Former ‘Late Late Show’ Writer Ian Karmel Shares Lifelong Struggle with Weight in New Memoir: When You Learn That You’re Fat, You Learn Thats Bad [Video]

Ian Karmel remembers the exact moment he realized he looked different from other kids. 

“It was in the pool,” the comedian tells PEOPLE. “You learn that you’re fat — and at the same time that you learn that you’re fat, you learn that that’s a bad thing.”

“And then you put a T-shirt on in the pool with the idea of covering up that fact somehow, or throwing people off the track even though it sticks to your torso and people can immediately tell. But you know, it’s an act of desperation in a juvenile mind.”

Karmel, 39, references that experience in the title of his memoir, T-Shirt Swim Club: Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People, which he cowrote with his sister, Alisa, a psychologist.

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