Book Review: Perfect Weight

by Jordan Rubin

I read Self magazine and Shape not for the information about losing weight, but because I love the success stories contained in them. “Meet Jane, she weighed 435 pounds, started walking every day, and now 14.5 months later she only weight 100 pounds.” So when I picked up the book, Perfect Weight, I was immediately sucked in by the author’s story. He lost a lot of weight too, but not because he wanted to, because he was sick.

Chapter 2 started out great: how to decode most diet books. Ok, I am game. He tells the reader that most diets have the individual cutting out 500 calories a day from their diet and then exercising 500 calories away. This will equal 7000 less calories a week, or two pounds of weight lost a week. He tells us then that 95 percent of all diets fail and he thinks that is because people are hungry.

Thanks. Very insightful. I am just hungry.

He does go on to cut down one theory about obesity theories that the media repeats over and over: Fat makes you fat. Turns out that the word for fat in food happens to be the same word as fat on your bum. The two fats are not the same. It is basically a homonym. Think of the word type: it can mean both to write with a keyboard or a sort of something. Sounds the same, but not the same.

The book begins to lose me though after this strong start, because he starts selling weight loss supplements in the book. I felt like I jumped into an infomercial. Neither good nor subtle.

The book does end on a strong point. He profiles success stories from an Ohio town that tried to all work his program and has lots of recipes. I suppose I should not be so down on the book…I just did not like that he was selling diet supplements in the middle of this book.