Dawn Lerman

Dawn Lerman is a board-certified nutrition expert and a contributor to the New York Times Well Blog. Her company, Magnificent Mommies, provides nutrition education to students, teachers, and corporations. She lives in New York City with her two children, Dylan and Sofia.

Lerman's new book is My Fat Dad: A Memoir of Food, Love and Family, with Recipes.

From her Q & A with NPR's Michel Martin:

MARTIN: You know, people are used to the cliche of the Jewish family where food is the center of everything, but you kind of turned that story on its head. Your father couldn't stop eating, and her mother almost seemed to hate food. And you write in the book that growing up, you were always hungry. Tell us a little bit more about that.

LERMAN: Well, growing up, my dad was 450 pounds, and every week, he was on a new diets. And whatever diet he was on, we had to be on to support him. When he was on Atkins, we were on Atkins. When he was on the cabbage soup diet, that's all we ate - was cabbage soup. So I was always hungry. We never had real food in my house. And my mom was a want-to-be actress, and she was always running from auditions. And she only had time for a can of tuna fish over the sink. and she was rebelling against her mother, who cooked obsessively. And she felt - wanted more from her life, and food was just not in that equation.

MARTIN: So why was your father so obsessed with food?

LERMAN: His mother worked in the garment district from the time she was 13 years old. She was a Russian immigrant, and that was the way she showed love to him. She would feed him obsessively. And to him, food meant love, and I think that was his way of stuffing his emotions and not dealing with anything. So he just...[read on]

Visit Dawn Lerman's New York Times blog and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Dawn Lerman.

The Page 99 Test: My Fat Dad.

--Marshal Zeringue