Your Fat Is Not Your Fault

About half the book outlines reasons for weight gain: you may lack brown adipose tissue, which stimulates heat production through calorie burning; you may have food allergies; your childhood eating habits or adult dieting may have set you up for weight challenges; you have extra fat cells and your body is predisposed to obesity; your hormones may be out of balance. Your strategy is not to diet--she explains why various diets don't work--but to fix the way your body processes calories. That means avoiding high-glycemic foods (grains, processed foods, starches, high-sugar fruit) and balancing protein (30 percent), carbohydrates (40 percent), and fat (30 percent).

Many of the 61 recipes by Margaret West are higher in fat (mostly olive oil, but also butter and half-and-half) than most dieticians would recommend for weight loss. (A recipe inexplicably titled Baked Potato Without Fat contains two tablespoons of butter.) --Joan Price

Product Description
This book presents a healthful and realistic way to eat that is simple to understand and implement, and puts an end to "dieting" days. 17,500.

Why are so many Americans overweight, and this number increasing every year? Probably because of driving more, and walking less (the zoning laws). In one way overweight is better than famine; too much of a good thing IS a bad thing, or at least has a trade-off. Is a person predestined to be overweight? Or to squander money or time? Not if they learn to act in their own best interest, and reject the lies of advertising (p.11).

Obesity used to be a problem of middle age (p.4). But now it attacks our youth (less walking and more sitting and watching). Caloric intake has decreased by 10% since 1900 (p.5), but obesity has more than doubled! This book may explain why maintaining your desired weight seems so difficult. Weight alone is NOT a reliable indicator of health (p.6)! The obese are subject to "intense prejudice and discrimination". In past ages portliness was associated with prosperity; thinness equaled poverty. This prejudice may be a sign of "human error", where many people are always looking to put down others to make themselves feel better. Does thinness recall a lost childhood?

One feature of this book is the debunking of those Met Life weight tables (p.13) which had nothing to do with health, or the ratio of lean to fat tissue! Some dieting styles are genetically and biologically wrong, no matter how many articles and books repeat them. There are three principles to consider: 1) if you are/were overweight you will have a tendency to be fat; 2) almost everything you read in the corporate-controlled media about nutrition and diets is wrong, guaranteed; and 3) it is possible to lose weight permanently.

The secret is to NEVER go on a diet again. It will ruin your health and make you fat! you must eat real food and balance proteins, carbohydrates, and fat. You need a gentle exercise program several times a week. Chapter 2 explains why common diet strategies fail. Diets lead to metabolic imbalances in your body that guarantees eventually gaining back any lost weight (p.24). Dieting, or starving, results in binge eating (p.32). Eating a high-protein breakfast can control binge eating.

There is the critique of the "politically correct" diet of high-carbohydrate vegetables and grain (pp.34-42). The problem of the low-fat diet is on pages 42-54. Fats are an essential part of a diet, but some eat too much. Fried foods from fast-food restaurants are the most dangerous foods you can eat (p.46). Pages 54-56 tell of the problem with a too-high protein diet. The problem of a herbal diet is discussed on pages 56-60; they are not safe! The facts in this book make it recommended reading for everyone!


Still some of the same ol', same ol'   August 20, 2001
 4 out of 13 found this review helpful

Good material - but it still requires changing your diet (translated: dieting). You're supposed to avoid grains, processed foods, etc. Most of us are looking for a way to be thin and still eat whatever we want - which we know is possible because we see plenty of skinny people doing just that. I want to eat grain. I don't eat much processed food, but if I want to, I don't want that to matter. Call me in denial, avoidance or whatever you want. But if some people can eat whatever they want, as much as the want, as often as they want (metabolism?), surely there is a way that the rest of us can. When someone writes a book with a method that works for that, I'll buy it - and so will millions of others. And then we won't be an obese nation!


about thyriod   June 30, 2000
 0 out of 11 found this review helpful

i would like to know what i need to eat good healthy diet for my thyroid ? thanks catheryn


This one is worth it-a good tool in the battle of dieting!   February 20, 1999
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

While some say this is just a copy of the zone, I think it is more well written than the zone...the information can be presented a number of ways & this one is the first diet book I feel like I can really learn from & use. It is true she hawks her own stores products, but any savvy consumer can make their own choices. Besides, the breakfast bars she mentions can be bought just about anywhere these days. The points she makes about thyroid, & other possible reasons you may not be able to lose weight yet are good ones. The recipes are very easy & very tasty. All around, a very good tool to get you going on a real plan to change the way you eat so you can lose weight for good. At Amazons paperback price, what have you got to lose, really? Go for it!!