Review: Great book, well written
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2014
This is just the book I needed.I discovered the 5:2 diet by accident while reading a magazine in a waiting room, it contained a small article by a restaurant critic who mentioned that this plan was perfect for her and had worked wonders. Armed with this tiny piece of information I dived straight into a 4:3, with hindsight I should have done more research first but I can be a bit 'bull at a gate' at times, it worked great I must admit but I was hungry, really hungry, no surprise really considering I'd just gone from eating too much 7 days a week to eating 500 calories on 3 days, I found the only thing that filled be up was soup, I'd make a huge pan of soup 3 days a week which contained all my calories for the day and I was no longer hungry. I lost 2 stone relatively quickly and ultimately, compared to diets of the past painlessly, I became over confident I think, it all seemed too easy and slowly, I realise when I think back now I slowly started to overcompensate on my 'off' days, I'd reward myself for doing so well and before I knew it my off off days weren't 'normal' anymore and I stopped losing weight and then Christmas came I put away the 4:3 for a few days which turned into a few weeks, realising I'd put weight on I decided to detox for a week, this is something I used to do every year to get me back on track after the excesses of Christmas but it gets harder as you get older, or at least it does for me so now it's June and the weight is slowly creaping back on and this book has given me the nudge I needed to get back on track.When I originally read the article that started me on this diet I asked around and couldn't believe the number of people who'd heard of it, some were doing it and those that weren't knew people that were, I couldn't believe it had passed me by. A BBC Horizon programme was mentioned but I couldn't find it, I looked into books on Amazon and some of the reviews were really helpful but a few pointed out that once you knew the basics they were mainly recipes and after all I had my soup.I'm having a fresh start and this book is the right book at the right time for me, I'm not saying it contains anything new infact it's a short book so I would imagine it contains significantly less but it's just what I needed. It's well written, not remotely 'preachy' or condescending, the author understands how difficult it can be and writes accordingly. This is the book I needed when I started out and yes with hindsight I shouldn't have dived in head first with so little knowledge but what's done is done and this is my fresh start.This time I'm doing it right, this week I'm doing a 6:1 next week 5:2 and I'm going to try and stick to that, it will be difficult for me to not charge ahead especially since I know how well this works. I'm going to use the recipes in this book to help me, the Roasted Red Pepper and a Tomato soup makes 12 portions so I'll freeze it, it'll make busy days ahead easier.This diet, when done right really works and part of the problem for me is that it works too well, too easily, I associate diets with hard work and even with my soup only days it never really felt like hard work, boring yes but not really hard and crazy though this sounds I know, it was just too easy.This time I'm better prepared I know what to expect and this book explains everything so well, the recipes look really good, I'll have to make a few changes since I'm vegetarian but there's enough choice I can just repeat some dishes or juggle them around.My advice, for what it's worth, if you need to lose weight read this book, I'm not saying it's the best book out there I haven't read all the others but this gives you all the information you need to get started and it really does work, just learn from my mistakes and take it slowly.