Mart-Mari Breedt is an author, software engineer and happily married mother of four. For the better part of 38 years, she was obese – morbidly obese. But over nearly three years, she had lost 80kg (176 lbs), reaching her goal weight in December 2019.

Soon after reaching her goal weight, she discovered that being and staying thin was not all it promised. With no goal to pursue and solely relying on her strong willpower to pull her through each day, maintaining a massive weight loss became a constant battle between wanting to live freely and not picking up weight. The onset of the COVID pandemic did not help either.

Her desire to somehow balance not gaining weight with living a limitless and unbounded life led her on a therapy journey and ultimately discovering that her problem was never the weight she had carried. The weight had only ever been a symptom of a bigger problem – one she had been trying to patch up with food her entire life.

Mart-Mari’s debut memoir, Eighty Kilos of Shame, is about her process of losing her emotional weight. It is an immensely personal writeup containing only her story that she’s written to inspire and open the eyes of others to food addiction and how people numb their emotions using food.

Her memoir is enlightening, captivating and riveting. It will have your nose glued to the pages and you wishing for more even after reading the acknowledgements.