The Vice-Busting Diet: A 12-Week Plan to Break Your Worst Food Habits and Change Your Life Forever [Hardcover]

Julia Griggs Havey (Author), Dr. J. Patrick Havey (Author), David L. Katz (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 2006

Julia Havey has lost 130 pounds and kept it off for ten years. She's discovered the key to losing weight and keeping it off--small changes add up to big results. Unlike other diets that ask you to overhaul eating habits or eliminate food groups, The Vice-Busting Diet allows readers to discover what's getting in the way of weight loss. Whether it's soda, fast food, sweets or another temptation, Julia Havey teaches you how to eliminate it and replace it with a healthy alternative--with practical advice and a healthy dose of motivation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Havey, author of Awaken the Diet Within and who serves as eDiets.com's "Master Motivator," was once a self-described "290-pound unhappy single mother." Now, she's 130 pounds lighter—weight loss she has maintained for a decade—and is married to her coauthor, a doctor and president of Missouri's Health and Wellness Institute. Havey shares her own breaking point: the time at which she realized "Deprivation is not living without certain foods, but living with them and being deprived of your true health and happiness!" The key to adopting a healthier lifestyle and a healthier life is the recognition and eradication (busting) of vices that are getting in the way of weight loss. The most common ones are soft drinks, fast food and television; the book offers strategies, affirmations and action plans for eradicating the negative influences of these bad habits. The book's centerpiece is a 12-week plan with specific, manageable goals for each step. An exercise plan and healthy recipes round out this straightforward though simplistic plan for lifestyle change. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover

If you change one bad eating habit, you can change your life.  Julia Havey lost 130 pounds and has kept if off for ten years.  Through her experience she has discovered the key to losing weight and keeping it off - one small change a day adds up to big results.  Unlike other diets that ask you to overhaul eating habits or eliminate entire food groups, The Vice-Busting Diet allows you to discover what is getting in the way of weight loss.  For some it's soda, others fast food, still others sweets - no matter what temptation lures you off the diet wagon, Julia Havey can teach you to eliminate that thing that trips you up.  What's more she will help you to replace the unhealthy habit with a healthy alternative.  At every step of the way Julia gives practical, time-tested advice laced with a healthy dose of motivation. 
The 12-week program will take you by the hand and help you to gradually change the way you eat and teach you how to add exercise into your life.  At the end of the 12 weeks you will have beaten at least one diet vice, lost weight, begun to exercise and feel much better about yourself.
You have the ability to make changes in the way you eat, Julia Havey will show you how.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312348363
• ISBN-13: 978-0312348366
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #822,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why this book??? Cause YOUR worth it!!!!!, August 15, 2006

By 

Valerie Melancon "Val" (Alexandria,La USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vice-Busting Diet: A 12-Week Plan to Break Your Worst Food Habits and Change Your Life Forever (Hardcover)

To sum it up in just a simple phrase, Id say " Changing your life is an understatement for what this book does"!!! Who would have thought that my life would come full circle in the last 5 years! In 2001, I sat at this very computer reading the cold hard facts about how vices control our life! The definition of vice was put as simple as anything that controls you and hinders your desired outcome. My biggest desire in the world was to become a healthy person who could dream big and THEN make those dreams become a reality! My biggest hinderence was my LOVE for cupcakes! It was as simple as giving up my first vice in order to start a journey that would last a lifetime. It has been 5 years since I started this long journey with Julia Havey and this road has led me from a 350 pound admirer of this successful weight loss author, to a 170 pound friend of this warm hearted mother, wife, and honest woman! She has been by my side through ups and downs, both weight loss related and life related, and help keep my head high throughit all. This book is a real life approach to helping someone reach their dreams and goals. It teaches you to bust your vices one at a time and more importantly to learn to belive in yourself! Without the self confidence that you learn to feel, success would not be the final outcome. If I had to suggest one book that would truely fit its title, this would be it. It will help you change your life in every aspect of the word!!!! Its a simple, doable, believable approach to weight loss, and once youve read the book, you will know that "IF you dream it, YOU CAN DO IT!" I dedicated my time and effort to this woman 5 years ago, and believed in myslef enough to bust all my vices, and go on to lose 185 pounds in less than 2 years and have been living a life of confidence, health and love for myself for the last 3 years! In october of this year I will marry the love of my life, and Julia will be standing up next to me in my wedding. Life has come full circle thanks to her, and if you are looking for a plan that will work not only to lose weight, but to change your life FOREVER, please read and follow this plan for 12 weeks, and then spread your wings and fly!

88 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Advice: Don't Let A Vice Entice Your Life, July 25, 2006

By 

Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Man "Jimmy Moore" (Spartanburg, SC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Vice-Busting Diet: A 12-Week Plan to Break Your Worst Food Habits and Change Your Life Forever (Hardcover)

Before you can share what "vices" you have in your life that are preventing you from moving forward in your quest for weight loss, the first thing you need to know is what that little four-letter word actually means. Do you know what a "vice" is?

The following are just a few definitions of the word "vice" that should get your mind to thinking:

"An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit."
"A serious moral failing."
"Wicked or evil conduct or habits."
"A slight personal failing."
"A flaw or imperfection"
"A physical defect or weakness."
"An undesirable habit"

OUCH, OUCH, OUCH, OUCH, OUCH, OUCH, and OUCH! Do all of us REALLY have things like that we allow to creep into our lives? Is it really THAT bad and we've just never realized it since nobody has shined the light on this issue before now?

If you ask Julia Havey, author of the "The Vice-Busting Diet: A 12-Week Plan To Break Your Worst Food Habits and Change Your Life Forever," then the answer is YES and it may be even worse than you even realize. Yikes!

Think about it for moment. How many of us consciously TRY to cause harm to our bodies with the way we live our lives. Nobody with a sane mind does that, right? But Havey says our small choices in life such as mindlessly drinking sugary sodas, stopping by the local burger joint for a quick meal on the go, or even forgoing exercise just so we can plop down on our couch to watch hours of mindless television are all vices that we need to overcome to lower our weight and get healthy.

Although the word "diet" is in the title of this book, Havey will be the first to tell you she does not and will not ever recommend you go on a diet to lose weight because you will simply set yourself up for failure just like all the other hundreds of them you have been on in your lifetime. Instead, she says people need to make those "simple changes" in their lives that they KNOW they need to make the improvements in their weight and health which will surely follow.

While many diet gurus who write books about weight loss are people who have no idea what it feels like to be fat, this is definitely NOT true about Havey who once weighed nearly 300 pounds. But she overcame her obesity and lost 130 pounds because of the very principles she shares in this book. Best of all, she has kept that weight off for over a decade and has committed her life, along with husband and co-author Dr. J. Patrick Havey, to helping others find the success they so desperately crave in regards to their own weight.

Havey is very crafty in the way she explains how two out of every three Americans got to be overweight or obese and openly shares how their lives could change so much for the better with just a little weight loss, including physical and mental changes that you most of us never even realize is just waiting to explode out of us until you lose weight for yourself.

As someone who has lost 180 pounds personally, I can verifiably attest to each of these remarkable changes in my own life. When you have lived with a belly hanging over your pants, shopping at big & tall stores, having trouble fitting in booths at restaurants and in movie theater seats, constantly feeling sick and tired, and so many more daily inconveniences I could keep sharing until next year comes, you cannot even begin to know how transforming weight loss can be. Havey most definitely hits the nail on the head when she describes how your life will be turned upside down by shedding the pounds!

So how do you lose weight? Sounds like a simple question to ask, right? I get posed that question a lot myself ever since my weight loss and I'm sure Havey has heard it a million times herself in the past decade. She clearly outlines the necessary changes you must make to begin losing weight for good and urges people to seriously commit themselves to her 12-week program to begin moving in the right direction. No, it's not like the 12-step programs where you have to show up for meetings and confess your soul to the whole world about your life. It's sooo much better than that!

In fact, Havey is so convinced you will LOVE her program and start overcoming your diet vices that she GUARANTEES you one thing that is worth more than the cost of the book -- you will never be alone as you go through this. That's right, anytime you need an advocate on your side during your weight loss, she has vowed to make herself available to anyone who purchases her book to "help you keep moving forward" in your progress towards better health. How about that?

She assures you over and over again in her book that "you are not alone" in this battle and that there are many of us "loser" on your side who WANT to see you become a weight loss winner. I offer the same guarantee to anyone who needs to find hope in the midst of that hopeless feeling that you'll be "that fat person" forever. It doesn't have to be that way and Havey understands this! She's showing her authenticity about this subject that is near and dear to her heart. Do you get the feeling she's not like all of the "other" diet book writers yet?

Havey says if you begin replacing your old habits or vices with these new ones that she suggests, then you will be well on your way to becoming that thinner and healthier person you have always dreamed about. She arms you with power-packed advice and practical suggestions about the specific foods you should eat, prepare you for the mental challenges, outlines why you need to incorporate physical activity into your life, and so much more. If you take the "The Vice-Busting Diet" plan seriously, then there is NO reason whatsoever why you can't become the same weight loss miracles that Havey and I have been privileged to have happen in our lives.

What would a weight loss book be without yummy recipes, fitness tips, and resources to help you continue on this journey long after you've read the book from cover to cover? Well, you get all of those, too, at the back of the book.

In case you haven't noticed, Julia Havey is a very special woman who sincerely cares about helping people overcome the vices that stand in their way of success in weight loss and in life. It is obvious by the way she writes that this isn't just a fly-by-night writing gig that she hopes to "get rich quick" off of. Nope, not hardly!

Behind all those words of motivation and encouragement is a beautiful woman inside and out who has been there before and knows the pain and hurt of living inside the shell of an obese woman scared half to death that she will keel over and die at any moment. Just seeing others go through that same struggle is very painful for her to watch and is undoubtedly what drives Havey to do what she is doing today. I'm so glad that she is.

Take it from this former 410-pound slob of a man who was on the verge of an early death due to morbid obesity, weight loss is indeed a lifechanging experience. You cannot even begin to imagine the changes that will occur because they really are too many to count. Julia Havey has hit on something here that really works with her book "The Vice-Busting Diet" and I encourage everyone who feels stuck in their weight loss efforts to read this book. Havey knows firsthand what it takes to do this and stands ready to help you, too.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Julia has done it!, September 28, 2006

By 

Melvin A. Niska "mel the deli man" (Andover, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vice-Busting Diet: A 12-Week Plan to Break Your Worst Food Habits and Change Your Life Forever (Hardcover)

Julia has succeeded when most have failed.

Julia Havey has written a practical guide to shedding those lethal pounds. The dirty little un-secret is that diets don't work, lifestyle change works. She has not written a tome --- don't criticize her for what she leaves out. She has included enough information to accomplish the purpose, which so many other diet books have attempted and failed. She has left out the heavy counting and calculating. The rewards are along the way: for the person who honestly and sincerely starts to follow the lead, they start from the very first week.

It's true that there are volumes written on aspects of the problem, particularly the psychological and spiritual aspects that Julia only covers lightly, but I believe Julia meets the chronically obese where they're at, gives them what they need to begin on the road to better health, and helps them replace bad habits with good habits. This book is a must-read for every obese person, every future obese person, and every friend of an obese person.