Friday, September 10, 2010

Book Sneeze: Let's Do Lunch

Are you a blogger? Have you heard of Book Sneeze?  You can request new, FREE books from there in exchange for your review of them.

My most recent book from Book Sneeze was Let's Do Lunch by Roger Troy Wilson.  This book was originally published in 2003, but has been updated and republished in 2009.

Let's Do Lunch is basically a diet book.  I'm not a big fan of diets, but the subtitle to this caught my attention: "Eating all the CALORIES and CARBS you want to lost weight!"  You know how they say "If it seems too good to be true, it usually is."  I wanted to see if this was one of those cases.

The book starts out with the author sharing his personal story of how he ate everything in sight as a child and quickly became obese.  As an adult, he tried every fad diet out there only to fail miserably.  One day he discovered by accident that he really liked frozen grapes so he started eating them every night instead of his usual junk food.  He ate pounds of grapes every night, yet he still lost weight.  This lead to making other changes in his diet and he eventually lost 230 lbs.  He decided to share his weight loss secrets with the world.

There are several good things about this book.

1)  The author states that he doesn't make a cent on the sale of the book.  100% of the proceeds go to charity.  I'm taking him on his word for that one.

2)  He stresses that eating a healthy diet is the key to weight loss.  I agree with that.  Diet is 75%, exercise 25%.

However, I have a few issues with his plan.

1)  He states on the cover that you can eat "all the calories and carbs that you want" and still lose weight.  According to the diet he lays out, this should really read: "Eat all the calories and carbs that are on my plan and still lose weight."  His plan excludes potatoes, pasta and rice and highly recommends fruit - lots of it.  Now I understand that potatoes, and pasta can be fattening, I'm not arguing with that.  I just think his subtitle is misleading and not entirely honest. 

2)  I really don't think rice is fattening.  Over half the world survives on this food and that half of the world is not suffering from an obesity epidemic like we are.

3)  His other big premise is that you must eat your biggest meal of the day at lunchtime (hence the title of the book).  His logic is that you have more time to burn it off if you eat it at lunch.  Logically I can see where he is going.  But I've read several studies about this and there is no conclusive evidence that food consumed later in the day turns into fat any faster than food consumed earlier.  It's a steady rate kind of thing whether you are sleeping or awake.  So, I'm going to continue to eat my biggest meal in the evening until I have proof otherwise.

My conclusion is that this diet plan is not for me.  I can't argue that he found success on it and you might too, but I don't see enough merit in it to change my eating patterns.

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