The wish to become slim has given rise to a highly lucrative market with its fair share of inventors, quacks, swindlers and honest but ineffectual doctors, as well as hysterical reporting. And yet all slimming methods have so far proved to be unsuccessful. Under such conditions, why do so many people continue to try one slimming method after another, and, above all, why do supposedly responsible doctors continue to recommend slimming diets and products to their patients?

Gérard Apfeldorfer tries to understand the paradox and examines the controversy in detail. He presents a scathing review of slimming methods from Hippocrates to our time. What if the real issue was not dietary, or psychological, or individual, but collective? What if the underlying cause of weight problems were our bulimic society?
Here is a book that finally asks the right questions. It should help readers to understand the situation, change their habits and so successfully lose weight.

Gérard Apfeldorfer, a medical practitioner, psychiatrist and psychotherapist, is a member of the French Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies. He is the author of Maigrir c’est dans la Tête.