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"
