Publisher's Synopsis
A few weeks after turning 41, Eve decides to chronicle her efforts to lose weight. Every day is a different reason to keep up her struggle to eat less candy, eat more veggies, and go for a walk. This "river of consciousness" memoir details her struggles with morbid obesity, infertility, raising two autistic boys, and battling depression. The book is sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and always real. From the book: I turned 41 years old a few weeks ago. This birthday hit me in a big way. I weigh about 330 pounds. Because of my weight, I have had problems with my menstrual period. A sensitive gynecologist told me in passing that I was barren. I have tried to have a baby since I married Antonio in 2015. I take progesterone shots, the pills, the Clomid. Nothing. And it's all because of my 330 pounds. It's all because of me. It's all because I am a failure at self control and eating right. I am a failure at daily exercise. I am a failure at life. I am a failure at becoming a mother. I am a failure at being a woman. If I wasn't so busy working full time and being a stepmom to two amazing boys, I could get super depressed about this. But on occasion, when I have a moment to myself, these thoughts rumble around my addled mind. I have wanted to give up trying to have a baby. As much as I want the joy of having a baby, the pain of not having a baby is overwhelming. And so I stopped taking my monthly progesterone shots because shots aren't fun. But without them, I find myself endlessly bleeding. January, in addition to being the advent of my 41st birthday, was also a time for the never ending flu/bronchitis and non-stop menstrual bleeding. Imagine being feverish and coughing so much that giant clots of blood fall out of your body. That was January. Finally, I had the presence of mind to awaken from my cycle of misery and ask my husband to shoot progesterone into my hip. It had been a while. I laid sideways at the end of the bed while he prepared the needle. I tried to distract myself with my phone. He felt for my waist with his large calloused hands. He has to find the top of the waist, then spread his hand back towards my butt and put the needle in a muscle that resides at the top of my buttox. Instead of putting the needle into the muscle, he put it into a nerve in my hip. It felt like fire. I screamed, I yelled, I swore. He pulled it out and put it in the right place, but the place where he put the needle still burned and something about the needle penetrating the nerve unleashed every horrible feeling I'd been trying to hide from him. I sobbed and cried out, "I'm such a loser!" Over and over again. "I'm a loser!"I think you have to know me to know the depth of the strangeness of those words. I have never been accused of self-deprecation or a lack of self-confidence. I loathe self-deprecation. And I don't see the point in pretending to lack self-confidence. I am pretty good at most things. And if I'm not, I'm perfectly content being bad at those things. 'Perfect' being the operative word. To try and be good at EVERYTHING would be illogical and impractical. The needle burned into my nerves and produced screaming and language far-fetched for a woman of my confidence. How was it possible for me to scream such foulness? But my weird dark secret was out. I saw myself as a loser.
