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Why Your Last Diet Failed You and How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One | 
 enlarge | Author: Charlie Hills
Publisher: Lockshire Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $9.40
You Save: $5.55 (37%)
New (13) Used (2) from $8.97
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 321845
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Pages: 210
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0974973262
Dewey Decimal Number: 817
EAN: 9780974973265
ASIN: 0974973262
Publication Date: October 8, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Product Description
Follow one man's remarkable 192-month journey as he loses seventeen thousand pounds and about half of his sanity. If you've ever embarked on a diet and failed, you might feel alone in a world seemingly filled with happy, smiling, thin people on late-night infomercials. Why were they able to eat all their favorite foods while the pounds melted away and you gained twelve pounds in three weeks eating nothing but carrots? If this paints your world, then this just might be the next book you need to read. The title says it all. You'll learn why your last diet failed you and find out exactly why it won't possibly help you on your next one. It's a humorous, semi-autobiographical commentary on weight loss and our culture's obsession with the topic. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll put it in your next garage sale.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 This book won't fail you! July 20, 2008
Gary Dale Cearley (Bangkok, Thailand)
What a book! This book is unique in the fact that it is not what you might think it was by looking at the title but at the same time once you have read the book cover to cover you will see that the title is exactly what it purports to be... (Are you still with me?)
By and large, no pun intended, Charlie Hills has succeed in his humorous sarcastic take on his failures at being able to keep weight off - although he has had sporadic successes when he asserted himself. The whole point of Charlie's writing the book is that most all diets work and at the same time most all diets don't work; the onus is on the dieter to use common sense in eating right and getting the proper exercise and not continually falling for one fad diet after another. The book is rather sarcastic in a hilarious way but if you are one of the millions of people who have found yourself trying to shed a few pounds (or more than a few) you will see yourself in Charlie Hills's self-deprecating remarks. This tome is about getting serious about loosening up about dieting and I must say it works for me.
If you want a shot of humor with a dose of reality about dieting, get hold of this book. It would also make a good gift for any friends you know who are comrades in the struggle to reach their ideal size and weight.
 Laugh both at and with the author... July 9, 2008
Michelle L Devon (Michy)&trade (Texas, USA)
When I picked up the book by Charlie Hills, Why Your Last Diet Failed You, I thought, Great, yet another book on dieting. Then I read the subtitle of the book: "And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One". My thought on that was, Huh, well, at least he's honest.
Not only did I find the cover of Why Your Last Diet Failed You amusing, but I also found it honest, and that's what you're going to find inside the book. That is, essentially, what the very foundation of this book, yet another book on dieting, is all about: honesty, with a dash of humor, and it's calorie free.
One thing that stood out when reading the book is that Mr. Hills makes it clear upfront his isn't a miraculous weight loss story. He's never weighed 400 pounds, had a near death experience, or any of the other amazing and heartwarming stories we see in late night infomercials from people with whom we cannot relate. Instead, he's just a normal American human being, who, like the majority of Americans, has been battling the bulge and the "trampoline" weight loss and gain, and he found himself loosing the war.
Pros: Humorous, realistic, practical... this book will make you laugh, might even motivate you to lose weight, and even if it doesn't, provides enough entertainment value to make it worth the read.
Con: The book is a bit pricey.
Overall, I recommend the book for its entertainment value alone, but if you pick up some useful information along the way, all the better!
Charlie Hills Knows A Little More About Diet Success Than He Lets On June 30, 2008
Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Man (Spartanburg, SC)
When you've been on diet after diet after diet in your life, you become somewhat of an expert on the subject. And they always say to write what you know and that's exactly what Charlie Hills did with this humorously-titled book. Struggling to lose weight and then gaining it all back got frustrating and Charlie finally figured out that he needed to find what worked best for him (which turns out to be a healthy low-carb diet, by the way!). He hopes by sharing about his ups and downs over the years that other people can finally find that plan that will give them the final answer to this lifelong problem. And he's kinda funny talking about it, too. :D
A humorous look at the diet book fad June 14, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
So many diet books, so many failed diets - sometimes you just can't take the nonsense anymore. "Why Your Last Diet Failed You: And How This Book Won't Help on Your Next One" is a humorous look at the diet book fad, following the author's own journeys through the ups and downs of the problems of his own diet, losing more of his mind than he did pounds. Also examining the American culture's fascination with being thin and shedding the pounds, it's a laugh riot from front cover to back. "Why Your Last Diet Failed You: And How This Book Won't Help on Your Next One" is highly recommended to community library humor collections with a nod to health collections as well.
A successfully sardonic look at diets and dieters May 6, 2008
Rachel Boehm
Why Your Last Diet Failed You And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One
By Charlie Hills
(Lockshire Press, 2007)
Pages: 210
ISBN: 978-0-9749732-6-5
Price: $16.96, paperback
Books dedicated to dieting abound. How to diet, how not to diet, instructions for specific diets...the public's demand for guidance seems to grow exponentially on a daily basis. Its rise propelled by the increasing number of diets and dieters. This trend is precisely what Charlie Hills's book, Why Your Last Diet Failed You And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One, seeks to address.
While Hills's book may share a shelf with other diet books, it shares little else. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing. Hills's book does not try to capitalize on readers's potential insecurities. It does not try to promote any one diet or exercise plan. Nor does it try to sell: equipment, shakes, pills, or special foods. What it does do is speak frankly and honestly; from one dieter to another.
Charlie Hills is not a doctor or a dietician. He is a dieter. He has in fact tried many diets; a good portion of which are discussed in this book. By adopting the voice of a witty commentator, Hills shares the failures, successes, and revelations that came with his 192 months of diet-hopping. Neither his failures nor his successes are new. Many a dieter has fallen victim to the yo-yo effect, and the curse of the "dietlet". But that is what makes his book so appealing. He has been there. He is one of the dieters he is writing to. He's "one of us," his target audience can chant. What are new, or at least rare, are his revelations. And the way in which they are presented.
Hills's book has two purposes. To explain why diets fail, and why diet books do not help. (Hence the title). What Hills learned over the course of his dieting is that diets are not all-powerful. That any success a person has while on a diet is not because of the diet itself. It is because of the person. It is the dieter, not the diet, that makes the changes happen. Or not happen. To back this up he breaks down the most popular diets; including Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, South Beach, and Body for Life. He does not harp on any of these diet plans. In fact, he recommends them all. Because, as he rightly points out, every person is different, thus every diet can aide at least one person. Choosing a diet is a personality match. There is no right way or one way to approach weight loss. Despite the many tag-lines that claim otherwise.
Hills also tackles these tag-lines and plethora of claims. The mixed-messages they send that dupe the common dieter into repeatedly trying and failing. While all the while praying for the magic pill or plan to come their way. These mixed-messages, Hills argues, cause dieters to believe that the diet should do all the work for them. That if the dieter fails, it is the diet's fault. And if the dieter succeeds, it is the diet's victory. By discussing the popular diets of today, Hills points out how they, and all diet plans, are essentially the same. The bottom line being that every weight-loss plan tells its followers to eat less and exercise more. Everything else is a marketing technique.
Having tackled diets, Hills can more easily make his case against diet books. He does admit that such books can provide helpful tips and suggestions. But he argues that like their diet counter-parts, these books are all relatively the same. And all typically serve only a short-term purpose. They lay out guidelines and instructions and provide motivation. But basically state the same old fine print: eat less, exercise more.
Hills uses a fine tuned balance of personal experiences, observations, analysis, facts, and figures to successfully argue his two points. His honest, witty, and at times sardonic, voice speaks to his audience. Not at them, or down to them. He approaches his readers on their level. Because, as I said, he is one of them. He seeks only to share with others like himself the lessons he has learned while bouncing from one weight-loss attempt to the next. Why Your Last Diet Failed You And How This Book Won't Help You on Your Next One, is a fun and quick read for novice and professional dieters alike. It will help its readers take dieting and themselves a little less seriously. And manages to teach a few things in the process.
Reviewed by: Rachel Boehm
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