A typical New Year’s Eve would find her buried in the binge to end all binges while planning the diet to end all diets. Still fat and frustrated despite having dieted for decades, she dreads the number on the scale as much as she hates herself for being there again.
Her pre-diet stepping-on-the-scale ritual inevitably prompts the dreaded raging scream, “Out damned fat, out!” With pizza in one hand and pen in the other, she sets down to chart another fat-fated course to that magical land of eternal slender.
Born and raised in the backwoods of B.C., Ruth Boehmer, who lives in Creston, received her diploma in nursing from Lethbridge Community College in 1976. She went on to complete a master’s degree in health promotion and a PhD in psychology. After launching her last of four children out into the world, she set her time and mind to writing, starting with a compilation of decades of journal entries recording the misery of losing and gaining weight over and over again.
Boehmer’s four-decade struggle with weight and body image inspired the writing of her book, All My Sizes: Four Decades of Diet Hell. As a young woman, she began keeping a journal, finding four decades later that much of her life story centered on her obsession with dieting and weight problems.
She has penned the misery-go-round of the modern woman in All My Sizes: Four Decades of Diet Hell. Intensely personal, Boehmer captures the heart, mind, and soul-war of the diet-binge cycle caught on paper in the hate of the moment.
Featuring journal entries from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood, All My Sizes is a firsthand account of the author’s struggle with food, weight and body image. There is no resolution or how-to guide, only a cacophony of diet drama authentically capturing the battle every woman faces when she believes she’s not “enough”.
A book release will be held at 6:45 p.m. Nov. 30 at Creston’s College of the Rockies campus. All My Sizes is at Black Bear Books. For more information, visit facebook.com.
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