Ryan DeJonghe - The Avid Reader

Is this a diet book? Yes. And no. If you are looking for a diet book, this may be enough for you to achieve your goal. This is also an excellent accompaniment to your already favorite weight loss tool (e.g., Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, etc.). But, as the author, Yoni Freedhoff, puts it, “at the end of the day if you don’t like the life you’re living while you’re losing weight, you’re virtually certain to gain it back.”

Lifelong enjoyment: that’s the goal here. You want to be healthy and happy at the best weight you can maintain for the rest of your life. Thanks to THE DIET FIX that’s absolutely possible. Honestly ask yourself if you can eat the way you are eating forever. Are you hungry? Do you wish you could have that piece of chocolate? Ask yourself if you are happy with your current exercise length and intensity level. You may be, but for a lot of dieters—they know they can’t sustain unhappy actions.

Freedhoff begins with a history of various diet programs and moves on to something I found interesting: the sings of dieting, the traumas of dieting, and the Post Traumatic Dieting Disorders (PTDD). He finds why certain diets don’t last, labels the pitfalls of remission, and categorizes the emotional effect of a stumbled journey. The solution, or fix, is the bread and butter of the whole book: the 10-Day Reset.

We’ve heard some of Freedhoff’s advice before, but much of it is new. Such things as shopping on the outside aisles of the grocery store and journaling your food are pretty common pieces of advice in the dieting world. What makes this book unique is the paradoxal advice mixed in. Such things like: people don’t lose and keep off weight because they aren’t eating enough; or, eat more during the day before going to a big dinner; or, “ensuring you eat enough calories is more important than ensuring you don’t eat too many.”

The end of THE DIET FIX contains reset techniques for specific diets, as well as well-supported advice for everyday life situations. Really, you could probably move forward on the first half of the book: knowing the psychological, physiological, and hedonic behaviors toward dieting, and especially the 10-Day Reset. However, if you are inclined to follow any other diet plan, Freedhoff has techniques for success with that plan. Freedhoff also includes considerations for everything else, from work conferences to vacations, and even parenting.

The walkaway advice seems simple, yet logical enough to last a lifetime. For that, I’m giving this five stars.