Customer Reviews

The Great American Detox Diet: 8 Weeks to Weight Loss and Well-Being

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found "Supersize Me" to be one of the great documentaries (of sorts) in quite a while, not the least of which was the healthy dose of irony in that the girlfriend of star Morgan Spurlock, Alex Jamieson, was a vegan chef witnessing this diet he went on.

Well, the movie's a huge success, Morgan and to a lesser extent Alex are mild celebrities, and they both took the time to write books. Admittedly, this wreaks of commercialism, but remarkably both turned out good pieces, Spurlock's a companion to "Supersize Me", and Jamieson's revolving around the "Detox Diet" that she put Spurlock on after his month of McDonald's.

The book essentially is broken into three parts-- the first part is sort of introductory/background material-- Jamieson describes her journey from confessed junk food nut to vegan/health maven. It makes for an interesting read, but I felt the level of repetition (and endless reinfocement about processed sugar, etc.) that get to be kind of a drag.

The second part is the "detox diet"-- a week by week transition plan for abandoning the many processed and chemical additives that are throughout our food.

The third part is a series of healthy vegan recipes, some of which look quite interesting, and while I've used none of them, I've stolen a couple ideas for my own cooking.

My thoughts on this-- before I go further, I'm not a vegan, nor am I likely to become one anytime soon, but I derived a lot of value in this book, in particular from its advice in reading food labels and what's missing from them, and its advice in checking ALL food labels-- for example, we all know High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a corn-based sugar syrup (and at least some of us know that the body doesn't seem to register it as consumed calories and so hunger isn't effected which is why many folks can down ten cans of soda and still eat a full meal-- but if you didn't know that, Jamieson points it out to you). But what I don't think I knew is how prevelent it is-- on advice from the book, I read labels of seemingly innocent product-- bread. In my local grocery store I read about two dozen bread variety labels, and most of them (including a number advertized as "whole grain" and "multigrain" and "healthy") contained HFCS. In fact, I STOPPED looking when I found one that didn't have HFCS. And that scares me.

She also spends a lot of time talking about the flour enriching process, oil processing, water chemical additives, and so on-- I found all of this quite valuable in its own way as well, and armed with this knowledge, I made some subtle changes in my purchasing habits.

Mind you, Jamieson also recommends against plastic, I don't suspect I'd ever purge my life of plastic, and against caffeine, another thing I don't particularly want to go without (while I can and have gone weeks without my morning coffee, I enjoy the taste and decaf never tastes right to me). But its certainly all worthwhile to read, the more knowledge you have, the better.

One thing to point out-- adhering to the changes wholesale she advocates would get rather expensive-- there's a reason HFCS is all over the place, its cheap. This is true of all sorts of things from enriched flours to hydronated oils. While I'm certainly not hurting for cash, I think it'd be a bit too much of an impact on me financially to move in this direction. One other thing is that Jamieson recommends a wholesale purge of your diet of negative substances while overlooking that a number of people love this kind of stuff. I'm not advocating any behavior, but I know personally that when I restructured my diet about a year and a half ago, I still had to make room for the occasional deep fried takeout order to keep myself sane.

The recipes like I said look very interesting-- I haven't tried anything (yet), but I may, and like any good recipe book, there's a lot of worth-stealing suggestions in here.

Its a good book, packed with information, and well worth the read. Recommended.

The standard detoxification diet seeks to purge the body of toxins. Certain foods magnify toxin problems, promote yeast accumulation, excess acidity and a whole host of other issues
which interfere with the bodily healing and equilibrium processes. These foods are processed sugar, white bread, coffee, alcohol, excess dairy , artificial sweeteners and red meat. We should say yes to generous helpings of water, whole grains, millet, nuts, blackberries, strawberries, beans, acidophilus, fresh food, chicory, escarole, dandelion root, ginger and licorice. Water acts as a classic body detoxifier. The author fears excess amounts of nutrasweet which breaks down into methanol and eventually formaldehyde. Trace levels of formaldehyde have been found accumulating near vital organs.

This work will assist in customizing your diet so that a complete detoxification can occur painlessly. The bodily healing processes cannot do their marvelous work optimally until toxins have been discharged or significantly minimized.

This work explains the biochemistry of dieting simply with a
minimum of extraneous material. It is a solid value for the price charged. A copy should be in every personal health library.

I picked up a copy of this book because, despite being a long time vegetarian, I had been feeling sluggish and weighed down, and I knew that my diet was a major culprit. I'd been working long hours and had been ordering pizzas and nuking frozen dinners all the time rather than preparing healthy meals for myself and my husband. It's a hard rut to get out of, and I needed a bit of a nudge.

When I first started to read the book, the first thing that really struck me was her advice on water consumption. When I really thought about it, I couldn't even remember the last time I had a plain glass of water! (I'm a terrible diet soda junkie.) Of course, most of us have heard the 8-10 glasses of water a day rule, but I have also heard it said several times that we get enough water from drinking pretty much anything and that plain water is not a necessary component. How wrong that is! I decided to replace about half of my liquids with water, to start (spiked with some lemon juice, because plain water still tastes bland to me) and I immediately noticed a difference in the way I felt.

There are plenty of other bits of advice in this book, and most of them make perfect sense (cutting sugar, salt, artificial sweeteners, etc.) though if you're used to eating a lot of processed foods it can be a bit of a struggle at first. I don't think I'll necessarily be following all of her advice, as I don't plan to ever give up regular coffee or wheat, but I've tried just about everything else and so far it's truly helped me.

I've read a couple of reviews that state that eating in the manner she suggests is expensive. Personally, I've found it to be quite the opposite. It's ultimately much less expensive to purchase fresh vegetables and fruits and grains and put together a meal than it is to buy processed food all the time. Cooking your own healthy food doesn't have to be a chore. You can prepare almost anything yourself in the time it takes to get a pizza delivered, and there are all kinds of meals you can make in twenty minutes or less. In fact, the author features several quick recipes in her book, all of which are easy to prepare and not nearly as ingredient-intensive as you might expect vegan fare to be. I've prepared several of her dishes already, all of them delicious, none of them time-consuming. My personal favorite recipe is the Avocado Sesame Pasta, which features a raw sauce that can be prepared and ready by the time the water starts boiling for the pasta. And it's hearty enough that you don't need anything on the side.

Overall, I think this book is a great buy. The only reason I gave it four stars instead of five is that I felt it could have given a bit more transitional information for people to start out with. I doubt most people are going to be able to just give up something that is a large part of their diet cold turkey, especially when she's expecting one new thing a week. But even if you don't follow all of her advice exactly, I still think you will find a significant difference in how you feel.

I thoroughly enjoyed Morgan Spurlock's film "Supersize Me," and wondered about the details of the diet girlfriend Alex Jamieson put him on to restore his health. This book provides the basis of that diet and so much more.

Jamieson begins the book by recounting her own experiences with the Standard American Diet, along with the hows and whys of her quest for a healthier way of life. From there, she outlines an 8-week plan for cleaning up our own eating and lifestyle habits one-by-one. She advocates:

*Aiding an over-taxed system with plenty of fresh, filtered water
*Eliminating refined sugars
*Eliminating caffeine
*Replacing bad fats with healthy fats
*Replacing refined grains with whole grains
*Incorporating healthy sources of protein
*Removing toxins from the home
*Creating healthier relationships with the world around us

There's a wealth of related information offered in these chapters that a list simply can't cover, along with many appetizing recipes.

Jamieson's personal experience with kicking bad habits is evident throughout the book--her suggestions are tempered with a definite understanding that giving up addictions like sugar and caffeine is, in fact, quite hard. At each step, she offers mental exercises and questionnaires encouraging the reader to genuinely consider the underlying causes of bad eating habits. She also offers enough information about the ill effects of certain bad habits to really make the point stick. I'll admit that I've heard suggestions for some time that eliminating sugar and caffeine from my own diet would help me feel better, but it wasn't until reading this book that I was sufficiently inspired to kick those habits.

One more thing: this is not a quick-fix, faddish diet book, but a book about real lifestyle change. It's not a resource for cramming healthier eating into an already hectic lifestyle, though I think many of her suggestions could be incorporated into even the busiest of lives. Instead, this book is about slowing down, making mindful choices and enjoying the benefits of really treating our bodies well.

If all of that's not enough, Jamieson also has a very readable writing style--it was a fun read. Highly recommended.

I mustered the courage to go vegetarian about 2 months ago. I had already committed to that when I realized that I was missing the larger point of eating for better health (still using a lot of artificial sweetener, for example). I ordered this book from Amazon and have read it from cover to cover, over and over. "The Great American Detox Diet" gave me exactly what I was missing, a broader view of health and information about our food, the food-producing industry and the harmful chemicals lurking in our everyday environment. This is stuff that we all know or have heard about, but this no-nonsense guide puts it all together in an entertaining, easily readable way. Over and above a committment to cruelty-free eating, my everyday choices in food consumption are much better. After the "why", the book also provides the "how", offering over 100 pages of great recipes and menu plans, helpful websites and resources. The recipes I've tried are really yummy (some favorites so far: Mushroom Barley Pilaf, Popeye Spinach Pie, Spicy Sweet Potato Fries and Veggie Loaf - delicious!!!) and I love learning to use different herbs and ingredients. Best of all, my husband, formerly just a meat-and-potatoes guy, eats and enjoys every recipe I try!!

I recommend this book to everyone, young and old, vegan to meat-eater. I thank Alex Jamieson for the caring, thought and effort she put into this wonderful first book.

Jamieson offers some really good and innovative recipes at the end of this book. They are fun to try and she even manages to make bok choy and tofu tasty. There is no "diet" plan per se, just 8 things you need to kick, like sugar and caffeine. The first part of the book has her and her boyfriend's nutritional journeys, and those are interesting and informative, and very representative of the kind of "you are what you eat" tales you read from other reformed adherents of the Standard American Diet.

Be warned, though, much of this pastiche of medical details and alarmist nutritional info is cobbled together from less than reputable sources. What good medical and nutritional advice she does dole out is directly taken from Andrew Weil, David Katz and other MDs or RDs who actually have studied the subject and know how to interpret medical studies. Jamieson claims that everything in our modern life is killing us, and she joins her voice to the thousands of others in pop-culture who cry for a simpler time, a purer time, a chemical free time... which of course never really existed in this fantasy form because humans were dying of infectious diseases and cholera. She and her ilk ignore the fact that people are living longer than ever, and now have the diseases of old age and over indulgence.

This book address the over indulgence and there is NO QUESTION that you will be healthier and happier if you follow it. But if you want more substative, and more reliable, medical and nutritional advice, you would be wiser to turn to writers like Andrew Weil, Stephen Gullo, or David Katz. Weil has an actual 8 week eating plan that offers more guidelines and recipes than this book does, though very similar.

this book is not for the faint of heart! im currently studying food science, dietetics, and nutrition as a senior in college and this book opened my eyes to more than i've been getting in classes im paying an arm and a leg for! this book is SO very important ESPECIALLY as our culture is sucked further and further into the black hole of our "fast food nation" (PS: also a wonderful read). but if you find yourself curious as to why you dont feel great, despite your "healthy" lifestyle including watching your diet and getting regular exercise (like i was!!) this book will answer many questions and pose some that you never would have thought to ask. even my super-macho, rugby-playing, milk guzzling, velociraptoresque boyfriend is trying to go organic with me now! good luck ever looking at ANYTHING - including carpeting (who knew they put formadehyde in it!?) - the same way again!

I call this book, the book that changed my life. While I 'knew' most of the material in the book it helped so much to see them in black and white. Alex's easy and friendly writing style was a very large plus as well.

I'm almost done with the 8 week program (one more week to go) and I've lost 12 pounds, feel so much better, and have much more energy.

Thanks Alex!

This book is ok-- if you know anything about healthy eating, vegetarian or vegan diets, or the mistreatment of animals slaughtered for food, then you probably will not find this book very useful. However, if you don't know anything about these things and consume a high-fat diet full of animal foods, bad carbs, and rely on convenience foods full of sodium and chemicals, then this book would be a good resource to help you change to a more healthy lifestyle. But, it is not really a diet, it's more like a guidebook to what is wrong with the way you currently eat and foods to add and eliminate to help you eat and feel better.

Diets don't work for you? Maybe what you need to do is detoxify your body, not only for weight loss but also for optimal health. That is where this book comes in handy. The first part examines why there is a problem with the American diet and why detoxification is the answer to that problem. The second part then details the detoxification plan. The plan is thorough and includes dealing with sweets, caffeine, fat, and carbohydrates. The third and final part contains recipes and resources for detoxification.
The biggest problem with detox diets tends to be the difficulty of following the advice. The recipe section of this book resolves this problem by providing nutritious meals that taste good while allowing you to follow the detoxification plan. The Great American Detox Diet is a recommended read.