The Cheat to Lose Diet: Cheat BIG with the Foods You Love, Lose Fat Faster Than Ever Before, and Enjoy Keeping It Off! (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The basic concept of this diet is simple: eat healthy, low-calorie foods six days a week, and cheat on the seventh. Fitness consultant Marion encourages readers craving blueberry pancakes to "fire up the griddle" on day seven and "top them with butter, maple syrup, whipped cream, more blueberries." Marion backs up his "cheating" philosophy with lots of tedious scientific-sounding explanation, personal accounts and success stories, but there's nothing particularly radical about it: common sense tells people who eat wisely and exercise regularly they can afford to indulge once in a while. Nevertheless, the author hammers on his point throughout, while knocking other diet plans: low-fat diets might be related to "muscle loss, lethargy, and sexual side effects," and low-carb diets "fail to produce the results necessary to make such an extreme diet worthwhile" No matter what kind of diet readers are looking for, the recipes in the back of the book will appeal: a tasty Tomato-Basil Omelet, filled with herbs and garlic, creamy Pumpkin Pancakes and luscious Lamb Chops with Beet-and-Orange Salad are good enough to make "cheating" an afterthought.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

Burn Fat Faster with your favorite foods

Author, fitness expert, and Body-for-Life champion Joel Marion often found himself doing exactly what we all do when a diet simply isn’t working: quitting. But through a series of diet “screwups,” Joel discovered a startling truth: cheating on your diet can actually accelerate fat loss. Here, finally, is a diet that works with your body to help you lose fat faster than restrictive dieting ever could. The Cheat to Lose Diet includes a simple weekly plan in which more carbohydrates are deliberately added with each passing day, leading up to the “Cheat Day,” when you’ll cheat BIG with all your favorite foods. Never again will you feel guilty for indulging in the foods you love, because you’ll learn that dietary cheating is absolutely vital to your success.
This innovative new diet plan has already helped dieters around the world lose weight and keep it off–so start cheating and losing today!

“Based on cutting-edge medical research, The Cheat to Lose Diet reveals the hormonal connection between strategic cheating and fat loss that will change the way you diet forever.”
–Muscle Magazine International

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307352250
• ISBN-13: 978-0307352255
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #346,337 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Diet - OK Book, August 25, 2007

By	R. Tolliver (VA - USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Cheat to Lose Diet: Cheat BIG with the Foods You Love, Lose Fat Faster Than Ever Before, and Enjoy Keeping It Off! (Hardcover)

The Good -
The diet is sound, appears to work well and most importantly (for most people) it's easy to follow. The book is easy to read, gives good information on this diet and why some others fail.
The Bad -
If you are a numbers person (like I am) - and you want to be able to check off "perfect diet day", you won't be able to. Joel gives no recommendations on number of calories, grams of carbs, fats, protein etc. He gives size recommendations (a piece of chicken breast about the size of your palm counts as a protein item in a meal) and he has a bunch of great recipe's in the book, but I would have like to know what counts as a "low carb day" for instance - if I'm under 100g?, 50g? 30g? As I'm sure this was conscious decision on Joel's part to make the diet easy to follow, and so as not to scare off the masses, I can't really kill the book because of this.
The Ugly -
OK 2 things here.
1) The book has almost as many pages of references as it does diet information. At the end of each chapter he just lists a ton of references - sometimes 8-10 pages of them! It honestly looks to me like the books editor said "The books great Joel, but without the recipe's it's only 100 pages - we need another 50 or so" and they just found a bunch of studies on leptin and threw them into the book (by the way my numbers - 50 pages - are probably an exaggeration, but the point is there is a lot of "wasted" pages.)
2) The web site - if you go to the web site for the book, it's set up to have you pay $5/month to use "The Cheat to Lose Diet" - I didn't buy the book to be upsold on a web site - if they are going to put a site up for the book, it should have a free area for the people that buy the book, and then maybe a pay area for extra recipes, one on one Joel info etc. It almost looks like the book is just a marketing tool for the web site which is kind of annoying.
That said - the book is cheap and contains enough info to execute the diet, so I can't complain too much.
My review sounds more negative than my real feeling about the book. The 4 stars is my feeling, so don't skip the book because I didn't say it was perfect. I think, for the average person, this might be the "perfect" diet because you can eat whatever you want at times.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This diet works!!, August 22, 2007

By	AngryVader (Dublin, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cheat to Lose Diet: Cheat BIG with the Foods You Love, Lose Fat Faster Than Ever Before, and Enjoy Keeping It Off! (Hardcover)

I recently purchased this book and gave it a read. I had been dieting and exercising pretty hard lately, but I had been stuck at the same weight and bodyfat level for a good two weeks or so. I was really depriving myself and was getting discouraged.

After reading the book, I decided to give the full day cheat a try. On Saturday, I feasted on pancakes, waffles, sausage and hash browns. Later that night, I made macaroni and cheese. I really enjoyed the day as I loved all the food I ate. :)

On Sunday, I resumed the diet and exercise plan. It is now Wednesday and I've already lost 3 additional pounds! I'm now officially the lowest weight I've been in over 2 years. The cheating recommended by Joel Marion in this book really works! I've seen the results first hand.

I recommend this book to anyone that wants to lose weight but still enjoy life and good food!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, August 17, 2007

By	S. Morris (nj United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Cheat to Lose Diet: Cheat BIG with the Foods You Love, Lose Fat Faster Than Ever Before, and Enjoy Keeping It Off! (Hardcover)

Excellent book. Easy to read, informative. I know some people will ask "isn't this just a eat clean during the week and cheat on weekends book?" No, it's not. Joel tells you how to use strategic cheat meals to keep your fat burning hormones (letpin) primed and working with you, not against you, as they do on many traditional diets.

The book will help you out with exercise, meal planning and how to set up each of the phases of the diet. My only problem is that it's called a "diet." I know that word sells, but it should be called a life-style, since this plan could be followed long-term.

As with all diet books, there is a long list of recipes in the back. I don't like this aspect, but I know many people do. I will say that the recipes are easy to use and use common ingredients, unlike books that have you running to specialty shops for odd ingredients.

Overall, I'd give the book 5 stars, and I'm very selective when it comes to diet and exercise books.