Erin S. (nantuckerin) reviewed Believe It, Be It: How Being the Biggest Loser Won Me Back My Life on + 158 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
I'm a huge fan of The Biggest Loser brand -- from the TV show, to the cookbooks and workout DVDs. So, when I stumbled upon the memoirs of Ali Vincent -- the first female Biggest Loser winner -- I didn't hesitate to pick it up.
Believe It, Be It is a quick read, and a very inspiring tale documenting Vincent's life and her road to weight loss. I really enjoyed the back-stage pass to The Biggest Loser process and the behind-the-scenes details about life on the ranch -- it provided a very interesting perspective on the series for fans of the program. However, Vincent's own revelations are also worth a read. The writing isn't great -- at all -- but the content is good. Vincent talks about her past problems that lead to her obesity with a lot of transparency and honesty. I was surprised by her candor about her childhood and some of her misteps in adulthood, and really appreciated Vincent's courage in writing this book.
The main story is punctuated with short tips, anecdotes and inspirational pull-outs. As a reader, I thought these were a little distracting and maybe too frequent throughout the text, but most provided some good quick information.
At the end of the day, I kind of left the book feeling that Vincent might be a little workout-obsessed. She writes that she no longer goes to movie theatres because she'd rather watch a DVD on her treadmill. (Really?) It's inspiring to see how much weight she lost and to learn how she did it, but for me, it was also a little discouraging to realize that unless you want to work out for 4-8 hours a day, that path from a size 20 to a size 4 might not be quite so easy for the rest of us to follow.
Believe It, Be It is a quick read, and a very inspiring tale documenting Vincent's life and her road to weight loss. I really enjoyed the back-stage pass to The Biggest Loser process and the behind-the-scenes details about life on the ranch -- it provided a very interesting perspective on the series for fans of the program. However, Vincent's own revelations are also worth a read. The writing isn't great -- at all -- but the content is good. Vincent talks about her past problems that lead to her obesity with a lot of transparency and honesty. I was surprised by her candor about her childhood and some of her misteps in adulthood, and really appreciated Vincent's courage in writing this book.
The main story is punctuated with short tips, anecdotes and inspirational pull-outs. As a reader, I thought these were a little distracting and maybe too frequent throughout the text, but most provided some good quick information.
At the end of the day, I kind of left the book feeling that Vincent might be a little workout-obsessed. She writes that she no longer goes to movie theatres because she'd rather watch a DVD on her treadmill. (Really?) It's inspiring to see how much weight she lost and to learn how she did it, but for me, it was also a little discouraging to realize that unless you want to work out for 4-8 hours a day, that path from a size 20 to a size 4 might not be quite so easy for the rest of us to follow.
