Weight Loss Journal

Many of you that watch The Biggest Loser are already familiar with the author of this book, Bob Harper. He's one of the trainers on the show and has already provided millions of dieters with inspiration and advice on getting fit and losing weight. Let's see how well his book stacks up against the competition and whether it's really worth the cover price.

From the start, we were hooked with this book. Harper starts off with dealing with the emotional issues that affect so many of us that are overweight. For the vast majority of dieters, unless these issues are addressed, diets are an exercise in futility. The first major benchmark that Harper passed was also his emphasis on changing your lifestyle, changing the way you eat and changing your future. This is the standard by which we judge all diet books, and unlike so many out there, Harper included all of these points in his book.

This is certainly not a fad diet, and if you're going in hoping to lose ten pounds a week, chances are you're going to be disappointed. What it is - is a healthy alternative that will help you lose a lot of weight and keep it off for the rest of your life. When you read the book with the right mindset, it becomes so much more useful than the legions of other books, fad diets and miracle plans. Sure, the results are going to take a tiny bit longer, but you're going to be able to enjoy them a lot longer.

The book contains twenty different sample menus that will provide you with more than enough variety to keep losing weight without getting bored. Harper did a great job picking the right balance of foods for each menu so that dieters don't feel deprived. There are some really great suggestions and for this alone, the book is well worth its cost. However, there is a downside and one that probably should have been thought out before the book went to press.
There are no recipes, which for those of us that are lucky to boil water, this is a definite drawback. You can't provide someone with a plan for the future and then fall short when it comes with the blueprints they're going to need. Thankfully, most of the recipes can be found online or in most cookbooks, so this wasn't enough for the book to get a black mark against it.

If you're looking for a solid diet plan that really works and has documented proof of working, this is certainly a book that you need to read. For anyone that wants to make that commitment of losing weight and keeping it off, this is certainly one of the best on the market.

It's easy to see why the contestants on The Biggest Loser get such fabulous results. When they're working with a trainer like this, they can't help but succeed. We highly recommend this book to anyone looking to lose weight or just get healthier.

With summer coming, many of us are focusing on how we're going to look at the beach or the pool. There is a lot of money to be made off of spring diet books and every year, we are besieged with the latest plans that will help us get that bikini body we've always wanted.  (Editor's Note: review written by Weight Ladder's wife ) The main problem with many of these titles is that they don't focus on healthy weight loss and that weight does tend to creep back on once you stop the diet. This book promises results in just two weeks, and that set off our radar systems right away. While you can lose a lot of weight in just two weeks, the majority of it is going to be water weight and this can give a false sense of hope to dieters and work to actually derail them from the diet when that water weight comes back.

While there are some very good tips in the book, such as eating the right kind of fats and focusing on foods that contain the nutrition you need to get healthy, the one major failing is that it requires a huge commitment for exercise. For many dieters that are just getting started the two hour daily minimum commitment is going to be just to hard to reach. This can lead to feeling like a failure and instead of staying on track towards getting healthy and losing weight, many people may just give up.

More than 75 recipes are offered and most are delicious and well balanced. The exercise plan is actually quite reasonable, but the time commitment required is a major drawback. The exercises in and of themselves are not terribly difficult, but it's the sheer amount that may turn a lot of people off of the program. Some people just cannot do that level of activity, especially if they are just starting out.

Our main problem with this diet is the promise that you'll be ready in two weeks. It takes a lot longer than that to lose weight in a healthy fashion and unless you're only wanting to lose 5 to 10 pounds, this diet will be pretty discouraging. That and the fact that the two hour exercise requirement is really kind of glossed over, the whole book fell short of what it could have been.

Although it contains healthy recipes and some great advice on lifestyle changes, we just cannot recommend this book as a healthy way to lose weight. If you're in it for the long term and you have an extra two hours a day, this may be the perfect diet for you. But you'll need to go in with the right expectations and realize that Rome wasn't built in a day and if you want to look good in your bikini, it may take a little longer than 2 weeks. That said, there is some useful information and if you go in with the right mindset, this diet may actually work for you.