Product Description

Change the way you eat for good. Ten real-life motivational case studies prove this plan works, whatever your lifestyle, age or weight. Ditch the gimmick diets: take up the Food Doctor challenge and lose weight for good in just 30 days! Kick-start your diet with a blitz on bad habits and lose up to 7lb in the first week. Then see more weight drop off as you follow the eating plan for life. Share inspirational reactions and advice from the volunteers and find out how together they lost 9 stone in 30 days. With over 50 mouth-watering recipes, menu plans, plus tips and encouragement, you're never alone. Achieve real weight loss and change the way you eat for good. "I find I'm no longer leaving back-to-back meetings exhausted and starving" - Jo Wiley, Radio 1 DJ.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45651 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

About the Author
Ian Marber Dip ION is the UK's leading nutritionist and founder of The Food Doctor brand. Ian is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times and has regularly appeared on Richard and Judy and GMTV. He lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Expensive and complex menus
If everyone had unlimted money and time and a family that wasn't fussy at all then this book would be great. Unfortunately when this book arrived I was so hyped up over the 5 star reviews that I had seen that I was bitterly disappointed. I knew that I had none of the food that I would need in my cupboards to embark on this food plan and as I was on an average income I also had none of the spare cash to nip all over the county looking for the various items my local supermarket didn't stock. I would need a complete life change to accomadate this diet and as a busy mum of a toddler and fussy eater husband I don't have the time, money or energy. But I'm do know that this diet would work as it lists all the food that is known for its health benefits, unfortunately it doesn't benefit my wallet or state of mind.

Got a lot of time on your hands?
I'm not a fan of diets and especially not diets that claim to not be diets, but rather 'a complete change of lifestyle'. However, having excess babyweight to lose and having reached an impasse with normal eating and exercise I decided to give this one a go. It was the healthy eating that attracted me. I realised that I had got into some poor eating habits while in the bleary eyed, sleep deprived new baby stage and this seemed to promise to restructure my eating habits over the course of a 4 week plan.

As others have stated the book provides shopping lists, daily menus and recipes for evening meals. However, I found a fair bit of the food difficult to find (perhaps due to my non-cosmopolitan location) and in fact eventually went without many of the items or substituted with food I considered similar. Another downside for me was that this diet takes a lot of time, a lot more than it claims. For any busy person, finding time to have snacks as well as main meals proves a challenge, and for me making everything from scratch proved impossible. For breakfast I eventually bought the food doctor cereals online to make life easier, while I only managed to make one smoothie from scratch and found it quite unpalatable. I eventually compromised with shop bought juices and smoothies, which the food doctor says is not ideal - thus adding to my sense of guilt and failure - not a great combination for dieters. On the plus side, although the evening meals took longer to prepare than stated, they were surprisingly delicious and yes, I have revisited a number of them since.

I suppose as with any diet the end result is what counts. I am sorry to say that over 4 weeks I lost only 3 pounds. Not the incredible weight loss promised by the book and apparently achieved by others. I cannot fathom why I have failed where others have succeeded. I exercised as suggested and followed the plan rigorously other than the comparable substitutions I was forced to make.

It seems to me that many of the 5* reviews for this book have come from members of the original 'Richard and Judy' diet club. Perhaps this has skewed the rating? I imagine they had extra support from the guru himself and the impetus of appearing on TV to lose weight.

I do not want it to seem that I have a wholly negative view of this book or diet. I liked a lot of the food and it has made me rethink what, how much and when I eat. I am eating healthier and I do feel marginally better in myself. I would say buy this book if you want to rethink how and what you eat, but as with any diet do not expect miracles.

Fantastic results and a great book
I suppose a diet reivew should cover two aspects, the diet and results but also a review of the book itself.

First the book, there are a couple of great things about the book which first attracted me to it, it is ring bound which might not sound odd but is there anything worse than trying to cook with a book which keeps wanting to close? It also has a rugged cover so it performed well in the kitchen, something I think is often forgotten with many diet books. The plan is 31 days and details every thing you will be eating every day, the first few weeks are restrictive but the last two give you many more options and give you the knowledge you need to take the diet in to the future. It also includes full shopping lists with versions for you to cut out with a handy pouch in the back to keep them.

On the negative side I found many of the meals took longer to prepare than stated, not by much, but they try and keep them in 30 minutes which while is good if it's not realistic I'd rather know about it up front. Also I found that the shopping lists had too much on them for a single person and the main meals were portioned for 2 people. That wasn't such a problem but as I say the shopping lists meant I threw a fair amount of stuff away.

As for the diet I suppose all I need to say on that front was that I lost 10kg in the 4 weeks, that was done with a fair amount of exercise but it shows that the case studies in the book are realistic.

I'd definately recommend both the book and diet.