Book: Fast-Metabolism Diet

Three things to get out of the way: First, if you think of yourself as a foodie, you need to read this.  Second, full disclosure: I have not read this book, but I have been subjected to it, currently completed my 1st week.  Third, don't buy this book on Kindle - you'll flip around too much.  

When I hear the word 'diet' I think less eating and no snacks.  Not so with the Fast-Metabolism Diet.  I'm actually stuffed after meals!  The diet cuts out the obvious stuff like sugar (goodbye cookies), caffeine (coffee, I miss you), alcohol (no beer), butter (say it's not so), and dairy.  The book argues that we need to present different food combinations to our bodies to make sure it knows were not starving, read: time to store up surplus, and to exercise different systems to speed up the processing.  So the week breaks down into 3 phases.  Phase 1 is Monday and Tuesday that includes grains, fruits and veggies.  Phase 2 is Wednesday and Thursday that focuses on protein and veggies.  Phase 3 is Friday - Sunday introduces healthy oils, protein, and veggies.  The program has three meals per day plus snacks.  The program claims that someone can loose 15-20 pounds in 4 weeks.  I've finished my first week and have lost 5 pounds.  Get this: want to loose more weight?  You eat MORE.  Crazy, right?  Snacks have included smoked salmon, hummus and veggies, and fruit.  Not bad.  I do have to drink 6 x 16oz glasses of water.  Do you know how hard that is?  The first day I could barely chock down 4 glasses.  After that I added lemon that helped.  Sure disrupts my day though.

Here's what's interesting to me:

Eating good food takes work.  Getting fresh fruits and veggies, preparing them, cutting up veggies for the day, making fresh hummus, planning, etc. takes time.  I can see where the TV dinner came from and that evolving into fast food, prepared foods, Wegman's take out, etc.  I'm sure over time this will get easier as we get familiar with different menu options that work for us, but it does take time.

Given that this takes a lot of work, I can see where the detox-program-in-a-bag comes from.  We're just really busy people in the USA and we do want to loose the weight.  This has got to be a billion dollar industry.  But these programs also get us by claiming they have 'science' behind them: here, drink this and you'll get all you need, plus we flush the toxins out of your body (what ever they are).  When it comes down to it, there's no substitute for good fresh fruits, veggies, and meats.  We're a little too impressed with 'science' in the market place and maybe aren't critical enough.

Since my wife works at home, she puts a lot into this.  In fact, I'm sitting here on my butt writing this while she's in the kitchen making dinner.  With you her, we wouldn't be doing this.

We do eat a lot of crap.  I'm as guilty as anyone.  Have been on a sugar/coffee binge for the past two months.  It's easy to reach for the candy bar in the checkout line, grab a bag of cookies from Aldi's, etc.  Pasta, bread, chips - it's part of every day life.  After a week of not having any of this stuff, I'm still getting side effects.  It's just SOOOOO easy.

You know that four weeks is not much time in the grand scheme of things.  I'd recommend everyone try this.  Just four weeks.  Not only is it healthy, but it's a bit of an eye opener that, yes, there is another way of eating.