"The Spark" (the book) is in my opinion not what people beginning a diet need to lose weight. However, I'm not sorry I bought it, for one very important reason. I'm grateful from the use of their web site, and happy to contribute to their income by buying the book.
I started a diet in mid-June, and I used SparkPeople to track my calories. It helped me immensely, and in two months I've lost 17 pounds that at the start of the summer I had no idea I would or could be losing. However, I did it because I got into the nuts and bolts of calorie control and switching to better foods on day one of my diet.
I want to emphasize that SparkPeople is a wonderful set of tools and resources to help you lose weight. I owe a lot of my weight loss to making use of the web site's tools, and without it I would not have lost as much weight as I already have.
The book is not as clear cut.
The first 80% of this book spends most of its time talking about organization and motivation techniques. It came across to me much more like books that are intended to pump up a sales staff than a book which would help someone who is overweight kick start their weight loss program. Frankly, I don't think it is helpful to try to get someone who desperately needs to lose weight to juggle many different motivational concepts. That's just too confusing. When a book tells me that one of the first things I need to do to lose weight is to embrace "Positive Force", I'm sorry, I don't know that that means, and I'm still fuzzy about it after finishing the book. LOL
What someone who has trouble because they've gained weight needs is a set of simple and practical steps. "Positive Force" doesn't give me a clue towards how I'm going to lose a pound this week. "Replace soft drinks made with corn syrup by drinking water" does do that. That's in this book too, but not until about the last fifth of it. That's something I can hold onto, and in fact it was the very first step I took in my own diet. I cut 150 to 600 calories a day out of my own "calorie waste" just by cutting out the corn syrup sweetened soft drinks.
The next thing I did was to replace high fat, high sugar snacks with healthy snacks. My favorite emergency go to for a snack is one or two grape tomatoes - 2 calories each - replacing something like 3 oatmeal cookies at 75 calories each - 225 total for the three. An apple at 70-100 calories is another good choice for an afternoon snack.
Next I cut out high fat dairy, replacing sour cream with 0% Greek Yogurt and severely curtailing my consumption of cheese. I cut most of the butter out of our cooking. We started cooking our own meals with healthy meats and vegetables and stopped ordering pizza. My favorite Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Pan Pizza is 310 calories per slice. Three slices of that on a Friday night plus a Dr. Pepper was 1100 calories all on its own. This pizza is out of our meal rotation now. LOL I'd eat a Jack in the Box Ultimate Cheeseburger for lunch ... 800 calories. Now I'm on a ham sandwich and a bowl of soup for 300 total. The 300 calories is more filling, more nutrition, and actually better tasting.
These are the kinds of things you do to lose weight. Its the detail work that identifies what's gone wrong with what you decide to eat, and replacing those things with smarter choices. We didn't really even have to make too many difficult choices here. The meals we cook now are better tasting and better for us than the pizza was. Yes, it takes more time, but the rewards are far more valuable than the time spent.
I gave this book three stars because in its last sections, it does give you some specific information and hard data that you can use to lose weight. I think it is organized backwards. Its rare for an individual to make the decision to take that first step to lose weight. When they do, don't waste the chance to help them by talking about organization. Give them a short list of simple actions to help them get started. If you ONLY do the type of things I noted above, you'll lose weight. Then do some reading on your own and add to that. Find healthy and fun recipes. Add some exercise when you can. But the most important thing is to identify the calorie land mines and get them out of your life.
As I mentioned above, I've lost 17 pounds in two months, and my wife has lost 14. We're enjoying what we eat, and going hungry is not part of our "diet" experience. We eat real meals, made of real foods, and they taste good. That's the easy way to diet, let me tell you. And it isn't hard to do. Its available to everyone, any day they choose to start eating that way.
UPDATE: As of October 28th, I reached my original goal of 30 pounds lost. I'm going to continue to lose a few more pounds to have a safety margin for the extra calories that Thanksgiving will bring. I'm firmly in control of my weight, and I attribute that to:
(1) Identifying the high calorie, low nutrition foods in our life and banishing them from the house.
(2) Using the SparkPeople.com nutrition tracker (counting calories) to double check when I'm reaching my calorie budget for the day, and making sure I stay within that budget.
(3) Taking the trouble to find great tasting dishes we can prepare which don't rack up huge calories. This keeps us from suffering "diet fatigue" from not enjoying what we eat, or getting bored with what we eat. Hint: several ounces of chicken and two or three one cup servings of vegetables will stuff you for less than 400 calories for an entire dinner.
(4) Finding low calorie snacks to gobble when a stray craving hits (grapes, grape tomatoes, apples, even popcorn).
(5) Still eating some of the higher calorie things we love, but limiting portions (a 1/3rd cup serving of potato salad instead of a huge serving ... one hamburger instead of two (home cooked, the cheap fast food hamburgers have ridiculous calories).
(6) Making a few sensible but still decent tasting substitutions: home made ranch dressing made with yogurt for 35 calories a serving instead of store bought at 160 calories per serving, for example. In fact, yogurt is a big key in our weight loss. It substitutes for sour cream and other dairy products at a fraction of the calories. I can make key lime pie using yogurt and light cream cheese for 170 calories a slice instead of eating the key lime pie bought at the store, which is 450 calories a slice. The taste is similar and the texture of what we make at home is actually better ... and it literally takes 10 minutes to make.
