Foodist: Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting

I said last week that I was going to do a full blown book review on an excellent book called Foodist. This is as much of a review as I’ve got time to write but my recommendation still stands. Darya Pino Rose of the summertomato.com takes a very sensible and accessible approach to you taking control of your life and changing your healthstyle. That’s a new word – you can just add it to your spell-checker right now.

I finished the book a couple days ago and believe that everyone of you should read it, too. I know that sounds bossy but I get asked “what to eat” about a dozen times a week (if not a dozen times a day). The answer isn’t a simple “eat this, not that” type of answer. It’s about a healthstyle and Darya shows you how you can get there. Whether you are a food snob or you’re learning new ways of eating to improve your health and body composition, this book will speak to you. The book is broken into 3 very logical parts.

Part 1 frames the concept of creating habits, using willpower wisely and introduces this crazy idea about eating food. Food: as in things that are grown in the ground or raised on their ancestral diets and when you buy them they don’t have a label or a package. She references Michael Pollan often and his famous rule: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Part 2 helps you get started and gives you a practical approach to making these changes. What to eat, when to eat and how to eat. I’ve personally tried this one simple change and as often as I remember to do it, I feel so much more satisfied. Try this: take a normal size bite with a fork and then set the fork down while you chew 30 times. Try to taste the individual ingredients. Once you’ve swallowed, pick up your knife and fork again and repeat.

Part 3 wraps it up and deals with many of the things that are out to sabotage your new healthstyle. Things like eating out too much, that person at the office who always brings candy or baked goods, the value of eating at home and how to eat at a restaurant — are all part of this section.

Also in part 3 are, in my opinion, two of the biggest components to your success. Darya devotes an entire chapter to dealing with friends and family who won’t understand how important this is to you. Either inadvertently or sadly, on purpose, you know there are people out there who will take your success as a threat to their own psyche and they’re going to try to bring you down. She has great advice on this topic.

Darya also devotes another entire chapter to Food and Values. This is where she discusses your conviction or guiding values.

People whose food choices are driven by their personal values are not lured by temptation, because they believe their actions have meaning above and beyond their own hedonistic desires. Vegetarians, vegans, and people of faith who follow very strict dietary rules believe, with conviction, that making choices that are consistent with their values is more important than whatever inconveniences come from them. As a result, their choices are clear and they have little trouble following through on them.

In other words, what you eat and how you eat can become a reflection of who you are and what you believe (or who you want to become and what you want to believe).

If the book has any shortcomings, they are few and insignificant in the big picture. Buy the book. Read the book. Become a Foodist. You can get it on Amazon in hardback or Kindle.