Customer Reviews

The Denim Diet: Sixteen Simple Habits to Get You into Your Dream Pair of Jeans

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I highly recommend this book. The title makes it sound like it is going to be a fad diet - it isn't! It's all about getting healthy and looking great in your dream pair of jeans. The book is divided into chapters in which Kami helps you tackle your health habits one-by-one with babysteps and a lot of humor. The nutritional advice is sound and the focus is on building healthy diet and exercise habits while also being mindful of the environment and sustainability.

Some of the topics Kami covers are: artificial sweeteners, sugars and alternative sweeteners you might not have thought about (such as agave nectar - yum!), simple vs. complex carbs, organic foods vs. conventionally grown and genetically modified foods, fast food, alcohol, coffee drinks, protein sources including meats, fruits and veggies, fats (they are not all bad!), snacking, portion sizes, eating with freinds and family, and exercise. She includes shopping lists, recipes that are easy and delicious, and tips for choosing well at a variety of ethnic restaurants and social events.

Kami's approach is down-to-earth, positive, and sensible. She also weaves in lots of personal stories that keep you interested and motivated, and she is laugh-out-loud funny to boot. I felt like I was in the presence of a friend when I was reading it, and I found the advice easy-to-follow. Does it work? Well, I have lost 14 pounds (and counting), and my family says I look like a different person. I have never felt deprived since the plan includes plenty of healthy, delicious foods. My skin is glowing and I have more energy than I have had in years. I liked the babystep approach, since I have found that trying to revamp everything in my diet all at once is a recipe for crash-and-burn. This is a simple, doable lifestyle change that you can approach at your own pace.

I like that this book is a quick read with a great message! I love the idea of eating healthy, choosing organic foods and learning a more sustainable way of life.
This is a great book for someone like me that likes to keep it simple. The food suggestions are not limited so, you can still eat yummy food and the bonus is that it's healthy for you and will help you feel and look better about yourself!
I found the alternative suggestions for certain foods is very helpful -(like the agave nectar in place of sugar).
'The Denim Diet' has made me more aware of what exaclty I am putting into my body. High Fructose Corn Syrup is one example - I did not realize it was in so many foods!
This book also has helpful ideas of what to eat when you go to social events and it gives you several tasty recipes to try.
All the tips are very helpful and simple- so Thanks Denim Diet- and hello to me looking HOT in my favorite pair of jeans!

In "The Denim Diet", wardrobe stylist and designer Kami Gray, uses an extremely effective yet simple technique that I have been utilizing for years to insure that I don't gain an exorbitant amount of weight especially during the dreaded holiday time. In addition to this, she outlines a program that includes sixteen dos and don'ts that will formulate lifelong habits that will keep you trimly fitting into your favorite pair of jeans.

Not unlike the idea of Will Clower's "The Fat Fallacy: The French Diet Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss," Gray inadvertantly advocates an American take on the French way of eating that eliminates obsessing over the numbers registered on the scale and focuses instead on whether or not your clothes fit. Substitute the black pencil skirt spoken of in Anne Barone's Chic & Slim: How Those Chic French Women Eat All That Rich Food And Still Stay Slim series for a pair of True Religion (the brand is just a suggestion) jeans and you have the ultimate weight-monitoring gargoyle. The test is simple: Do they fit you? Are they tight? After eating certain foods, is there a subtle difference in the fit? When you look in the mirror while wearing them, what do you see from a 360- degree perspective?

So many women, especially those of a certain age make the paramount mistake of turning in their jeans for either leggings or the dreaded elastic waist. Essentially, what this allows is over-eating. Stretch yoga pants while not worn during exercise are not the `thing' to wear while eating lunch with girlfriends at a restaurant. Especially when those girls eschew eating flesh as a matter of conscience and concentrate on high-caloric bread, pasta, beans and cheese to balance out their diets. Caution, indeed, will be thrown to the wind along with those jeans the squeeze you into dreaded muffin-top disproportion.

Wearing jeans with a zipper or button closure or for that manner any form-fitting pant with a structured waistline and button or hook and eye fasteners, keeps your eating in check automatically. My simple rule is to try on your dream jeans every morning--if they fit the way you want, then you ate well the day before. If they don't rewind and figure out which item or which habit did the damage before the damage becomes irreparable. Of course, there is more to Gray's book to just pulling a pair of jeans on and off. Nonetheless the jeans do serve as an important benchmark that aids in self-restraint.

Thinking that you are eating right and actually eating correctly may be two very different things. My example of the women who embrace the vegetarian lifestyle without understanding the subtle balance of the body is a case in point. A little education using Gray's easy-to-read anecdotal sixteen-point plan will make keeping your weight stable a no-brainer. Leaving nothing out, Gray devotes a chapter to each of her eating sensibilities that include: "Slimming Alternatives to Sugar," "White Versus Brown Carbohydrates," "Healthy Organic Food Practices," "Caffeinated Beverages," "Booze," "Breakfast," "Healthful and Ethical Meat Consumption," "Fruits and Vegetables," "Cholesterol, Good and Bad Fats and the Superstars Omega 3s," "Getting Lean Means Better Planetary Health," "Snacking," "Customized Exercises," "Family, Friends and Food Enablers," "Calories, Portions and Proportions," and "Eating Healthy Out and About." Without hesitating to lay down the law, she dictates what you can and cannot eat if your desire is to stay healthy and slim. She follows her rules and regulations with a summary sheet, tips on how to dress five pounds slimmer instantly, how to stock your pantry and provides healthful recipes for each food category.

Gray takes many of the themed-diets like Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat no-snacking portion control based plan, the The Sonoma Diet: Trimmer Waist, Better Health in Just 10 Days!Sonoma Diet's emphasis on power foods like fruit, vegetables and nuts and the glycemic index system of ranking carbohydrates according to how much a certain amount of each food raises a person's blood sugar levels found in The Zone Diet, The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan for Fast and Healthy Weight Loss, Sugar Busters!: Cut Sugar to Trim Fat, Suzanne Somers' Fast & Easy: Lose Weight the Somersize Way with Quick, Delicious Meals for the Entire Family! and The French Diet: Why French Women Don't Get Fat and factors in fashionable diet challenges and enhancements from ultra sugary designer coffee drinks, artificial sweeteners, holiday pitfalls and pig-out friendly fast food to eating green, vitamin supplements, protein bars, aerobic and weight-bearing exercises. She does an excellent job of covering all the bases.

Bottom line? In "The Denim Diet," Kami Gray provides a great nutritionally savvy guide to keep you slim for a lifetime. The title of the program may sound gimmicky and superficial, but disregard it and delve into the book's contents instead. Buy yourself that pair of jeans that you always wanted to fit into and try them on every morning as you follow Gray's sixteen guidelines. Keep track of what works for you and what does not and you will be well on your way to a healthful weight that makes the most of the current state-of-the-art knowledge concerning well being and weight control. Strict vegetarians may need additional nutritional aid. There are strict do's and don't so this is not for the faint of heart or those who make cheating part of the plan. Recommended as one of the best all encompassing plans I have come across.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

This book was just what I needed. Kami explains things in such a way that it is simple, and easy. The way she writes it, it just makes sense. It speaks to you in an uncomplicated way, where you believe you can make the changes you should to live healthy. Without preaching, she makes you feel as if it is easy and simple. Finally, someone who doesn't say "DIET" per se, it's about living clean and healthy. While some of her ideas are a bit too stringent for me re: food as fuel only, the overall message is fabulous. Do better, eat better, feel & look better. It's so simple that it's incredible to me that so many people choose pills, and fads and non-sense diets over something as simple as this. It really is the most simple, common sense you could imagine. Just eat healthy-done!

I was very surprised that this got such great reviews. It's not bad, but it's not new, either. The fitting into your jeans part is rather small. Much of it is about having a recommended list of foods to eat and avoiding others. Eat fruits and vegetables. Eat good carbs. Tell me something I don't know. This doesn't solve most dieters' problem of wanting to eat the foods she forbids. To think that the normal person is going to go to dinner parties and look only for the meat and vegetables isn't realistic. Slim women eat the other stuff all the time! They just don't get too full. Plus, the idea that she actually suggests you respond to a coffee server's standard question with a tirade of anti-pastry invective smacks of fanaticism. Finally, the print layout of the book made it look endlessly long. I recommend the No S Diet to help deal with eating foods in moderation and eventually Volumetrics, The Omega Plan, and Michael Pollan's work when someone is ready. They give slightly contradictory advice, but the emphasis is the same:lots of good plant foods and some good protein and fats.

If you are looking to fit back into your skinny jeans then "The Denim Diet" has a lot to offer. Kami Gray teaches you the fundamentals of a healthy diet. She is a natural teacher and easily guides you through page after page of great practical advice.

First, she takes on high-fructose corn syrup and then teaches you how to pick the best organic fruits and vegetables. There is even a section for people who love to eat out. Kami Gray explains the best choices for Chinese, French, Indian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Italian and Mexican foods.

The main chapters include:

Slimming Alternatives to High Fructose Corn Syrup
White vs. Brown Carbohydrates
Healthy Organic Food Practices
Fast Food is Fat Food
Foo-Foo Coffee Drinks
The Most Important Meal of the Day
Meat Me in the Middle
Win and Lose with Fruits and Vegetables
Got Fat? - A discussion of good and bad fats
Lean and Green
Snacking
I Like the Way You Move - Exercise
Eats Well with Others - a discussion about surviving meals with your family
Count Me In! - A discussion on calories, portions and proportion
Eating Away from Home
Stocking the Pantry
Kami's Top Ten Trimming Tips - What to wear to look thin

This book contains some good reasons you never want to drink water from the tap. You may also rethink buying "Lean Cuisine" after reading this book. I liked the ideas about eating sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes. John Gray (yes, the famous author) says to eat lots of potatoes and I knew he was wrong. This book confirmed my suspicions on that advice.

If you are looking for healthy recipes this book has over thirty recipes. You may enjoy trying:

Quinoa Porridge
Mediterranean Scramble
Coffee Spice Cake (made with whole wheat flour)
Homemade Energy Bars
Cream of Pumpkin Soup
Raspberry Vinaigrette
Southwestern Salad

While she is not a doctor or a dietician, Kami Gray has discovered the secrets of staying slim through her own research and personal experience. I've read a lot of health and wellness books and this one was the most fun.

~The Rebecca Review

Excellent book! First, and most importantly (to me anyway) it's hilarious. Secondly, and still quite important - it makes sense. Kami Gray writes in a way that not only explains her 16 simple steps to eating healthier with straight talk, but intelligently as well. I am not a fan of dieting and this book is perfect because its not a diet book.. It really just discusses how to retrain your brain and easily create new, healthier habits, without ever going hungry. Not to mention as a result you will look better in your favorite jeans. Bonus! I am buying this book for all my girlfriends. I already told them that I was and it's not because they are fat. It is because they are going to love it as much as me and I wouldn't be a good friend if I didn't share!

Both of my grandmothers died from Type II Diabetes. My mother has it. None of these women were morbidly obese. They all were (are) about thirty to forty pounds heavier than they should have been. I was facing this last year and didn't consider myself overweight, but when I went to the doctor and my weight had gone up to about one hundred fifty pounds, and I am five feet three inches tall, a red flag went up. I left the doctor and started thinking about what would be a good weight loss solution for me so that I wouldn't follow the path of my mother and grandmothers. Lo and behold, the next week, Kami Gray was signing books at my local bookstore. I bought a copy. Not that the information is ground-breaking or meant to be judgemental, it is meant to be a humorous kick in the pants to get you on a permanent weight-loss and maintenance path. It was the right thing at the right time for me. I've lost about thirty pounds, have met my goal weight (considering my small frame), and my doctor is pleased with my progress over the last year. I found Kami's book to be a great inspiration and easy to follow, because, really, maintaining a healthy weight is no great mystery -- it's simple, good for you and good for the planet. Kami helped me to realize that, and I am a great and grateful fan.

Kami Gray...thanks for telling it straight. I have tried so many "diets" in my day. The diet food I would find myself eating made me feel sick and hungry. This book was truly refreshing, because it really isn't a diet book at all. It is simply a healthy, green, manageable and yummy way of eating everyday. What I loved most was that it made me think of eating items that I sometimes I have forgotten about. Adding more olives to my diet has helped me curb my salty tooth. Always having string cheese on hand tames the hungry lion (that resides in my belly) so that I can make more healthful choices for meals. The recipes in the back have been fun to try, easy to make and a delicious addition to my family's repertoire. Thank you for this book!

Nice idea! It appeals to me.

There is good information in the book, most of which we've all heard before, but presented with an 'attitude' and spicy language that many readers will enjoy and relate to while others will view like they would a slap in the face. She apparently comes by her style of writing honestly because throughout the book there are (sometimes funny) little stories in which her family and friends are brutally frank with her, to the point of being insulting. In return, she insults her friends, family, strangers, and celebrities. Readers will decide for themselves if they like a more gracious, gentile approach or if the blunt style is just what is needed.

The brief mention of celebrities throughout the book helps to lend credibility as to why the author is qualified to write the book, and she does talk about that as well. She is also honest as she makes sure not to claim expertise she doesn't have, as she explains why she wrote the book. I respect that.

Back to the content of the book though, the concept of getting into your dream pair of jeans is one almost all of us can relate to, and that is why we buy the book.

Especially helpful for many, even though we've heard all (or most) of the recommendations before, is the table listing habits we should develop and others we should break.

Is it the last and best diet book for all of us? No, but it may be exactly what some readers are looking for.