A Book in Review: Skinny is Overrated

Skinny is Overrated: The Real Woman's Guide to Health and Happiness at Any Size By: Danielle Milano, MD
non-fiction, diet, health 209 pages
Book Count: 48

First, given the title would you think that the main point of this book is "You are too fat you must follow this lifelong, strick diet to be better"? This book SO upset me at points that I almost stopped reading it in the first chapter. Although it has a large amount of good information, the bad really outweighs it. For example, besides lying about the main point of the book it has advice like: watch the DVD of "The Secret" to think yourself thinner, as your friends are all exactly like you you need to get new thinner friends, and the only good kitchen tools are expensive ones. And although the main points of the diet are good, healthy and based on evidence (both scientific and experience based) as it is a life long one (as they are the best for real change) it is too strict and at time counterdictering. For example, in one chapter it says that you can only drink water, and an occasional beer or wine. Then in the next chapter it says that some fruit juice is fine as long as you think about the calories in it. It also lists iced tea as a drink you can't have, but earlier when talking about groups and times of people known for a healthy diet and good health talks about a group that drinks tea as part of the healthy things they do. It also has a number of rules that no American, over weight or not can follow all of the time. These include NEVER eating anything containing the following: fast food, deep fried foods (chips, fries, etc), trans fats,and high fructose corn syrup. As well as EVERY day eating: 3 meals and 1-2 snacks, dark green leafy vegetables, and 5-10 fruits and veggies. (OK, besides eating salads or greens everyday that part isn't hard, but we all have had days where we can't eat at normal meal times for us or you're traveling and the only food is a fast food burger and fries where if you are adding a normal pop or ketchup you have broke every one of the NEVER eat rules. If the diet was simply to not normaly eat these foods, I wouldn't have a problem with the rules, but its not.)