An Xl Life

A rare three-time winner of the Marconi Awards, Big Boy (aka Kurt Alexander) is one of the country's biggest hip-hop DJs. Unfortunately, for a time he was big in every sense of the word, finally weighing in at 510 pounds. Busy with work, he opted for duodenal switch stomach surgery and shrank by over 250 pounds, but nearly lost his life. Not a diet guide but a probing memoir.

This is the weight-loss story you don’t hear about. As LA’s most talked about radio personality, and a man that peaked the scale at 500-pounds, Big Boy shares his journey to the top, and for the first time gets real about his weight-loss to ensure people know the truth. This is the weight-loss story you haven’t heard. Despite growing up homeless, fatherless and facing more than a few problems with gang violence, Big Boy managed to rise to the top of the hip -hop world and west-coast radio scene. He had just one problem. Over the years, Big Boy was becoming a very big man. As he reached the pinnacle of broadcasting he just kept piling on the pounds until his weight scaled a truly scary 510 pounds. A bet with Will Smith for charity set him on the right path – but he’d need to do something much more drastic if he was going to get well. He’d have to learn to put himself first. It didn’t come easy. A radical surgical procedure took off the pounds, but it nearly killed him. Even with his health in turmoil, Big continued to entertain while fighting through the greatest struggle of his life. Now, in An XL Life, the joke song-singing, crank call-making, celebrity interviewing, wise-cracking, all around hilarious, humongous brotha behind the wildly popular morning radio program Big Boy’s Neighborhood shares everything he lived through and learned along the way.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

With two out of every three Americans overweight or obese, it’s all hands on deck--scientists are studying how excess fat changes physical and mental health, demographers are calculating how it’s shortening life spans, and economists are debating the impact it has on America’s productivity and global competitiveness. But how weight affects intimacy and sexuality is barely discussed. Yet it’s a question of high importance for the tens of millions of Americans who are overweight or obese and having difficulty sexually and romantically. It is changing and complicating the mating game and married life alike; stunting the ability of young people to find happiness; and tipping some heavy, but otherwise happy, couples into divorce. For many, a larger body has meant a more troubled mind: a decline in sexual quality, an increase in self-loathing, and a tendency to let these factors stand in the way of love. In XL Love, Varney travels the country and tells the personal stories of men and women who are experiencing what millions of others feel every day, along with the stories of those who are in the business of helping them: physicians, researchers, scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and more. Analytic and immersive, personal and eye-opening, XL Love tackles the question: How is sex changing in America as the shape of Americans changes?