The only diet book that works past Wednesday......
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I've been a serial dieter for most of my adult life. (Start most Mondays and when I stick it out until Wednesday, it's a good week...)
I know all the theory: I just fail the practical. Or failed.
When it comes to losing weight, I don't need a diet. I know "all there is to be know'd" about diets. What I lack is willpower. Of the hundreds of slimming books and magazines I have read, this is the only one that has ever worked. Because it changed my way of thinking. Suddenly I found that elusive ingredient.
Two of the author's many telling comments stand out in my mind. One is that every time you choose the cake or the calorie-laden dessert, you are choosing to be fat. So simple. But so effective. Suddenly, I was no longer a miserable failure at losing weight: I was just choosing to be fat. Except that - unbelievably - I wasn't. When I had the choice, I was choosing NOT to eat the piece of gateau/biscuit/proffered sweet, etc. Instead of trying desperately to resist, and failing miserably yet again. Unheard of!! At first I couldn't quite believe what I was doing. But I have made that choice so many times since reading the book that now "I'm a believer".
The other comment was a question. If someone was trying to give up smoking, would you allow him one cigarette a day? That's what most diets do. You're allowed one, or maybe two, treats a day. And when you're a serial dieter like me, by George you live for that daily treat. The rest of what you eat is just duty. And a pretty disagreeable duty, at that. What you're thinking about, and all you really care about, is that one little treat. But the sugar in the treat is the smoker's cigarette....
As someone else said, maybe this book isn't for everyone. But it's the only one that's ever worked long-term for me. If you've read masses of dieting books and/or magazines; if you know all the theory and still fail the practical; I'd recommend that you try this book. So far, I have bought four copies! One for me and three for fellow sufferers. It has changed my life. I hope it changes theirs. And yours. Good luck.
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The ONLY diet book i've read that's motivated me to lose weight - BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
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First of all, i have to admit that I've always known how to lose weight from a purely technical perspective .....
calorie counting, tending towards the low GI plan, etc. The problem has always been summoning up sufficient reserves of willpower!!
From my early teens to early twenties, I used to see-saw up and down in terms of my weight, from 9 stones 4 lbs to 11 stones 0lbs (I'm 5ft 6ins). 11 stones used to be my 'crisis point', at which I would start to diet back down to circa 9 stones odd .... however from my mid-twenties onwards I allowed my weight to balloon to the point where it reached 17 stones 2 lbs in January 2006 ..... I ignored the situation because at the time I was ultimately unhappy with my life .. .I was feeding some sort of emotional need in myself. Thanks to this book, I have now reached 12 stones 6lbs, and I am on track to reach my target weight loss of 10 stones 0lbs by December 2006.
Try not to focus on the total amount of weight you have to lose .... as Lee Janogly says in her book, no-one is asking you to pose nude for playboy/playgirl in 6 months time .....just focus on eating healthily each day, each week, each month ....time will pass and you'll lose weight gradually as you carry on with day-to-day life...there's really no rush!
I' ve been eating regularly and have never felt 'hungry' as such on my 'diet'. I never, ever go more than 3 hours without eating.... hunger leads to vulnerability to sugary/unhealthy snacks, I think.
For me, Lee Janogly's book reinforced the following:
1) your body shape is the result of your lifestyle choices ...every time you eat a chocolate digestive instead of an apple, you are choosing to be fat....therefore the reason you are fat right now is because you are CHOOSING to be .......SOOOO true....
2) losing weight starts in the mind.........the thoughts you put into your mind influence which foods you put in your mouth......whether you think you can or think you can't lose weight....you're right!!
Please do read her book ... it truly helped me to find the courage to face and address my weight problems, I hope that you find it useful too! I've had the odd lapse here and there, but the secret is to forgive yourself, and get back 'on the wagon' straightaway afterwards.
I would SOOOO love to thank Lee Janogly in person!
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Woeful and insulting
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I was fooled into buying this book by the glowing reviews it had received on Amazon - I'm glad to see a more balanced selection is now available. I'll start with the pluses: Ms Janogly has a nice sense of humour ("a balanced diet is NOT a biscuit in both hands") and her chapters (at the end of the book) on self-motivation do contain some good advice.
However, I found much of the rest of the book flawed and insulting. First there is the hypocrisy...along the lines of 'diets don't work, you won't succeed by following somebody else's rules, I have the solution that is guaranteed to work and you need never diet again...just follow these simple rules...give up sugar, all sugar, for ever, you will never eat a cake again, have protein at every meal (this one is actually useful) but no carbs during the day, oh and if you want to lose weight you'd better watch your serving sizes too and not eat fattening foods, you idiot'. So much for the no-diet diet.
The first couple of chapters are more of a rant than a source of information. She insults anyone who has ever written a diet book as unknowledgeable and working an agenda - pot, kettle, black, anyone? and even insults Saint Carol Vordermann's detox - according to a newspaper test (very scientific), Carol's detox was the only one of the diets tried that didn't result in weight loss. Well, I've read Carol's book, and she clearly states it is not about losing weight (although I lost 13lbs on it) but about feeding your body only good wholesome food for a period of time (and ideally thereafter as part of your normal life). Plus, according to Ms Janogly, all detoxers have huge bums, so there.
On the chapter about exercise she dismisses people with PhD's and years of experience researching exercise physiology, getting to the top of their field and helping to form government guidelines as "experts", HER derisory quotation marks, simply because she doesn't like what they have to say, and she knows better, yet she freely quotes from books by non-specialised journalists and her own 'guru'. As a scientist, I found that her explanations of the (sometimes sound) science behind some of the ideas she espouses ranged from laughable to new age mumbo jumbo, but I will charitably put the invention of a new vitamin, F, at the expense of vitamin K, down to a typographical error. I hope.
This is a jumbled together amalgam of other popular diet books and a lot of personal venom. Her give up sugar idea may actually work for some people but there are better, more useful, and more informative books out there for people looking to lose weight and get off the dieting treadmill. Patrick Holford's books are always based on the latest sound scientific research for example, or if you really want to know why diets always fail and what to do about it, try 'Fed Up' by Wendy Oliver-Pyatt (MD), someone who actually knows and understands what she is talking about.
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Useful But Flawed
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I had this book passed on to me and gave it a go. The main points of the book are:
1. Give up all sugar. If you are overweight (or "fat" as the author always says) chances are sugar controls you. So give it up.
2. Do not eat carbs for lunch or dinner. Instead save them for breakfast and a bedtime snack.
3. Think positively about yourself.
4. Exercise.
Positives about this book come mainly in the chapters about sugar. Instead of being told "all things in moderation" the author says forget that. If sugar controls you give it up! Do not eat anything with sugar in it. Take control of matters yourself. The positive thinking chapters are also useful.
Problems with book include the fact that it's written by a woman for women. The author lacks much knowledge about exercise (e.g. she dismisses swimming as a useful exercise). The cutting carbs out of your lunch and dinner is slightly puzzling (i.e. you just eat protein and veg/salad for these meals).
Overall it is a useful but flawed book. It doesn't provide all the answers but instead is a tool towards losing weight. 6/10.
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Only Fat People Skip Breakfast
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I bought this book in October 2005 and to date (May 2006) I've lost 4 stone in weight. I would have liked to thank Lee Janogly personally for writing this enlightening book, but this is the nearest I can get to shaking her hand. Ok, its not going to work for everyone, but it certainly did for me! Thank you so much Lee. I feel so much more healthy and happy. If someone gave me a sack of 50-odd pounds of potatoes I couldnt lift it......and I was carrying this around with me all the time.....for years. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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