Three Answers: Janice Taylor

by Dick Donahue, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2006

Three Answers from Janice Taylor, whose Our Lady of Weight Loss: Miraculous and Motivational Musings from the Patron Saint of Permanent Fat Removal will be published by Viking Studio on August 17.

PW: Has it crossed your mind that some devout people might object to your use of religious themes and imagery?

JT: So far I’ve had two people who’ve come forward, and I really appreciated that both of them were willing to have a conversation with me about this rather than jump to their own conclusions. One of them e-mailed me and asked me if I was making fun. She said she had a real relationship with the Blessed Virgin Mary—that she had received help after praying to her. I said I’m absolutely not. I have my own relationship with the Blessed Virgin; it may not be the traditional Catholic link, but it’s coming from a childhood love of nuns. Those were the people who were the nicest to me, so all this is coming from a place of love and respect—it’s my interpretation of it. She wrote back and said I’m really glad I asked you about this, and I still want to be on your mailing list. Then I was giving a talk somewhere and I had a similar conversation with another person. And I said anything that’s giving people a forum to talk about religion in a positive way, that’s a good thing. So I’m listening to her thoughts about religion and she’s listening to mine—I said then ‘I think it’s a good thing,’ and she said ‘I do, too.’

PW: You seem to be a terrific self-promoter. When and how did this start?

JT: I don’t know that I would label it a self-promoter in that way. I lost all that weight and I put up my Web site and I did the Kick-in-the-Tush Club mostly because I love to connect with people. My husband is always saying, you’re always looking for somebody to play with. So I think that this, though it happens to have turned into something that looks like self-promotion, is really me going out there and jumping up and down and saying, Look I lost all this weight, and Our Lady of Weight Loss was with me, and I’m having such a good time! Who wants to have a good time, too? The first time I got an e-mail from someone other than friends and family I was ecstatic. It’s the miracle of the Internet. I’ve been discovered. I think all this is coming from a really authentic, organic place; it’s not that I’m thinking, hmm, how I can I promote myself. I’m saying, I have never had so much fun, and then I find out that Publishers Weekly wants to interview me—how cool is that?

PW: Some of the things you say in your book—the wisdom of laughter, for example—might strike some people as obvious. Does that concern you?

JT: Two things about that. One day I said to a friend, You know it takes 20 minutes for the brain and the stomach to catch up—you’re eating so fast you’re going to eat more than you really want to. And she said, I didn’t know that, and I thought everybody knew that. I said gee, I would have put some things in the book that I think everybody knows but maybe they don’t. Or maybe they want to be reminded. To be reminded about laughter, and I’m glad you brought you brought that up: kids laugh 400 times a day on average, while adults chuckle about 15 times. So we can talk about laughter as being obvious, and maybe we all know that, but if you’re chuckling 15 times a day and the kids are laughing 400, maybe I ought to tell you again. The tone of the book is happy and fun and people tell me that they look at it and feel better. And if you can look at something and feel better, that’s pretty good. There’s enough out there that’s serious; you don’t need me to be serious, do ya?! I don’t do serious well, anyway.