Waist­ed, a pro­gram locat­ed in a remote Ver­mont man­sion, promis­es fast, dra­mat­ic weight loss; Alice, Daphne, and five oth­er des­per­ate women leave their fam­i­lies for this once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty. The catch? They must agree to always be on cam­era; after­ward, the world will see Waist­ed: The Doc­u­men­tary. The women soon dis­cov­er the film­mak­ers have trapped them in a cru­el exper­i­ment. Each lost pound sends them deep­er into obses­sion and insta­bil­i­ty. until they take mat­ters into their own hands.

Daphne, raised in a tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish fam­i­ly, plump in a fam­i­ly of mod­el-thin women, learned at her mother’s knee only slim­ness earns admiration.

Alice, uncon­di­tion­al­ly loved by her pro­gres­sive par­ents — her father, a South­ern Bap­tist black man from Geor­gia, her moth­er, a Jew­ish woman from Brook­lyn — risks los­ing her mar­riage if she keeps gain­ing weight.

The two women move from being acci­den­tal room­mates to cham­pi­oning and pro­tect­ing each oth­er, to ulti­mate­ly form­ing an unlike­ly and unbreak­able friendship.