Fat, Crazy, and Tired: Tales from the Trenches of Transformation

by Van Lathan Jr.

Podcaster and former TMZ host Van Lathan Jr. writes a sharp, funny, and brutally honest, cultural critique of the unspoken obstacles and extreme anxiety that keep us from maintaining good health in America’s “wellness waistland,” explored through vignettes about his mental health and weight loss journey as a Black man.
 
  A formerly chubby kid who self‑identified for much of his life as “the fat friend,” media personality and podcast host Van Lathan Jr. has struggled with physical and mental health his entire life. He was used to being his besties' wing man on the dating scene, the slack bench‑dweller at the gym, and his mother's biggest fan at every meal, especially whenever she served up her infamous mac and cheese with five different kinds of cheese. At 365 lbs, Van hated being fat so much, he found it harder than being Black! After dedicating years to improving his physical and mental health, with many ups and downs, in 2020 Van found himself in a shared slump with other Americans when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the George Floyd video was released—suddenly he was surrounded by carbs galore, binge-ing everything, feeling non‑stop exhaustion, and crippling waves of anxiety and depression. 

Fat, Crazy, and Tired isn't just about Van's ultimately unsuccessful journey to an Instagram‑able body and zen; it's about the unspoken personal battlefield of attaining and maintaining what Americans deem as good health. He explores the real reasons behind our unending physical and mental health battles—culture, family, and the baggage of life—and demonstrates how we can better understand our bodies by better understanding ourselves. He takes it back to his southern upbringing in Baton Rouge, opens up about how being “the Black guy” at work at TMZ overshadowed his identity, and shares how he holds up to survive the madness.
“Detox” cleanses? Weight loss pills? Celery juice? No, thank you. Unlike the self‑help gurus that push you to go “all or nothing” and “keep it 100,” Van wants you to be happier and healthier at 50% without totally admonishing yourself to get there. Packed with double doses of humor Fat, Crazy, and Tired shares a brutally honest cultural critique of mental health and our weight loss obsession in what he dubs America’s “wellness waistland.”
 

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

208 pages, Hardcover

Published April 26, 2022

Reviews

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Van on his podcast Higher Learning so getting to know more about him was a treat. I didn’t realize a lot of the ways he struggles with being comfortable in his body. Very relatable. There’s a good balance of humor and wisdom in the book, not too preachy (a celeb memoir pet peeve). I wish there was more about Van’s opinions and insights on racism in the book bc I find his voice there to be super insightful and his perspective unique. Overall enjoyed this.

[Colleen Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled across this book when a coworker offered me the ARC, and after reading the back, I decided to give it a try. It was a great read, unlike any other memoir I've tried.

As a fluffier person, I really appreciated Lathan's honesty about the struggles with his weight, the causes of it (family, neighborhood, cultural history, family pressure, food availability, etc) and the way that poverty and social inequality in turn influences how we deal with weight via family, influence, wealth and our own access to healthcare. His rawness about his own suicidal ideation and continuing mental health struggles were hard to read but uplifting in their honesty.

Lathan is truly, really funny; his writing is light and easily digestible. The sections about Black Lives Matter were wonderfully introspective and brought a new perspective about black bodies and the physical and emotional weight they carry.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many, I know Van Lathan from his Ringer podcasts, Higher Learning and Ringer-Verse. When I saw that he published a book earlier this year about his relationship with his body I thought, yes – let’s read that. So much of the way in which the systems around us fail us forms the bedrock of this book, but its Lathan’s way of exploring the larger ideas through scenes about his own health journey as a Black man which was fundamental to why I wanted to read a book by this author. This is a personal story that lets the reader in, but it takes someone used to sharing their stories to create that space in crisp, easy to read chapters. Oh, and Lathan’s signature humor is on full display, right next to his candid discussions of his mental health journey (cw: suicidal ideation).

Full review: https://faintingviolet.wordpress.com/...

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful af, like the man himself

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m reading this book because I saw the author on The Daily Show, and it sounded interesting. Fortunately, it is kinda short. It wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be. It’s like a young memoir – one written when you’re still too young to be able to talk about an entire life. Then the book transforms into a life rant. I thought it was about his weight loss journey, it is but it’s not. Basically its about living.


RECOMMENDATION: SKIP IT

[Shamiram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, I have to admit that maybe my review is biased because I really really like Van from listening to him on Higher Learning for a long time. But! There are some really honest and, ultimately, self-compassionate insights here that will stick with me for quite some time. Plus, any book that can make me laugh out loud at points while also making me cry at others is usually a book I enjoy.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up
This was such a good book; listened to the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed it. Great inspiration and ideas.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and love when authors read their own stories. Enjoyable short listen.

[MakBoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Journey towards self-acceptance

“I wonder how we find peace in a society where the trees were fertilized with the blood of our ancestors.”

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this concurrently with Brene Brown's "Atlas of the Heart" and was pleasantly surprised at how closely the two books complement one another. I'm not Van's intended audience here at all, being a privileged White woman, but if that also describes you, don't immediately dismiss his writing off the bat -- there is something in here for every human who cares to listen. (If you're not listening to his podcast, "Higher Learning", you should be -- I have learned so much from him and his co-host Rachel Lindsay about how much I still *don't* know of this world) Van's meditations on anxiety, depression, collectivism, and connection hit me pretty hard, at the same time I was reading analogous chapters in Brown's book, and you can definitely read one without the other, but I think you'd be missing out. Finally - I knew Van lost his father last year, but I was not prepared for the emotional wallop in the final chapters of his book when he opened up about that experience. Tread with caution, but also with an open heart and mind.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Van Lathan’s memoir made me want to read more books by men. Van’s book was delicious, it was like a warm hug. it felt like he was just sitting in front of me, telling me his life story that is so profound and remarkable over drinks. It felt so personal, and to think that after all that, one doesn’t feel arrived, accomplished, like they are living and doing it remarkably well after all the trauma??? That is proof that life is in the living not the doing and aspiring because there will never be enough. The essays are human, and I actually think every Black man should read this as a Black woman. The book was almost shocking in his vulnerability, I commend it and recommend it HIGHLY!!!!!

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

A zero-star racist rant from an overweight angry black guy who is surrounded by privilege but wants to blame society for his own bad choices. The memoir is a propaganda booklet, less than 200 pages with lots of white space, where Lathan gets to spout nonsense in the name of standing up for his "community." He splits the country between "Black Americans" and "white supremacists" (note which color is capitalized) despite the fact that he had overwhelming success befriending a large group of Hollywood white co-workers and producing an Academy Award winning short film. It's essentially a bad therapy memoir where he gets to spew his continued unhappiness and hatred toward anyone not his color and the country as a whole, then coming to the silly conclusion that the only solution to peace is yoga.

At least I should admire him for admitting his unwillingness up front to accept responsibility for his own choices--he writes on the fourth page this ridiculous statement: "The outcome from what you're doing isn't your fault, even though you're responsible. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT."

So his 365-pound black life is based on his belief that he (and others like him) cannot be held accountable for his own actions and choices. And even though he accepts that he may be responsible for putting all that bad food in his body or saying hate-filled things out of anti-white rage, the outcome is something he can't be blamed for. This is typical of the unintelligent #BLM movement supporters that don't think they should be held responsible for anything destructive they do because it comes out of a reaction to "hate speech," "oppression" and "systemic racism." Namely, blacks can speak hatred, oppress others, steal, take lives and destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of others property but not have to suffer the consequences of criminal behavior because according to Van Lathan "it's not your fault."

Who's fault is it? Guess. Society, of course! Majority white society! He has the audacity to claim that the reason overweight people don't make good choices is due to shame from a society "obsessed with looking good" (people from whom he desires his living, so isn't he complicit?). This undereducated self-imposed fake health expert then says, "Shame is the number one driving force behind a seemingly never-ending cycle of bad decisions." See where he's going with this? He (or anyone like him) can't be held accountable for bad choices or doing destructive actions because the way he (and his community) perceives how others mistreat him is a valid excuse.

I don't buy any of it. The book is filled with odd examples that tows the leftists party line and lacks any objectivity. He seems to have mental difficulties when arguing points, never thinking of other viewpoints beyond stereotyping the person who says them and failing to show any tolerance or inclusiveness toward anyone beyond skin color. It is the ultimate racism--except when standing up to a conservative black man who dares to say something Van didn't agree with.

Lathan fails to acknowledge his own hypocrisy. He claims to be a God-follower who believes in "only love," but he doesn't practice what he preaches. He turns his supposed faith into another racist rant saying, "White Americans have a god complex," adding that white religion teaches God can take a life whenever He wants therefore that is "why we're so easy to kill." Seriously. This book actually got published with that kind of illogical nonsense.

He does say that he has gained a bunch of weight back since leaving TMZ but is at "peace" due to yoga. What happened to the shame aspect that he supposedly now has under control in a divisive country? So was his original theory wrong that society's shame causes weight gain?

He also claims after a book filled with hatred that he now realizes that anger won't do anything to change the world. Then adds, "It's not that I'll never be angry. It's that I won't ONLY be angry. It's not that I'll never be violent. It's that I won't ONLY be violent." What in the world does that mean? So this man of love and peace is still threatening violence against a country he thinks is ruled by white supremacy? His end-justifies-the-means approach to life is anti-God, anti-love, and anti-peace.

Van Lathan Jr. is a mess. He was embarrassing on national TV and was rightly taken off TMZ. He needs serious mental and physical health help. This book does nothing but add to the growing list of publications that reveal the dangerous misguided thinking of some destructive black Americans instead of coming up with real solutions for peace that starts within.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Genuinely disturbing suffering filtered through the lens of redemption capitalism.

There’s real power in the moment Van sees his father frightened for the first time. It’s destabilizing. And it’s telling that he doesn’t know what to do with that fear except turn it into a punchline. Piss Olympics is a great phrase. It’s also a dodge.

The parents in this book are its most genuine literature, if you’ll allow the term. His mother, in particular is mythologized, yes, but she’s also the one figure who resists full conversion into Lathan´s emotional performance. He tries, of course. but what bleeds through is something he doesn’t’ understand. She’s not his muse. She’s his ghost that haunts his paragraphs in ways he’s not equipped to narrate.

What’s positively horrifying is how aware he seems of this and how he aestheticizes that awareness. There’s an almost literary cruelty to the way he describes his mother watching the family eat in silence, food as compensation for lost selfhood. The structural conditions that constrict her life are translated into a charming anecdote about macaroni. He eats her story, quite literally.

The mother, who never eats. The father who enters with a gun and leaves with a bedpan. They’re table dressing. Lathan doesn’t engage with their interiority; he decorates his trauma with them. He blames him, and he blames her. On the same page he tells you he doesn’t.

Right after, and before the 1000-word paragraphs where he does.

It’s not his fault. It is not.

And as long as he can make you believe he's alright, it isn’t.

[Bree Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book that catches me with a great title. And a wonderful blurb inside the cover to catch me.

BUT..... as much as I enjoyed the writing and this was a FAST read, the book felt a little all over the place. I was looking forward to reading about Lathan Jr's battle with the intersection of weight, mental health, and race. And he discusses all three. Unfortunately, he never quite gets deep enough for me on any of the three or how they might interconnect.

What I did learn (and appreciated in his vulnerability) is that he doesn't have (or pretend to have) any answers to the issues that he raises. He merely raises the issues that weight shouldn't have a stigma (going so far as to almost say that being fat is a similar prejudice to being a person of color), that depression is tough to deal with, and that racism is worse than white people think it is. And that the intersection of the three makes it incredibly hard.

That said, I love the issues that he raises - and that he doesn't provide a solution. Like soooooo many people try and do. He just accepts the fact that he will have to live with this intersection his whole life.

[taylor allie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So happy I decided to read this memoir from Van after being more thoroughly (after the TMZ Kanye thing) introduced to him through The Midnight Boys & The Higher Learning podcasts over the past year. I've grown to really enjoy his takes on all things pop, nerd, and political culture so it probably comes as no surprise that I loved this book.

As someone who often sees themselves through one, or sometimes all three, of the lenses of being fat, crazy, and/or tired I resonated with nearly every word. I appreciate him naming how so much of our most difficult challenges to overcome as Black people are our problems to solve despite not being responsible for the conditions in which they arise.

I can understand some people's perspective of this book as being "all over the place" but I think that's exactly how it feels when you see yourself as fat, crazy, and/or tired. The ideal is some straightforward linear process of progression and when you're occupying the intersection of certain identities, the direction in which you'll end up going is simply unclear.

[Kaden · Rating 5 out of 5]

CW: Suicide Ideation

Love Van and really appreciated his vulnerability here. I’m 6’6” and I feel my best in 240s but find myself more frequently in the 280s. Being thin isn’t in my genes and I carry weight well, but I still struggle with staying healthy and feeling consistently comfortable with my body. Like Van, food has always been my comfort blanket and over these last few years I’ve needed more comfort with everything going on. Hearing someone I listen to frequently and see as successful so clearly talking about these things I struggle with was a comfort blanket in itself.

Chapter 7 leads off with a story about suicide ideation. It was powerful, but I was on the audiobook and there was no advanced warning for that content which was jarring for me since I already was feeling more vulnerable from relating to his previous chapters on body image.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was way better than I anticipated. I have low expectations for memoirs lol. And although Van was all over the place he clearly explained the issues he suffers from and what that’s like for him.

Van has this poetic way of telling stories. Everything is always so detailed. His chapters on his relationship with food is probably the best part of this book. Black people have a long history of showing love with food and that isn’t always a good thing.

His chapters on anxiety were the most relatable! When he said if his mom couldn’t solve a problem it consumed her, I had to take a pause and think. Cause that’s 100% me!!!

All in all I enjoyed this read!

[SerenaBeReading · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really great listen. I noticed Van had gained weight but didn't think much of it because so many of us have. I didn't know he was a bigger guy years ago and had lost all of the weight for it to return during Covid. He talked about his anxiety (can relate!) and how it is to be seen as the fat friend. Of course I was waiting for him to talk about that day at TMZ and his time there and he delivered. I could also relate when he talked about the death of his father. Please give yourself time to grieve. It's ok if we aren't strong 24/7. Great read/listen!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fan of Van Lathan's work in The Ringer, I found this to be a delightful read. He was very reflective here, which is a side of him that we usually see in his podcasts, but not to this extent. The storytelling of his anecdotes was also great, as they were engaging and shared important details that added context to make us care. It was a short book to read, but nevertheless, it was still valuable and worth reading. It also felt fresh to read a memoir that is not coming from a popular celebrity.

[Awwwtrouble · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listen to some of Van Lathan's podcasts, and I like him a lot on the Ringerverse and sometimes I listen to Higher Learning. He will reference his issues or his past sometimes, so I was intrigued to get his book. It's a super slim volume, and I just wanted more from it. Really it's a series of essays that overlap time periods and sometimes contradict timelines. I wanted a more straightforward timeline and storytelling.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listen to Van on the Ringerverse podcasts and love his personality. So I had to give his book a try. I really enjoyed it.

He opens right up. You'll get a look deep into Van and what makes him tick. What his upbringing, nature, and nurture did to him and for him. I love how he's thought this through and broken it down to simple and relatable bites. If you listen to Van and think you know him, you've just gotten started.

[Mikki Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! It’s totally written in Van’s voice that I’ve gotten to know from several podcasts. It dropped some gems and shows how thoughtful he is. I wish him the best on his anxiety journey and I appreciate his honesty on how it’s affected him. It gives the rest of us some solace that we’re not alone.

[Nast Marrero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Van Lathan’s brave openness offers a very humane and relatable recollection of his experience dealing with anxiety, weight and self-image in a culture that is both racist and fat-phobic.

The book has many opportunities to grow in understanding and empathy, is genuinely funny and has a number of pearls of wisdom.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible memoir from a good podcaster. At a similar life stage to me with similar philosophical problems as myself but far more aggressive. Some interesting insight into what it means to be in middle age and it’s challenges of loss and anxiety and what peace means along with death, body issues and professional success.

[Tess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Van on the Higher Learning podcast. He’s such a great story teller. My only regret is I didn’t get this as an audio book because I actually think it loses something in the written word rather than listing to Van weave a story.

[Gab Johnson-Nieporent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge fan of Van’s podcasts Higher Learning and The Ringerverse and loved getting to learn even more about him in this book. He has a clear voice and tells the best stories. I absolutely hope he will be writing another book because I know he has many more lessons to impart and stories to tell.

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the fastest reads I’ve ever had; wish he went more into the Kanye stuff – and I’m really worried about his mental health in the future – but I learned things/am glad I read. Actually got this as a gift for LB for our wedding anniversary! Grade: B+

[Sarah Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered Van through his various Ringer podcasts and decided to check out his book. This was a great audio book listen from a fantastic story teller. I can’t wait to see what Van does next with his singular voice and vulnerability.

[Rob Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't heard of the author until I stumbled across the "Way Down in the Hole" podcast. Loved the podcast. Then found this book. Hilarious. Lathan is a wide open book who doesn't hesitate to tell on himself. Lets us look into his soul and learn.

[Dave Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really earth-shattering news here but if you’re a fan of Van Lathan then you’ll be a fan of Van Lathan’s book. Appreciated his unique perspective on his life and his writing style/story telling are top notch.

Also apparently his dad had a hog so that’s neat