Me on a Diet Book

So yesterday I finally bought You on a Diet and spent all evening on the couch, in the bedroom, and yes, even in the washroom reading it. It's a very interesting and enlightening book and I'm wondering why I didn't buy it sooner. In a nutshell, it tells you in simple terms the science of hunger and digestion and what goes wrong when you fill your body with crap.

The book is written in a very accessible style. It uses funny metaphors instead of jargon to explain how the body works. I can see how some people might be put off by this style, but I prefer it to techno-babble. I laughed more than a few times!

The only thing so far that I don't like about it is their occasional referrals to you, as the reader. It's hard to explain it, but it's almost a little rude and condescending. I think they were just trying to be funny in a "we're laughing with you, not at you" sort of way. Fortunately, it doesn't happen too often and the rest of the info is more than worth it.

I'm not even a quarter of the way through the book and there were so many lightbulb moments that I've lost track. The biggest thing (no pun intended) I learned is why many health professionals are saying that we should be more concerned with our waist size than our BMI. Part of it has to do with this thing called an omentum that we all have.

Omentum is belly fat and it literally hangs off our stomachs. The bigger it is, the more dangerous to your health it is and the more problems it causes. Take it from me, after seeing their diagram in the book, I'm completely grossed out by the thought of how big my omentum was and how it's still too big.

If you want to know what a normal omentum looks like compared to a big omentum, try the following link (WARNING: GROSS, GRAPHIC, AND TMI, don't say I didn't warn you), courtesy of Oprah. If that isn't an incentive to not to fill your body with crap, I don't know what is. Yuck, yuck, and more yuck.

There's much more to the book than our omentums though. It also talks about inflammation due to poor eating, how our small intestines are like a second brain, the work our poor liver has to go through, and much much more. Presumably the book will also go into what we can do to retrain our eating habits, what to eat, how to exercise and so on. I haven't gotten there yet, so I'm only going by the table of contents.

There's also a diet plan in the back of the book. When I get to that section, I'll see how it meshes with Weight Watchers. I'm hoping it'll give me a better idea of nutrition. I think I'm doing pretty okay with it so far, but I know I can do better. Fortunately, any cravings I've had for 100-calorie packs are entirely squooshed...for now ;)

So far, two thumbs up. I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars if I were reviewing it on Amazon.