food. Add to this her passion for her charming, sexy, and unobtainable colleague Ben, and Jemima knows her life is in need of a serious change. When she meets Brad, an eligible California hunk, over the Internet, she has the perfect opportunity to reinvent herself–as JJ, the slim, beautiful, gym-obsessed glamour girl. But when her long-distance Romeo demands that they meet, she must conquer her food addiction to become the bone-thin model of her e-mails–no small feat.
With a fast-paced plot that never quits and a surprise ending no reader will see coming, Jemima J is the chronicle of one woman's quest to become the woman she's always wanted to be, learning along the way a host of lessons about attraction, addiction, the meaning of true love, and, ultimately, who she really is.

Losing to Win by Michele Grant - The small town of Belle Haven, Louisiana, is still struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill, and its residents will do whatever it takes to get it back on its feet. So when local English teacher Carissa Melody Wayne is asked to appear on the weight-loss reality show Losing to Win, she agrees. She doesn't realize that others from her past will be joining her, including her high school nemesis, an acquaintance who's been nursing a long-time crush on her, and most shocking of all, Carissa's ex-fiancé, former NFL star Malachi Knight. As Carissa's group is split into pairs to compete in a series of challenges, she finds herself at the mercy of the chaotic Hollywood crew and cast members, and her own unfinished business. Soon enough, she discovers that her biggest challenge will be deciding what's really important to her, what she's willing to do to win and how to do it with cameras following her 24/7.

Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies by Erin Dionne - Thirteen-year-old Celeste Harris is no string bean, but comfy sweatpants and a daily chocolate cookie suit her just fine. Her under-the-radar lifestyle could have continued too, if her aunt hadn't entered her in the HuskyPeach Modeling Challenge. To get out of it, she's forced to launch Operation Skinny Celeste'because, after all, a thin girl can't be a fat model! What Celeste never imagined was that losing weight would help her gain a backbone . . . or that all she needed to shine was a spotlight.
A hilarious debut featuring friendship, family, mean girls and even celebrity crushes, Celeste's story is a delicious treat that doesn't add a pound.

The Next Big Thing by Johanna Edwards - Kat Larson figured she had nothing to lose by becoming a contestant on the new reality show From Fat to Fabulous-except maybe a few dozen pounds. Then she'd finally be able to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Nick, the British hunk she met online, who still thinks she's a size four. She'd finally be confident and graceful and thin-and there's that big cash prize, too, to pay for all those slinky new clothes she'd need. She'd finally have the perfect life.

Steamed to Death by Peg Cochran - Aging soap star Felicity Davenport is looking to revamp her image, and she's using Gigi's Gourmet De-Lite to help her shed a few of those unwanted pounds. Having such a high-profile client is definitely good for business, but when Felicity is found murdered in her sauna, things start getting too hot for Gigi to handle.
 The list of suspects is a mile long, and Gigi's best friend, Sienna, is at the top. Refusing to let her friend get blamed for a crime she didn't commit, Gigi is determined to hunt down the real killer. But, as the case reaches a boiling point, Gigi will have to be careful or she could be the next one getting burned.
INCLUDES DELICIOUS--AND HEALTHY--RECIPES!

The Weight of Him by Ethel Rohan - At four hundred pounds, Billy Brennan can always count on food. From his earliest memories, he has loved food's colors, textures and tastes. The way flavors go off in his mouth. How food keeps his mind still and his bad feelings quiet. Food has always made everything better, until the day Billy's beloved son Michael takes his own life. Billy determines to make a difference in Michael's memory and undertakes a public weight-loss campaign, to raise money for suicide prevention--his first step in an ambitious plan to save himself, and to save others. However, Billy's dramatic crusade appalls his family, who want to simply try to go on. Despite his crushing detractors, Billy gains welcome allies: his community-at-large; a co-worker who lost his father to suicide; a filmmaker with his own dubious agenda; and a secret, miniature kingdom that Billy populates with the sub-quality dolls and soldiers he rescues from disposal at the local toy factory where he works. But it is only if Billy can confront the truth of his pain, suffering, and the brokenness around him, that he and others will be able to realize the full rescue and change they need.