Fatgirl Slim

Starting at age 13 Stephanie Klein went to three different fat camps over five summers. In "Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp" (William Morrow) she writes about how she lost 30 pounds over one of those summers (among other things). It's hard to imagine that the sexy author of the memoir "Straight Up and Dirty"—the tale of her jump into single life after her first marriage ended in divorce—was ever overweight. But she was—emphasis on the past tense. The happily married mother of 15-month-old twins now carries 135 pounds on her five-foot-five frame. And with help from her husband, a naturally thin hedge fund manager, she's gearing up for a book tour for "Moose" (the title came from her childhood nickname). She talks with NEWSWEEK's Karen Springen about how parents can help chubby kids and the upcoming TV series based on her first memoir. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Is it true that all your "Moose" book tour stops will feature free chocolate?
Stephanie Klein: Yes! What kind of fat camp party would it be without a little junk food?

What was the most surprising thing about fat camp?
They weighed us on meat scales. The kids who were too heavy got weighed on a truck scale at the truck stop.

That must have been humiliating.
Humiliating. It's unbelievable to me, even to this day. They had barbed wire all around camp to keep us in so we didn't sneak out at night to go find food elsewhere. One parent sent menus from local restaurants nearby. Because we were so deprived, we would at night read the menu items out loud and imagine how they tasted. There were lots of humiliating experiences, but fun experiences too. For the first time in your life the opposite sex is paying attention to you. That's an aspect that people don't necessarily think about. Everyone is all of the sudden getting some boyfriends and girlfriends.

Your family was thin, right?
Yeah. More or less. My father had ups and downs. I did not have obese parents by any means.

How do you think you became an overweight child?
A lot of it was genetics, because my mother's family was overweight, even though she wasn't. I also think it was poor eating habits. I was kind of a book nerd. I was very good in academics. I'd come home, want to study and eat three bowls of cereal. Even though my mom didn't overall keep a lot of junk in the house, there's something called portion control. I had none.