It was Jennifer Weiner's father—a child psychiatrist—who first made her feel bad about her weight. "When I was 11 or 12, he would say, 'You're fat, you're ugly, no boy is going to want to date you,'" says Weiner. "He made me feel ashamed of how I looked, and eating made me not feel ashamed—it let me not feel anything. Then, of course, I'd eat and feel even more ashamed."
Just talking about those memories brings Weiner, 46, close to tears. As the bestselling novelist (Good in Bed, In Her Shoes) reveals in her new book of personal essays, Hungry Heart, her dad was "wonderful" when she was very young, but mental illness transformed him into a "mean and erratic" stranger—when she was 16, he abandoned the family, eventually becoming…
