When Jean Braithwaite moved to Columbia, Mo., to earn a doctorate in English during the 1990s, she was hard to miss on campus because of her obesity. That sentence probably sounds insensitive, but it is also true.

Through high school and into college, Braithwaite weighed in the normal range. She obsessed about food, and at one point struggled with anorexia. But by her early 30s, she had ballooned to 300 pounds. Yet she swears she usually ate healthy foods and exercised.

That might sound strange. But one theme of her memoir "Fat" is the complexity of the human body — how the identical calorie intakes of two individuals can result in radically divergent outcomes. Braithwaite is able to refer to detailed notebook entries about herself and her food to back her account.

Eventually, Braithwaite's metabolism (or whatever) altered again. Now, about age 50, she weighs about the same as in high school, has a doctorate in English, and teaches at a small college in Texas.

"Fat" tries to make sense of her weight fluctuations, her confused thinking about her body image, the way American society stereotypes obese individuals, plus her complicated relationships with family, friends and strangers.

Braithwaite is an accomplished memoirist although the book might frustrate some readers because the chronology is not chronological. Yet the path of her life as told by her is never totally obscured.

Sometimes her tone is ironic, as when she tires of explaining her weight loss: "In the week before school started, without actually saying anything untrue, I deliberately gave one of my English Department colleagues the impression that I have cancer, or HIV, or some other deadly illness, though in fact I'm fairly sure I don't."

What better way to avoid explanations while simultaneously shutting down the prying? Braithwaite reminds readers that she has not written a weight-loss manual. What she has written is a manual for life in the face of tempting, often unhealthy, food choices.

Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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'Fat: The Story of My Life With My Body'

By Jean Braithwaite

Published by Snake-Nation-Press, 242 pages, $25