I at least find it rather unsettling that the sample chapter depicts the strenuous efforts of a woman whose slender proportions would surely already be the envy of a considerable segment of the population?

Nonetheless, I can sympathize with the desire to see strenuous efforts bear fruit.

I'm sure it will be great. I ordered a copy from Powell's. I'll let you know how I like it :). Cheers!

I think that's the only method that works, and Carol did a great job of showing exactly how it works. Losing weight isn't a goal, it's a lifestyle change that has to be permanent to succeed.

Geez, you eat 1300 cal a day, work out three times a week plus 20 min a day, and you still barely maintain your weight? Your metabolism is in the toilet. Your sample day's diet is like a caricature of the comedic "all rabbit food all the time" diet, and you spend literally every moment obsessing about food and doing math.

Plus, you have no kids or husband to prepare food for, you never go out to eat with friends, and you work from home which gives you the option of grazing constantly, grocery shopping every day, and going to the gym whenever you want. Your dieting experiences are irrelevant to 90% of the population. And it appears your only human contact is when you check out at a store. This is a portrait of a bleak, tragic life, and it honestly makes me want to sing the "Peanut Butter Jelly" song (with complementary baseball bat) more than it makes me want to buy the book.

I can't help but notice that in the last few years your work has dropped off so badly that when an old comic is posted due to a hiatus, everyone says, "YAY! Old Carol is back! Oh wait - this is an old one." I wonder now if the drop-off in just plain talent coincides with the onset of this insane diet.

A cartoon that's also an advertisment! Yay.

Geez.

I didn't realize that Carol's new book would be about weight loss. I'll probably get it, as I have struggled with weight loss myself...unfortunately I also take medication that makes it hard to lose weight, so it probably won't help me much. I maintain a 1500-1600 calorie diet that is appropriate for my height and can't lose weight.

At the same time, the sample chapter really addresses the problem with "sit down workers" - you really don't expend enough energy in the day to lose what you take in.

I also agree with the other letter writer - the sample chapter seems unrealistic for most people who don't have Carol's luxuries of maintaining their own hours.

Gee, counting calories sure is a revelation. IMHO, calories are a complete waste of time. The human body is NOT a car.

What most "balanced" approaches to weight loss fail to realize is that we've only had agriculture for about 10,000 years--a blink the eye of human history. Our bodies are not evolved to tolerate a diet that is primarily based on SUGAR in the form of...sugar and also GRAINS. (Think about what they feed cows to fatten them up for market: butter and oil? Nope: CORN).

Each time we eat sugar/grain, we force our pancreases to put out insulin. The message of insulin: STORE FAT NOW. If you eat a diet that is primarily based on fat, moderate protein, and lots of vegetables (some fruits), you make much less insulin, store less fat, and start to burn it again. Ron Rosedale came up with this, and it really works. The Paleo diet is very similar.

Losing weight permanently does require a lifestyle change, and it ain't cheap to eat only very low-carb grains (there are breads with just 8 grams of carb per slice instead of the usual 20-30) and those only once or twice a week. But this is much more like what our bodies have evolved to tolerate. Fat is not the enemy--but keep a close eye on those grains...

Sounds like you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma! The first part about corn just blew me away, especially how ubiquitous it is.

Sodium is another thing I have tried to reduce, through cooking at home. it was suggested to me that reducing salt descreases water weight as well. Most commercial soups, even reduced salt ones, still have a huge amount of sodium in them. Trying to find no salt added goods can be quite frustrating as well. Even something like an average can of canned tomatoes will have 200-300 mg of sodium per half cup.

a person writes a book about their personal experience in dieting and everyone comes out of the woodwork to inform them they are WRONG!

The point is, regardless of lifestyle (sedentary shmedentary, acitve shmactive) you have to pick something, stick to it, and stop kidding yourself about all the "exceptions" (like George Cloony brining you sausage biscuits...to most people that would seem to be a portentious omen so eat the biscuit calories be damned!).

I did find the rant about corn amusing tho. We live in an freakin' agrarian world so no point in looking to neanderthals for diet tips.

eom

Aack. Right now they're at my office trying to sell me cookies! Where's my chainsaw, goalie mask, and leather apron?

But at the same time, I think based on the sample chapter, this book is missing in something a diet book needs: the ability to make the diet seem attractive and, most importantly, compatible with living a normal life. If I ever hit the point where I have to cut bananas in half because a whole one has too many calories, I would be well into eating disorder territory. There's a distinct feeling here of the pro-ana mantra "nothing tastes as good as thin feels"--only in this case, forget just taste, even a single drink with George Clooney isn't as good as being thin!

I'll keep my few extra pounds if it means that, along with healthy foods and exercise, I can also still have full meals and home-baked goodies.

I don't mean to say that Carol Lay necessarily *has* an eating disorder, mind, only that this lifestyle is one that many of us could not live without crossing that line. Thin does not feel so good that it's worth giving up everything else for that alone, and it's hard not to read this that way when she talks about consuming lemonade by the quarter cup (I guess on the up side, she won't have trouble bringing a beverage past a TSA checkpoint) or having half a banana for breakfast.

Great if it worked for you, Carol, but you've got a long way to go if you want to be the next big diet guru. I'll pass.