Losing weight is not easy. Jessica Smith agrees because, although she now appears toned and beautiful, she admits it wasn’t always this way. So she and Liz Neporent, a best selling health author, wrote a book about losing weight to help others on their paths to success. It’s called The Thin in 10 Weight-Loss Plan, and she truly believes it can help those who need to shed pounds but have not been able to take that crucial first step to a healthier lifestyle.

Smith tells about her journey in the introduction of the book: “Jessica once tipped the scales at 170 pounds. She tried various diets, exercise plans, motivational programs—you name it, she tried it—but nothing worked. While some plans seemed to work at first, the success was always short-lived. She’d always gain the weight back and then some.”

Any of that sound familiar? One day, Smith had enough and decided to do something about it. Instead of grabbing for another candy bar to soothe her frustrations, she hopped on a stationary bike, telling herself she could have the candy bar after ten minutes. “While those 10 minutes were pretty rough, she felt great afterward—and she had lost the urge to dig into the chocolate,” the book says. 
Read Full Post >

As her political career has seemingly fizzled, Sarah Palin is taking her complete lack of professional diet and fitness experience and putting it in a book, so she says. In an announcement the former vice presidential candidate made to People, she said, “Our family is writing a book on fitness and self-discipline focusing on where we get our energy and balance as we still eat our beloved homemade comfort foods.”

The Palin family is known well for their love of comfort foods, relying on the culinary favorites of their native Alaska, like seafood, moose chili, caribou, and some fruit. Like most Americans they aren’t above indulging in heavier treats like cream or pecan pies. Even Palin has admitted that a skinny white chocolate mocha is a morning staple for her.

The announcement suggests the family has found a healthy balance of food that works for sustenance that you can simply enjoy. “We promise you what we do works,” she said. We’re not sure of what they do exactly, but pictures posted this week show a slimmer Sarah Palin than we’ve ever seen before. An avid runner for years, she’s always appeared to be fit and trim, but what’s surfacing this week has people questioning a starvation diet. A celebrity news contributor for The Examiner said she “looks downright scary.”

The book at this time seems to be a personal project, as there is no word on whether an actual book deal exists or if a publisher has agreed to take it. Although possible titles are already circulating.

The name for sarah palin’s diet book is so obviously “The Palin-eo Diet.” Or, “Going Radish.” — Jen Doll (@thisisjendoll) October 10, 2012

Read Full Post >

Elizabeth Taylor, one of Hollywood’s most glamorous actresses, has many credits to her name. Over the course of her lifetime, she won three Oscars, two Golden Globe Awards, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute. Her well-publicized personal life included a whopping eight marriages (two to the same person), a vast $150 million jewelry collection, and championing charity causes such as AIDS research. What’s lesser known, or remembered, is the diet book she wrote in 1988 entitled Elizabeth Takes Off: On Weight Gain, Weight Loss, Self-Image, and Self-Esteem.

Taylor’s diet book, brought back to the limelight by NY Mag, is a mishmash of diet tips, recipes, and a personal memoir. She told interviewers at the time that she wanted to write it because she was used to extremes, black and white, and that then she wanted to cultivate the gray in her life. At mid-life, she wanted stability, and to pass this thinking on to others.

A good practice, for sure, but her diet food choices? Not so much. Many of Taylor’s food choices in the book are questionable. She eats things like cottage-cheese-sour-cream dip over fruit for breakfast and steak and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. Dry toast, minted new potatoes, fillet of sole, and swordfish with lime are some other foods in the book. She advocates eating a lot of fish and not a lot of red meat or bread. Her diet also stresses eating fresh fruits and vegetables regularly.
Read Full Post >

For Timothy Caulfield, it wasn’t about vanity. It was about cutting through the twisted messages the diet and fitness industries sell our health-crazed society, and finally finding the best way to be truly healthy. And this is why instead of just writing about diet and fitness, he became a human guinea pig to test the theories and health advice he would propose in his book.

Caulfield, 48, is the research director of Health Law and Science Policy Group at the University of Alberta. And he’s now the author of “Finding the Cure to Everything: Untangling Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness.” Unlike most authors who go the traditional route of research, deliberation and then writing, Caulfield became a walking experiment before he ever put pen to paper.

The project started as an academic book. “It wasn’t going to be for the popular press,” Caulfield told Diets in Review in a recent interview.” But then I started getting into it and thought, ‘I’m going to live every one of these chapters’ because I thought it would be a great story.”
Read Full Post >

Superfoods are indeed super, but they aren’t a magic weight loss tool. A new diet book should be more clear before it becomes the next fad.

Lucy Danziger is the editor-in-chief of SELF magazine. She recently published a book about her experiences with eating superfoods and ditching dieting. The book is titled “The Drop 10 Diet. Add to Your Plate to Lose the Weight.”  The book describes how Danziger turned to foods like nuts, berries and whole grains and found herself 25 pounds lighter in just six months. She also focused on what she could eat verses what she couldn’t as she began her diet.

The foods Danziger sticks to are called superfoods. The superfood title was coined in 2004 by Dr. Steven Pratt. He compiled 20 foods that met the criteria for being “super.” These 20 foods are readily available to the public, contain nutrients that are known to enhance longevity, and the health benefits of the food has to be backed by peer-reviewed scientific studies.

The twenty foods that meet Dr. Pratt’s requirements are apples, avocado, beans, blueberries, broccoli, cinnamon, dark chocolate, dried superfruits, extra virgin olive oil, garlic, honey, kiwi, low-fat yogurt, oats, onions, oranges, pomegranates, pumpkin, soy, spinach, tea, tomatoes, turkey, walnuts, and wild salmon.

Read Full Post >