The Fat Fallacy : Applying the French Diet to the American Lifestyle by Will Clower Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Fat Fallacy : Applying the French Diet to the American Lifestyle
Book Review: This book is amazing!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had to write in to tell everyone how easy this diet actually is. I was very skeptical at first, but what he's saying actually makes sense and when you use his principles you do lose weight while eating full fat foods. My cholesterol and triglycerides are lower, BP is lower and I'm healthier. LOL, my doc even asked me what I was doing and I believe he will try it too!
Will Clower has written his book with humor, I laughed many times while reading some of his anecdotes and he's humorous while getting his point across. A very enjoyable read with life changing tips!!
I would recommend this highly to everyone!!!
The only reason I'm selling mine is that I know it by heart having read it about 10 times so I don't need it anymore. My family members have all read it, too, and now they are changing the way we eat, too. You should have seen out thangsgiving table!! Such a life, who would've thought?!
Book Review: LIfe-changing
Summary: 5 Stars
This book has changed my life. After years, ok: decades, of struggling with my weight, I've lost pounds easily and consistently by following this plan. I love to cook, love to dine at the many excellent restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, and always plan my travels around good places to eat. I began as a size 14, am now a size 10 and am confident of reaching size 8 --slowly, but surely, while eating fine food all along the way. Book Review: C'est vrai! C'est simple! C'est tout!
Summary: 4 Stars
I have never been on a diet in my life. I am not a snacker. I do not eat fast food, nor processed foods. And yet, I have a weight problem. So imagine my surprise when after the first few days of reading this book, I lost 4 pounds without doing anything!
OK, that is not exactly true: I had a bowl of ice cream.
Sure there are all the tricks in this book: smaller plates, eat slower, eat smaller -- the things the critics point out in other reviews. But the real essence of his message is that if you take your time, savor your food, you will realize the moment you are full -- and that is the moment to stop eating (and this is where I think I have always failed). This book is a guide to understanding that the time to put down your fork is when you are full. It makes sense.
Another advantage of this plan is that it is extremely portable -- you do not have to pull out scales (don't laugh, I have seen weight watcher participants do this in restaurants), perform some sort of higher-math to determine the exact grams of carbs or fat. You just eat what you want and listen to your body.
So why is this not a 5-star rating? Dr. Clower's writing style is very chummy, almost patronizing and got on my nerves. The gimmick of the quiz at the beginning of each chapter (you get to guess the faux food from reading the ingredients) got to be tedious after the first couple of chapters. The testimonials sprinkled throughout the book all read suspiciously like they were written by the author. The paper (in the paperback) feels cheap, it was not a good tactile experience.
But when you push that all aside, the book delivers the goods. So it is 3 weeks later, and I have lost about 8 pounds, and I think I have made a lifestyle change without trying too hard. And unlike my dieting friends, I am not obsessing about food.
Book Review: absolutely fabulous book
Summary: 5 Stars
this is an amazing book that everyone should read. it really helped me a lot. i'm recovering from subclinical anorexia, and my therapist put me on this diet. using it, i was able to gain weight safely and develop a more psychologically sound relationship with food. i know i'm probably the only reviewer of this book praising it for allowing me to gain weight, but it hasn't been a lot, and i've really learned that fat is NOT the enemy, which i used to think and obsess about. try it. it's wonderful.Book Review: Yes, there are Fat Europeans, too...
Summary: 4 Stars
...and the French Chef Julia Child was no Vogue model. However,I like the concepts in this book, and I'm going to try them. I have been doing Atkins since the summer of 2003, my "summer of 42". I've lost 30 pounds. But, I missed my summer fruits, and I hate going to the store and seeing nothing but carbs I can't have!
I've never been a bread eater. But occasionally, I do like to make my whole wheat biscuits for myself and my friends, and I like the idea that I can now eat them without guilt or having to figure out how many carbs they are!
I hear what Mr. Clower is saying about the fake foods. However, as an Atkins follower, I've gotten so used to Splenda, I don't see myself weaning myself off of it anytime soon. I like to use it not only in my coffee, but in my lemonade and my, oops, unsweetened cherry Kool-Aid! I really needed to get my blood sugar down, and the Splenda has really helped me out in that regard. I'm keeping it for now.
I really do want to try what Mr. Clower suggests in the book. A lot of it appeals to me: I'm a fish eater, despite the fact that they say there are too many PCBs in it to be safe to eat every day, I want to eat my fish EVERY DAY. I'm time-challenged, and fresh fish is the fastest thing you can cook, especially for breakfast. I also love chicken. I've been using skinless chicken thighs exclusively for years. I've gotten to where I hate chicken skin now, so I won't be going back to unskinned. I absolutely hate beef, and I'm sorry if it hurts the economy if I don't eat steak and bread, but it's not for me at all. So, the FF diet is right up my alley philosophically-speaking.
I learned through Dr. Andrew Weil the health benefits of olive oil, and it has been years since I've had a hydrogenated oil product in my kitchen. I fry with extra virgin, I happen to like the taste it gives to even my biscuits. It's not the worst thing you can put in your food!
Where I'm going to have problems is the dairy products. I'm African-American, and lactose-intolerant (I've read where for some reason this goes hand-in-hand), which wasn't a problem because Atkins tells you to pretty much stay away from them. However, it's 100 degrees here in Oklahoma, and I like the occasional ice cream, just enough to not send me to the bathroom in pain. I agree 100% with Mr. Clowers endorsement of Breyer's Ice Cream, but you have to be careful, because for some unfathomable reason Breyers has started putting unnatural ingredients in some of their ice cream brands. Stick with the Breyers' Ice Cream in the BLACK BOXES, and you'll be safe.
Dr. Weil advises against margarine, too. I've used nothing but butter for years. I hate that you can't even find simple butter cookies in the stores anymore. And I love the idea of a bite of dark chocolate for dessert. And eating it the way my best friend taught me: get a Hershey Special Dark with Almond nugget and just slowly suck the chocolate away until you get to the nut...then crunch! Now THAT takes patience!
Eating in courses is tres impractical for me, a single person! But I can certainly learn to put the fork down and chew and take my time to eat. I wish they'd give me time to do that for lunch, though, at work!
Losing the grazing habit will be hard. Atkins encourages snacking somewhat, as long as you fall within a prescribed limit of carbs per day. I'm going to have to reeducate my body to a new way of thinking about food.
Oddly enough, water isn't discussed at all in the book...it is critical in the Atkins/South Beach diet because of the ketone buildup, but I drink three 24 oz. sportspack of room-temperature spring water per day. However, I LOOOOVE coffee, and love to finish my day off with a nice, STRONG cup of it that I've pressed with my small French press which makes just enough for one cup.
In short, I think I'll like this approach because it correlates with a lifestyle I'd been leading anyway yet had been failing to lose weight at. I'd like to combine what's in this book with the New American Plate concept the cancer organizations are touting these days: one part protein, two parts vegetable product, kind of like "the Zone", even for breakfast.
I've always hated low fat products, it seems obscenely unnatural, and you know what, my grandmother lived to be 92, butchered her own hogs and chickens, milked her own cow, grew her own vegetables, baked her own bread, and was thin as a rail. How do you argue with that? The older generation knew how to eat healthy, it is we youngsters who have strayed, and who are paying now with all these cancers and weight problems.