You, on a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management

I have struggled with my weight in recent years. As a kid I could eat anything I wanted and never gain, but, like everyone else, our bodies change and we end up gaining. Before I knew it, I ended up overweight. I had tried other diets (Atkins, South Beach, The Zone, etc.), and one day my Dad made a comment to me that really made me mad. Instead of getting angry then depressed afterwards, I had a new resolve. I had one thought and one thought only "Well, I'll show HIM. He thinks he's so high and mighty, always has the right answers for everything. He thinks I can't do it, I'll show HIM." With that thought, I got out of denial and did something about it. Within approximately a year and a half, I have lost 42 lbs. I am 5'10" and proudly at 140 lbs, back to the higher end of my high school weight.So while I praise my diet (an organized diet group whose name I will not advertize here) and giving me a new outlook on life, I praise this book for supplying me with the tools to go through everyday life. We are going to battle the bulge all our lives, no matter who you are. The biggest myth we have to overcome is the fact that we cannot eat whatever we want as long as we keep doing physical activity. You have to count calories as well. It's ok to have a little treat every once in a while, but we CANNOT eat treats all the time. This book provides you with tips and how to deal with our constant battles to eat bad things when you can make it a priority to eat good things. Listerine breath strips or mints are great things just to snack on. A craving only lasts a little while. If you follow these rules, you will feel physically and mentally better. Now I make it a priority to eat my five servings of fruit and vegetables everyday. It really does cleanse the body. Eat some garbage, and you will automatically realize how much you have been poisoning your body.As for the other reasearch that has to do with your family history, it has merit, no question about that. Hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. are all inherited conditions. You can't do anything about this, but you can control it. You don't have to resign yourself to weight gain, you don't have to resign yourself to poor health. And just about all of these problems, genetic and non, have to do with your weight. Our waistlines are expanding thanks to poor choices, cheap fat laden food made available, and our need for taste over eating right. This is a battle we will have to fight, and this book will help you overcome so many things.

This book taught me that you aren't really eating "normally" on most diets. Your body confuses a diet with a time of famine and is trying to keep you alive. Your body doesn't know that you can afford to lose the weight, and that the "famine" is self-imposed. It explains the role that chronic low-grade stress (work, relationships, etc.) plays on weight gain.The book explains how to eat well for your body so that you are satisfied, not hungry, and in a way that your body knows it is OK to shed pounds. Your goal is to remain satisfied or pleasantly full throughout the day. The other part of the book that resonated with me is that variety is what is killing us. The authors suggest that you automate your breakfast and lunch, eating the same thing or from a small group of things every day. This takes the guesswork out of things. Then you should eat a handful of nuts before dinner, so that you do not overeat. It also explains the effect that "bad foods" have on your hormones and brain chemistry vs. the effect that "good foods" have - other than just the extra calories that you are intaking. This was most interesting, and what sets it apart from other diet books or plans.The difference between the You Diet and any other that I have tried is that there was no 2-3 day period of feeling terrible or having to adjust. Just a clean-out of highly processed foods from our kitchen and a trip to Trader Joes for some healthy foods and lots of label reading. Now I just feel better and better the longer I do it. It is amazing how tasty whole grain foods can be and how much more they fill you up than processed carbohydrates. My husband is even enjoying the foods I am making!

I am half way through the book. I am not crazy about most of the pictures, and sometimes the explanations of the way the body works are too long, but over all it is an entertaining and informative book. It explains why your belly fat is giving you bad lab results even when you are dieting, and gives helpful hints to try to improve the health issues by improving the good chemicals in your body through healthy eating. It has some really good tips in the book.My husband who is now his ideal weight, because he has been eating healthy, has been reading it when he waits for me to get to bed, and he actually already did some of the things the book tells you to do, i.e. eating a small handful of nuts 20 minutes prior to a meal to set off a chemical that tells you that you are satiated (I am starting this thanks to the book). He is finding the book informative also (and he usually leafs through a couple of pages of my health books or magazines then sets them down - but this time he is reading it through).p.s. Even before getting this book, both my husband and I had been using the basic concepts in the book (getting sugar and white flour out of your diet, bumping up natural fibers...) and our "bad food" cravings are gone and we have both lost 25-30 pounds each. We now crave healthy foods. The book is just reinforcing a lot of the concepts we already know, but it is a good refresher, and we like the explanations of how the body works and how you react to the foods you eat. It is encouraging me to stay the course (I have 30 more pounds to go, and the book is likely to encourage me to get the weight off a little faster than I planned thanks to it's explanation of what my belly fat is doing to the rest of my body).