This is, I think, an exceptionally terrible book. I did consider giving it two stars, because if you stick to the (eleven!) instructions and ignore everything else in the book, you probably will lose weight. But that’s because the instructions in themselves aren’t too bad, including the core one ‘eat only when you’re hungry’.

Long ago I read and enjoyed Paul McKenna’s “I Can Make You Thin”, with a useful meditative audio track, and four instructions - ‘eat only when you’re hungry, eat what you like, eat slowly, stop when you start to become full’. And a friend of mine said ‘yeah but seriously, that’s obvious. The problem is that a thousand things about our lives don’t allow us to do that’.

This book will give you only modest help with dealing with that, with tips like ‘eat fruit for breakfast’ and ‘tell your friends to stop overserving’, and it’s certainly true that there are some nuggets of useful information here. But they’re interspersed with great ranging torrents of garbage; some absolute nonsense, some woo-woo, some folksy wisdom, some terrible analogies. Just utter rubbish. I am not a nutritional scientist and neither is Carr - but some of the other reviewers have gone into some detail about why so much of this book is junk.

He deviates from his main theme for a chapter to give us his thoughts on religion too, which are as muddled as the rest of the book; I’m mentioning this in case cod philosophy is triggering for you.

It’s amazing that Carr rails against junk food (by which he means any food that isn’t raw fruits, vegetables and nuts) but has delivered a perfect concoction of junk reading. It’s a very easy read; I scarfed it down in one sitting. But I think a few difficult and thought-provoking pages of Stoic philosophy would have been better food for my brain.

I see that other reviewers have recommended ‘Intuitive Eating’ and I might go there next. In the meantime, this is one of those books to be thrown with great force, as they say.

Автор книги, как не удивительно, убеждает нас, что проблемы связанные с весом и здоровьем человека можно избежать не изнурительными диетами, а только постигнув саму суть проблемы и изменить подход к ней. Аллен Карр знакомит нас с новой, более совершенной и естественной для человека культурой питания.

Easy read, and I can see how it would work very effectively. The trick is going to be to read it more than once, and read it slowly.

Many of the actual diet information seems to come from "Fit for Life" but the secret is in how he describes food and why you want to make different choices. I could feel my mind changing as I read the book. Fascinating, really.

Quick easy read, good information.

A good easy and motivating read.

I loved the easy way to quit smoking and it worked a treat for me. I found this book similar in readability, however not as profoundly effective. I will read it again as I do believe Allan Carrs books do a wonderful job of connecting with our unconscious mind and shifting things around.

I was curious about this method but... it's just plain stupid brainwashing. Calling fruit your favourite food doesn't automatically make it so, nor does it guarantee that it's good for your health and guts. I agree that meat and dairy consumption should be limited but there were no serious argument in this book. Furthermore, the religious undertone was very off-putting ("Nature created us so...", "Nature created us the best way possible", etc) and the constant preaching really annoying (every sentence is repeated at least five times).

Excelllllllent!

If you're tired of diets and kind of desperate - it is worth a try, it might work. You need to be open-minded and not question too much and just try it for yourself. It's quite an old book and as such it's full of quite unscietific "revelations" so the moment you start questioning and digging, you miss the point. It's more in the realms of "instinctual, slightly common sense guess" approach than science. However, many of Carr's principles are actually part of some modern weight loss programs and approaches and they do make sense.
The problem I have with this book is Carr promises for his method to be "easy", without any need for strong will. As though you read it, you follow his advice and there you are - it will all fall into place and you start losing weight happily. Well, it didn't work that way for me. I do follow some of the principles as they are good and I am aware of others - but I did not change my ways and it doesn't look like I will any time soon.
So no, it is not that easy.

2.5 stars
As a newbie MD You can never make me a vegetarian:))) He made some valid points but most of it is something a beauty influencer would tell you in their blog or ig!
Oh and half of the book was just advertisements of his other books and what was to come in the final chapters...

I keep revisiting this book. Just like I stopped smoking the Easy Way, I am sure this is the right way for my health and well-being.

The book is too watery, it seems that the author intentionally tried to write more pages. I didn't like his contemplations about God and evolution. At first he supports The Big Bang theory and Darwinism, but then he argues that so sophisticated organism like a human being couldn't have been created by a simple chance (it's mathematically impossible (what???). So author's belief in God can be perceived throughout the book.
Though, I really like the ideas described in the book, they seem logical and well-grounded. I hope these ideas will help me eat properly.

15 jaar geleden ben ik met zijn boek moeiteloos gestopt met roken. Dus toen ik dit boek vond in de weggeef boekenkast dacht ik, waarom niet. Maar zijn aanpak om te stoppen met eten is toch niet je dat. Hij sleurt er ten eerste al god bij. En dan komt het erop neer dat je moet eten als een gorilla, alsof dat zo'n lichtgewichten zijn.

The most pointless book I have ever read on this subject. This could have been a 5 pages essay, not a book. It says nothing new. It says principles that everyone knows and everybody writes about. But calling brainwashing the habit of drinking coffe, wine, sodas, eating meat, dairy, calling them junk food.... It encourages diminishing as much as you can the meat because we are not meant to eat meat or dairy, etc etc. and recommends eating fruit on an empty stomach or worse, drinking fruit juice. I also read some other nutrition books that don't recommend that at all. In this domain I guess you have to you choose to believe one version or another, because some say a thing, some say another thing. I just waisted a few hours on this. Choose to read some relevant nutrition books, this one is redundant.