Recent Media & Book Reviews
From USA Today:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/calorie-balance.html#more
Healthy Reads | F.A.T. Balance Diet
BY DESONTA HOLDER
dholder@MiamiHerald.com
Kevin Jones’ F.A.T. Balance Diet: 10 Steps to Weight Loss Freedom (Fitness Lifestyle, $15.95) begins with motivation and ends with maintaining weight. You’ve probably heard it all before: exercise, weigh yourself weekly, remove the skin from your poultry, etc. But this book is different in that it uses humorous, fictional characters to get the message across. For example, there’s Faith, who agrees with her fiancé when he tells her she wears her 167 pounds well. But deep down, Faith feels too heavy. Will she lose the weight? Will her wedding dress be the same size as her prom dress? Tune in to find out.
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| By | S V SWAMY “swamy-reviews” (Hyderabad, India) – See all my reviews |
The title is catchy in the sense that it gets read as FAT Balance Diet and almost all the struggle of those who are trying to lose weight is with the FAT in their body. The author has imaginatively created an acronym from that simple word. F.A.T. stands for Frequency, Amount and Type. And it is applied to Food and Exercise, the two key factors that affect our intake and expenditure of calories and thus decide our weight.
An innovative approach of using life stories of ten different people to explain the important concepts of life style management (weight and fitness management finally comes to that only) makes the book very readable. In fact, I liked the stories more than the following explanations, which are readable but appear like lecturing at places. I felt that the life stories could have been expanded a little more and the points incorporated therein.
The book is edited and printed well, except for one error on page 102 (Iris decides to take stairs instead of elevator and not as written).
The book comes with a glossary, 50+ recipes (mostly American since the book is meant for US readers though the principles are useful to others too) etc. and is a good value for the money.
I would have preferred to see this as a hard-cover book and also as an e-book, with links to an online journal. The food pyramid illustrations and a few other graphs could have been in color to get the message better across. The book is a good read as it is.
That in spite of good advice from many people including US government, nearly 65% of people are overweight indicates that life-style management has become a big issue in USA. It is hoped that this book will help some of them regain the control over their lives.
 If you’re looking for an upbeat, well-organized diet, this may be the one for you., February 2, 2008
Quoting from the back cover: “Do you want a LASTING weight loss solution? F.A.T. Balance is for you! Effective – Lose pounds and inches with a simple life management tool Flexible – Works with any lifestyle, diet, or exercise program Fun – Helps you succeed with more joy and less stress 1. Gina-Get Motivated F.A.T. Balance Diet is a new book on the market to help us lose weight. It tells us all the things we already know but can’t seem to follow…most likely because we prefer sweets to self-discipline. The humor and cartoon characters make this particular diet book an upbeat, fun read while conveying its message. Does it tell us anything new? Not to me, but perhaps its presentation will appeal to you, and that’s all that really matters. It is divided into ten chapters with personal names to represent the subject matter as indicated above, plus fifty easy recipes. If you’re looking for an upbeat, well-organized diet, this may be the one for you. Kaye Trout |
