Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking, helped me auit smoking after almost 10 years. It was an amazing book, and I expected the same of this one.

I like that Allen makes simple and truthful statements about eating fresh and healthy, and being a more natural version of yourself. His views aren't new, but he made me rethink my eating habits.

However, he makes statements that are not scientifically supported and sometimes goes against nutritionist advice. It's not a groundbreaking book, it's just his opinion.

The best advice in the book, follow Nature's Guide and disregard any advice that contradicts it!

This book is a steaming pile of shit.

This is the literal winner of "Worst book I have ever read."

Honestly, this book is full of falsehoods and lies. Mr. Carr has not only confused his opinions with fact about the biological processes of digestion, he is downright wrong on an embarrassing level. At one point he claims that you cannot eat protein and carbohydrates at the same time because your body uses an alkaline solution to dissolve one and an acidic solution to dissolve the other. A simple Google search and two spare brain cells to rub together prove that isn't true. Also, he fails to notice that vegetables are mostly carbohydrates.

Please, do yourself a favor and read ANY OTHER piece of writing on nutrition or diet. Literally anything else.

I am appalled at the publishing company for producing this dried cum covered stream of nonsense spewing from Allen Carr's keyboard. It is an embarrassment.

Just finished it and begun to put it in practice.
I have to say that, while reading it, it made couple of interesting points...I am curious to see if it'll actually work in the end but as Carr himself wrote, don't be impatient for results!

After stopping smoking very easily with his most famous book, this was always going to be a trickier curve for Allen Carr to negotiate. After all, we don't need to smoke but we certainly do need to eat. Still, the premise remains the same and very effective. It consists of recognising rubbish when you see it and training your brain to reject it. I don't have a weight problem by any stretch of the imagination but would sometimes find it difficult to stop eating if confronted with something I really fancied at that moment, always continuing after I was already full. That's what I wanted to stop. This book has enabled me to do it; I now feel better and I'm a lot happier for it. I'd have given the book five stars had honey not got such bad treatment…

**

Ok, first I need to say that I read Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking, and I rated it five stars. Is was amazing, and IT WORKED. I read it in 2007, and it is now 2019. I haven't smoked since I read that book, and I KNOW I never will.

Now, that had given me great hopes for this book.

Anyone reading this book is going to have to keep an open mind and keep reading regardless of some of the jarring content.

I found the regular reference to 'our creator' distracting, and lots of dubious comparisons were made between humans and machines, or humans and wild animals, etc. Some comparisons were valid, but others were shortsighted and disappointing; however, there was some really good stuff aswell. I just think that a lot of it could have been edited out to make the book speak to me better.

Despite claiming that we can lose weight while eating whatever we want, that's not really the case. I feel a little hoodwinked in that respect. The principal ideas in this book are to eat only when we are hungry - good so far - but also to eat primarily plant-based foods that are in their natural form, avoiding meat, dairy and processed/cooked foods. Carr uses his 'JUNK MARGIN' (an allowance for our bodies to tolerate a certain amount of abuse) to retain his claim that we can eat anything we want, but all the while, we are told that certain foods are bad for us; therefore we are back to having to restrict our diet, thus creating feelings of deprivation and guilt. Lots of what Carr says about nutrition is correct, but there is also error in some of it. I don't think he covers the topic of nutrition with a rigorous physioligically accurate approach that I would expect in a book designed to aid weight control.

There was a lot of repetition, which I don't mind if it's doing good (The stopping smoking book has the same repitition, but it worked as a kind of hypnosis or positive brainwashing, reinforcing the ideas). In this book, I felt that I was always waiting for some great moment when I would feel sure about it working for me, but I got to the end and was uncertain whether it would change my behaviour. I didn't need to wait with the stop smoking book; I knew straight away that I wouldn't smoke, and I was instantly a non-smoker from the moment I closed the book.

It's been a couple of weeks since I read the EASYWEIGH book - I wanted to see how I behaved before writing a review - and I am still continuing bad habits that I wanted to escape from (despite already being vegetarian) so it hasn't had the same impact on me as the stopping smoking book did. How could it? Stopping smoking is not the same as controlling eating habits.

I am going to go through the book again and highlight only the parts that I find relevant. Maybe through doing this, I will be less distracted by the stuff I didn't connect with.

I feel like I need a list of bullet points of the most important ideas/steps, because they got lost in the padding out of the book. The conclusion at the end summarised the plan, but it seemed too simple to me, and some of the important steps were missed out, for example, eating fruit for breakfast. That was one of the things that stuck in my mind and made sense from this book, and it wasn't in the conclusion. I think the book needed a more thorough recap/summary at the end.

This book could potentially work, but I need to go through it and extract the best bits, condense it down to maybe just 5 pages of strategy and motivation. I will revisit this review once I've done that...



REVISITED

I read the book again, highlighting with a pen the parts that I felt were meaningful to me. I then read the book a third time, only reading my highlighted lines. It took me around five minutes to read my condensed version, and I have to say that I now feel much better about the book. I just wish I hadn't had to read it three times in order to get my head around it.

I do think that the method can work, but I will need to keep revisiting the book on a regular basis in order to keep at it. It's just not working instantly for me like the stopping smoking book did, and I think that's because there are so many elements to think about and be disciplined around.

I'll give it a go

I think I understand the reasons to eat this kind of food I particularly love vegetables
I've just googled some examples of grains,so overall it doesn't look too bad
What would have really pleased me is either some recipes or examples of what Allen ate whilst losing his weight,just to give some ideas
I love curries,presumably I can have,say a butternut squash and spinach curry or a vegetable chilli....minus kidney beans,although I suppose they could be in my junk margin
I'd better have another read of it before I start on Sunday

Some good common sense advice in this book but also a lot of dated ideas and fairly dangerous claims and a fair bit of unnecessary pushing of his religious beliefs. Feels more like the rant of an old man than anything else.

This was very good motivation to embark on a healthier eating lifestyle without leaving me feeling deprived as diets do. Brainwashing? Maybe.... effective - so far so good!

Short assessment: This book started off with good intentions but failed to deliver because the conclusion was just one more diet. If you want to lose weight without dieting but instead through a lifestyle change, read n  Intuitive Eatingn.

Long assessment: Allen Carr's revolutionary book n  The Easy Way To Stop Smokingn has helped millions of people break free of their addiction. He's done really great work, and I applaud him for the lasting change he's affected. However, he took the principles of that book and attempted to apply them to dieting. That was a great first step, but unfortunately, he both goes too far and not far enough.

Breaking through brainwashing is a key point in his stop smoking book, and in this one, he also sets the reader down the path to do just that. Among other things, he outlines how added sugar and salt keep those of us here in the Western world addicted to processed food.

I've had personal experience prior to reading this book with breaking free of pre-packaged and sugary foods because I had a food intolerance that didn't allow me to eat more than a few grams of sugar in one meal or I would suffer painful consequences (much like gluten or lactose intolerance). I'm now well-versed in "ingredient-list-ese" and just how awful those ingredients are. If you've never really--really--let what's in the ingredient list sink into your brain, it's a pretty mind-boggling experience to go through. It's even tougher to change your entire lifestyle to cut out foods that add no nutritional value to your diet. It's something you have to spend days or weeks wrapping your head around, and this book (like the stop smoking book) brings that information to your attention and allows you, if you want, to focus on the truth behind the crap the food industry is shoveling down our throats.

I would give this book four stars if that's where he ended it.

However, he goes off the rails in two ways:

1. I found a factually inaccurate statement in the book about the metabolism and chemical properties of sugar, which calls into question everything else he's presented as fact.

2. He takes his recommendations too far and tells the reader that if you're going to revise your eating habits, you're going to have to change your diet to vegan.

The first error lowers the impact of his statements about everything, and the second ensures that the readers stays in the diet trap. (And I'm not so sure about the arguments he presents for his particular diet, either.)

1. Factually Inaccurate Statement

Here is the factually inaccurate statement, quoted from the book:

The natural sugar in unprocessed foods such as fruit is easily digest and like all other nutrients, travels through the body and feeds it. In its natural form, it's the primary fuel for your mind. When you eat fruit, the natural sugar, fructose, enters your body, combined with fibre and water. These act together to create the glucose necessary for your brain to function.

Monosaccharides, or the simplest unit of sugar, come in different chemical configurations, but each one has its own unique properties. Glucose is a monosaccharide and fructose is a monosaccharide. They (and other monosaccharides) combine to form di- and polysaccharides. Saying that fructose combines with stuff to create glucose is like saying that a neutron combines with stuff to create a proton, or flour combines with stuff to create eggs. That's just not how it works, period.

They do, however, exist in different amounts in different fruits, which is, I suppose, how he got confused. Apples have a large amount of fructose and a small amount of glucose, whereas blueberries have a large amount of glucose and a smaller amount of fructose. Glucose and fructose chemically bonded together create the disaccharide sucrose, which is the chemical name for white sugar. They also have different names: Dextrose and corn syrup are both names for glucose; whereas high fructose corn syrup is primarily fructose.

I could continue, but I won't, since this is supposed to be a book review. Suffice it to say that this factually inaccurate statement calls into question the rest of his assertions. He doesn't include footnotes or cite sources. So every time he says, "Your body works this way," I got more and more dubious. Sure, some of it I knew to be true, but a lot of it, I couldn't trust.

Still, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As I said at the beginning, he is indeed correct about the ridiculous amount of nutrition-free ingredients in processed and packaged food, and it is best to completely avoid them.

2. Recommendation for a New Diet

The book perpetuates the negativity around eating that you truly need to break free of if you're going to lose weight and be happy without dieting. (Sorry to toot its horn some more, but one of the key principles of Intuitive Eating is to remove the morality around choice and frequency of eating. After all, eating is not a religion. Why is some food "bad" and some food "good"?)

The author does seem to have followed the principles of Intuitive Eating to find his own happy place, which is great for him. But rather than guiding you to your own conclusions and happy place, he presents his own diet as "this is the way it should be." He does say "it's ok" to eat some of the "bad" stuff because we have a "junk margin." But, I mean, if you want to eat stuff in "the junk margin..." Well, "junk" is a pretty clear indication of what the author thinks of your eating habits, and another assignation of morality.

Conclusion

If I hadn't discovered Intuitive Eating through discussing this book with someone, I probably would have been able to noodle my way through the principles in this book to a happier lifestyle. But when I finished this one, I was left with an empty, unsatisfied feeling, as though he'd left out a significant principle or two. I may have come up with them myself, but why do that when the heavy lifting has already been done for me elsewhere?

The bottom line is that you have to remove the guilt around eating and tune into your body's cues. You're the only one who knows what your diet is. We're all different, with different needs--sometimes quite different, even from day-to-day--and no one can tell you what you should eat. Only you can figure it out--albeit with a lot of work and possibly the help of a counselor and/or dietition, if you're really stuck and unsure where to turn.

HOW does this man do it? His quit smoking method worked so effectively for me (over three years now and not even a tiny desire to go back) that I thought I'd try this book for weight loss. Despite being an active, (mostly) healthy and intelligent person, I wondered why I could never reach my desired weight and that my attempts always failed eventually. I'm smart enough to figure out what to eat and what not to eat...why do I keep failing? I was hoping that Mr. Carr's no-nonsense approach would help me figure it out. It did!!

I'm surprised at all of the bad reviews on here. Yes, it's a simplistic approach but I believe that's what's needed. I was so completely brainwashed by the junk food industry that I couldn't understand why it had such a hold on me. Allen Carr appeals to my intellect and it makes me feel duped and want to fight against it. Earlier I left a glowing review of the book "Food Addicts" because it really helped me understand the addictive power of processed food and sugar but it didn't address the psychological component. So ultimately the poor diet crept back in. Therein lies the magic of this book: the discussion about the brainwashing. Like the smoking addiction, Mr. Carr strips away the bullshit and lays it out for you and really makes you wonder - why in the hell am I putting this in my body? By taking away the sense of deprivation the veil has been lifted and I believe it will be hard to go back...I'd feel like a fool. Why in the world would I choose a processed, sugar-coated formed piece of styrofoam for breakfast instead of a piece of fruit? I can't see myself doing it anymore because I consider myself too smart to be fooled again. I'm nobody's fool, damn it!! Ok well I used to be but no more. :)

One other thing: I had already reached the same conclusions about meat and dairy on my own so not eating these things will not be an issue for me. Where I think it will help is in my craving for baked goods and fried foods such as french fries and chips.

So...it remains to be seen how effective this will be. I have high hopes. It's January 2017 and I'm currently 200 lbs. I'll try to remember to post back at the end of the year and update on my weight loss. Thank you to Mr. Carr (RIP) for helping me make sense of it all!! This book is, by far, the BEST $5 I have ever spent.

mmm

This book is disappointing. It keeps telling you that with his method you can eat as much as you want and whatever you want. But then goes on again and again on how we have been brainwashed about our favourite food. He basically says that the reason we love chocolate is because of the brainwashing of companies and their marketing tricks! Not to mention everything that he says about Nature’s Guide on what the body should eat and what it should not sounds wrong to me. As far as I know, evolution explains that our brains intrinsically love to consume sugar and carbs; Nature’s Guide loves for us to have extra fat stored in our bodies because that would increase the chance of survival when there is a lack of food, which has been the case for thousands of years. Yet, the guy suggests Nature’s Guide will lead you to regard steamed broccoli as your favourite food!
I read until chapter 10 (around 30% of the book) and at the end of each chapter, he reassures the audience that his method can do magic, but he doesn't actually talk directly about the method in these chapters! So I stopped reading the book. If 10 chapters were not enough for you to explain your method, then you probably don't have a realistic method at all, sir!