ridiculousy vague, referring to our creator... his methods for getting rid of addictions such as smoking is brilliant. this, to me, is a means to make more money out of something that is not in his expertise.

This is intended as a detailed and balanced review. It's a long one because this is such a curious information-laden book that does have some useful reminders and guidelines, while mixing in some dubious claims, vague language, and a methodology that somewhat crumbles when you think about it for more than a minute. So let's go.

Allen Carr claims his method isn't a diet and that achieving your ideal weight is actually really easy. It all sounds too good to be true, and whenever that happens, closer inspection is needed. Here's a conversation I had with him in my mind while going through his book, Lose Weight Now.

Allen Carr: "Rejoice that you are now finally free to eat as much of your favourite foods as you want, whenever you want, as often as you want, and be the exact weight you want to be without dieting, special exercise, using will power, or feeling deprived." (quote from the book)

Me: Whoa. My favourite foods?!

Allen Carr: Your favourite foods are fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Me: But you said...

Allen Carr: I know what I said.

Me: Okay, but I can still eat those things whenever I want and as much of them as I want?!

Allen Carr: Only eat when you're hungry and stop when you're not.

Me: But that's not really what you said.

Allen Carr: Shh. Have a banana.

All kidding aside, this book is a mish-mash of dishonest promises, good information, and idealized guidelines all wrapped in the guise of NOT BEING A DIET, while at the same time trying to change what you eat completely - with mostly good intent! And even some body positivity! That is until the end when you listen to the hypnotherapy exercise and are made to look at other people as disgusting.

But I'll get to that later.

I listened to Carr's audio book twice and took notes the second time because I wanted to be fair to him and his arguments. I also held off on writing this review because I WANTED to try his method to see if it delivered results. I'll tell you how that went at the very end as well.

According to Carr, the problem with undesired weight gain isn't eating, but overeating and eating the wrong foods. He rails on the junk food industry for over-salting their foods and lacing them with addictive ingredients that make it impossible NOT to overeat. Combine that with a corporate ad industry whose concern isn't your health, but their profits, and you've got a recipe for disaster. This information isn't new, but it's always good to be reminded that processed food = bad.

This is where Carr puts his own verbiage on things and talks about us being brainwashed by Big Food. He claims his book and method will UNDO this brainwashing and get us back to eating the things and the way we were meant to eat: unprocessed and only when needed. Like animals in the wild (nevermind that humans live in vastly different conditions and have vastly different challenges than wild animals, but we'll ignore that for now.)

And remember, this is NOT a diet. And you're NOT giving up anything. Right?

"Quitting altogether requires no will power at all provided you don't feel you're making a sacrifice...all you have to do is reverse the brainwashing that has led you to believe that overeating is pleasurable. If you try to cut down, you perpetuate the illusion that you're being deprived, and you become miserable and irritable. Junk food becomes more and more precious, and you become convinced that the only way to feel better is to stuff your face. Eventually, you reach breaking point. You tell yourself that you deserve a reward, and go on a binge undoing all the hard work you put in. It's the same story with every diet. Diets don't work."

I'm mostly with him so far. Diets are awful. Processed food is awful. Both make you feel awful.

So now what? What's the difference between his "method" and a "diet"? Before we get that answered, Carr goes into evolutionary biology and makes the claim that humans' teeth are meant for herbivorous eating. We have flat teeth like herbivores, not sharp teeth like carnivores. So we should be eating fruits, vegetables, and grains, not tearing into meat.

This links to the vague notion of what Carr calls "Nature's Guide," which rolls into the idea that we KNOW which foods are good for us instinctively by the way they look, taste, and smell, and how our bodies react to them. This leads to meat and dairy being bad for us, though Carr does allow for us to have a "junk margin" that still permits these foods to an extent. He is quick to point out that he is NOT telling people to become vegetarians or vegans...just that we should fill up most of our meals with fruits, veggies, and grains.

It's decent advice, and he also says "learn which foods suit you," without ever really telling you how you're supposed to do that outside of saying you have a "natural sensor" to tell you which foods are your favourites. To repeat this point as much as Carr repeats himself in the book:

"The foods that are best for you taste and smell good. Poisons taste and smell awful."

Okay, but what about pastries? Or fresh bread? Or hamburgers? For many people, these all taste and smell great.

"Trust your senses and unlock the knowledge you have inside your body."

Sigh. This is the problem when you use vague terminology like "Nature's Guide" and then actually try to explain it. It becomes a jargon word like "soul," "spirit," or "border security" that has a feeling more than a meaning.

Near the end of the book, he flips the script a bit on the rhetoric of "eating what you want" by reminding us that there is no need to exercise "as long as you eat what you're supposed to," which means "the foods intended for you by nature." So...not eating what you want, but by what "your nature" wants. And my body wants fresh chocolate chip banana bread, damn it.

In the end, Carr wants you on a vegan diet that is high in water content, with your only drink being a glass of water. But remember, it's not a diet. And don't listen to ANYONE, no matter how much of an expert they claim to be, if they go AGAINST Nature's Guide.

This book lures you in with a false promise. Perhaps the word "simple" would have been better than "easy," because Carr really is advocating for a simpler approach to eating. Just not an easier one.

The problem is that he puts so much on humans needing to eat "like wild animals" while completely dismissing the differences between them. Wild animals don't have to worry about paying for housing. They don't have to worry about public transportation. They aren't surrounded by advertisers and grocery aisles stocked with every type of food imaginable. And no matter what Carr may say, there ARE overweight wild animals. Just Google "fat squirrel!"

Regarding the last point, Carr's entire journey with this book started with him noticing a squirrel in his backyard and watching is scurry away quickly. He then got to thinking how HE had never seen an overweight animal in the wild, which led him down the evolutionary path and linking animals to humans. Hey, anecdotal evidence is still evidence, right? This deifying, and I would argue not really understanding, the natural is what his entire book and method is based on. It's all about "using your sensor" and "Nature's Guide," while not giving any lip service to how hard it actually is to do any of this or acknowledging the problems with it (bread is delicious and smells great, and I won't hear any slander against it.)

Carr lives in a world of generalities, while still making some decent points along the way. It's just that there are enough specious claims made that put the rest of his claims into doubt.

That said, I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee's approach to knowledge acquisition when reading books like these: absorb what is useful, reject what is not.

So I tried to follow the method. My journey started on May 29th. It is now June 20th. So, not a full month, but enough time to give some feedback.

I loaded up on nothing but fruit for breakfast for about a week and a half. I stockpiled pre-washed baby spinach to eat with some cherry tomatoes and olive oil when I was feeling snacky. I tried to make sure most of my plate what full of colourful fruits and veggies and lowered my meat intake.

The first two weeks I dropped about 7 pounds. Nice!

And then, as with ALL DIETS, I found it hard to stay consistent. I started letting eggs back into my breakfast. I re-introduced bread into my life. And I allowed myself some late night sweet and salty treats even when I wasn't really hungry. I've gained back about 5 of the 7 lost pounds.

This shit is HARD. It's not easy. And it IS a diet. It's one that's supposed to be a permanent life change, but it's a diet nonetheless. I don't care how many times Carr calls it a "method" or how he talks about "undoing brainwashing," this is something you have to think about and be conscious of almost every second of every day. It basically amounts to this for common people:

-Eat when you're hungry
-Don't eat shit you know is bad for you
-bonus if you can do it: cut out eating animals and animal products

SO REVOLUTIONARY. Look, I'm sure this method has helped people. And if anything, it HAS helped me by having me think more carefully about which foods are easy to digest (water-rich non-processed foods,) which ones aren't (processed foods, meat, dairy,) and by reminding me to pay more attention to what my stomach is telling me. If I'm still hungry after polishing off a bag of potato chips, it's probably because my body hasn't received the nutrients it needs, and no amount of junk food is going to fill that hole (nevermind the emotional void caused by stress and anxiety, but that's another story.)

So, I'll keep going. I'll try to only eat when I'm hungry, to eat more fruits, vegetables, and grains, and to avoid the addictive junk that saps me of energy and makes my brain sluggish.

Finally, I wouldn't be able to write this review without mentioning the 30-minute hypnotherapy section. You can get this in CD form (haha) or just get the audio book from Audible or wherever else and have it included at the end. I've got some things to say about this...

1. The beginning totally relaxes you. I was in repose on my couch while listening to this through headphones, and it was like floating on a cloud. It was so good in fact, that I've since checked out other hypnotherapy tracks on YouTube to help with rest, relaxation, confidence, etc. Check them out.

2. There are two parts that had me cringing hard. One where you're imagining yourself looking into a mirror and the person talks about how "slim" you are, and how you keep admiring yourself because you are exactly the weight you want to be. It's thin idealization through and through, and it's gross. The other part that made me laugh was when the narrator is talking about you looking at other people eating things like chocolate and cookies, and you "feeling pity for them" because "you know they are just sugary junk."

But hypnotherapy isn't brainwashing, right? Noooo, this is a METHOD and it's EASY and you should just listen to NATURE.

Ugh. I think that's enough. I'd love to keep the conversation going on this book in the comments if you've read it or listened to it.

In the end, Lose Weight Now: The Easy Way is a mixed bag that offers some actionable advice and necessary reminders, while also being purposely vague in some of its claims, and dishonest in what it calls itself.

I'm going to try to glean the useful bits and further explore what I should and shouldn't be eating. I'm currently an omnivore, but I'm open to seeing if vegetarianism or veganism could be sustainable for me. If anything, this book has at least pushed me in that positive direction and has increased and/or recharged my awareness of myself, my relationship to food, and the food industry.

Check it out? *shrugs with arms out to the sides and a furrowed brow*

This book started out so well and then just went south fast. I didn't know this book was about being vegan and went in with an open mind. While it offers some good tips it is far from good altogether. There are a lot of nit picked information falsely presented. In the first chapters he says that according to different cultures we see different animals as food (some see cows as food others don't for example). Then later on he says we should eat with our heart and we are not predators to eat meat. While it is true nowadays most of us never have to kill an animal to eat meat, back in the days my grandparents killed chickens and pigs themselves for meat. It was a normal thing to do and everyone knew how to do it.
Another thing he says is that veggies and fruits should be eaten raw, that's how we used to eat it and all preparations are basically bad... back in the days in the winter you couldn't just go to the supermarket and buy fresh fruits and vegetables! You would stock potatoes which would last more and the rest you would pickle or make into jams. Also saying that there always was such a variety of fresh foods... umm I am not sure about others, but I am pretty sure we never had homegrown bananas or mangos in eastern Europe. To this day when I smell oranges or mandarines it reminds me of Christmas, because that was the time we would get them as "celebration".
Processed food is bad for sure and opting for natural ingredients in your daily intake is prefered, but this book was a waste of paper. You can find these informations anywhere. Also I get where he comes from with implyimg that my favorite food is veggies and fruits, nuts and seeds, but the presentation is deplorable. Also he says that fruits and veggies taste the best and you wouldn't salt a fruit because it is perfect. Sure a fruit is sweet, but I am pretty much salting all the veggies I eat even raw. Tomatoes without salt are horrible.
If you read his How to stop smoking book before and hoped for another incredible breakthrough book there are high chances you will be disappointed.

This is actually interesting in some ways but there have been many more food and obesity studies since this was written in 2013.

I listened on audiobook. And I have listened a few times.

The author acknowledges that losing weight is not the same as giving up smoking or alcohol (which he originally thought were the same). But.....he makes the whole thing seem simplistic. He says we need to eat fresh natural food only, no processed. And then we will feel wonderful and won't ever want to eat processed junk again. Well......it doesn't just happen like that. If it did, we would all be able to diet easily. He does not consider that any of this will be hard, which seems ridiculous to me.

He has a hypnotherapy bit, but it didn't do anything for me.

He reckons that by the end of the book our weight problems are all solved. We just switch to plant based foods and meals with no problems, no cravings, no hassles and we suddenly start losing weight and become slim. This is just ridiculous. It does not address any of the addictions at all.

He says we just need to open our minds, understand that the junk food people are brain washing us and then we will just switch to fruit and salads with no side effects at all.

Understanding and being able to break an addiction are two different things. There is no guidance or advice on how to get from one state to the other. He just keeps saying its simple. Well its not.