by Nancy L. Snyderman, M.D.
Due to come out this month, I found this book at our favorite book store. (I am so excited about this! Our book store often has books that are sent to book reviewers before they come out. These book reviewers are over run by books and donate them to our book store. This is the first one I am reviewing before the book comes out. It comes out on Monday, so ok, not that early, but anyway...)
The author is the Chief Medical Editor at NBC News. Does anyone have faith in the news with respect to medicine after the swine flu? And a diet book to boot?
Let’s take a look. The book’s chapters are divided into 10 myths that most people believe about dieting. To name a few: your weight is your fault, calories don’t count, carbs are good for you, carbs are bad for you, and dieting is all you need to lose weight, to name a few chapters. I liked the use of these myths to organize the book. Telling me my "weight is not my fault" made me feel a roller coaster of emotions: first I felt better, the I felt let off the hook for being fat, then I felt the chapter made some good points, and finally I felt like she was not being completely honest with me! If the weight is not my fault, then whose is it?
Interspersed throughout the book are “truths.” Some truths are more informative than others. For example: muscle does not weigh more than fat. Who knew? A pound is a pound. (Who's buried in Grant’s tomb?) Apparently muscle does burn more calories daily than fat does.
The informative almost common sense information in the book is good basic knowledge for the reader. I kept thinking while reading, wow, I should have learned this in high school. For example she explains what a calorie measures. (It is the amount of potential energy in food.) And she tells (maybe reminds is a better word here) the reader that the secret to losing weight boils down to one equation: eat fewer calories than you burn.
The book is great for picking up and reading about a few things and then setting it down.
I will be reviewing a diet book I did not like this week. In comparison to that book, Diet Myths is great. Look for it soon in your local book store.
1 comment:
Just a wild guess here but I think the "muscle weighs more than fat" idea is based on the weight by size, i.e. a cubic inch of muscle weights more than a cubic inch of fat.
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