Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A random question I found on the internet asked why there were so many gurus in the nutritional field. I thought the very first answer summed it up nicely. The individual answered because everybody eats, ignorance is rampant, and fear sells. This winning combination has always proven to be a very effective technique on the masses. Heck, it has worked on me and I thought I knew better. I certainly didn’t mean to write this novel but I found myself writing thoughts here and there as they occurred to me about the information contained in this book and since I feel strongly about people being informed, I hope it will be helpful to at least some of the people considering purchasing this book. It’s easy to become caught up in what is known at the bandwagon effect without ever having thoughtfully consider the information that is being disseminated. Remember how you viewed your first love through those stars in your eye and their flaws were nonexistent? The bandwagon effect causes a similar reaction. The readers would do well to remember that there is a reason long term compliance is difficult and many of us gain our weight back. Past demonizing of groups of food has never had any noticeable effect on this. Patrick Luiciani says it well: “Anyone following the scientific literature quickly finds themselves neck deep in conflicting studies. The problem is science can’t definitively determine any cause and effect between sugar and disease, only a correlation, leaving the door wide open for junk science to flourish while fast-buck authors peddle scare theories to pick consumers’ pockets. The media promotes these authors with endless headlines such as “Sugar Overload” (Maclean’s) and “How Toxic is Sugar?” (CBC)”. Anthony Coplo states: “The sad result is that many, if not most, people are incapable of truly independent thought. Instead of researching things for themselves, they rely on others for information, and when that information is conflicting they want someone with the requisite persuasiveness and charisma to come along and convince them, in the process magically relieving them of their cognitive dissonance. In other words, they want someone else to do their thinking and to make their mind up for them. Never mind that persuasiveness has no direct correlation to truthfulness; in fact, these traits are often negatively correlated to each other (see the advertising industry, successful politicians and popular diet gurus for excellent examples of this phenomenon).” I think when the overall message in our society is that being fat is a personal failing of the individual, it is not surprising to see uncritical acceptance of anything that may relieve us of this personal failing. We simply want to know what is wrong with us that we can’t seem to stick to these diets!! I do understand this which is why I’m going to be more critical of the information in this book than your average overweight individual. She’s peddling weak science, drawing conclusions from data that aren’t even there and banking on the fact (rightly so!) that most don’t care in their desperate attempt to lose weight. This is the main reason this book gets a one star review. Similar to almost every group out there that has THE answer such as paleo, low carb, high carb, vegan, low fat, etc. SPT has also gained her fair share of rabid devotees, some who unsurprisingly go down the 1 and 2 star reviews as self- appointed attorneys for the defense. Here’s a tip. Weight loss, especially in the initial stages, is not evidence of the validity of a claim. Many, many weight loss programs have graduates that have been successful and have never gained their weight back. I have a couple of friends who lost over 100 lbs., one 15 years ago and another 30 years ago. One used a religious weight loss program and another weight watchers. No, we don’t have to just uncritically accept any nutritional information that comes from a person because they have a Phd in cognitive science. Plenty of MDs out there I would absolutely put under the title of quack. Please note, I’m not calling SPT a quack but I am questioning much of what she portrays or implies as truths. When I came across SPT, I really hadn’t paid too much attention to the anti-sugar movement. As someone who has lost the weight many times but along with that has failed to keep it off, I was interested in what she might have to add that would be of value. For $1.99, I figured it would be worth a read. I have no idea why I purchased the 14-day challenge. Perhaps, I was in a sugar stupor and my mind was foggy. I think it was just plain curiosity. If anything, it reiterated to me how powerful marketing can be. America seems to have a penchant for demonizing food. Remember the low-fat craze of the 80's and 90's and the explosion of fat free products? Yeah, did nothing for our waistlines but boy did it make a lot of money for a lot of people. The demonizing never seems to stop. Whether it is coffee, eggs, butter, unsaturated fat, salt, soy, or dairy, there always seem to something in the news that is being crucified. Despite that much of this demonizing has been debunked or unsubstantiated, it never seems to stop the nonsense that continues to get spewed on the internet backed by nothing more than anecdotal evidence and the need to believe we are right. If we operate on the fact that a belief is true, we will conveniently overlook anything else that doesn’t mesh with our worldview. In all fairness, we all do this to some degree, some more than others. Susan’s background is colorful to say the least. She starts off her book with stories of her drug addiction beginning at the young age of 14 taking mushrooms and graduating to crack cocaine, crystal meth, ecstasy alcohol, sex, and acid! She even implies if I understood her correctly, that she sold herself for drugs. Nowhere does she attribute any of these destructive behaviors to possible psychosocial issues that obviously needed addressing but uses the term “addictable brain”, a term I might add that doesn’t even exist. There’s a good reason I keep seeing a red squiggly line under the word addictable. This appears to be a made-up word. Assuming Susan means addictive personality, there is no science to back that up either. My research indicates there are no universal character traits that are common to ALL addicted people. It occurred to me almost immediately when reading her story that Susan never seems to stop and ask herself WHY she felt the need to engage in such destructive behaviors. Could it simply be there were other things going on at that time in her life? Her story ends when she wakes up in some seedy hotel and has this big revelation about her life going down the drain but also manages to keep a date that night (what??) who takes her for a romantic night out to a 12- step program. In between all of this, she acquires her advanced degrees. There is even a story of how she stuffs herself with marshmallows which she keeps on hand in her oversize coat. A bit odd to me to say the least. Yet another story has her going from a size 4 to a 24 in only 3 months after having eaten some sweets in a café. I can’t say that I find her stories very plausible for many reasons or they seem exaggerated to some degree in her effort to make her points. It really bothers me that she seems to believe that an addictive personality is the sole reason for her behaviors and then somehow draws the reader into believing that this might be the case with sugar and flour too. It sounds more to me that she could have benefited from a very good therapist. On to the science: To get her point across, she engages in the usual alarmism. She borrows Dr. Lustig’s definition of sugar (another alarmist) defining it as a chronic dose-dependent hepatotoxin which exerts its efforts continuously over a long period of time causing systemic widespread damage. Whew! and I just thought it was some sweet substance obtained mainly from the juice of the sugarcane and the sugar beet used to flavor foods. Of course, my boring definition won’t sell many books either. Alan Levinovitz wrote a great article which I found enlightening. He states that the demonizing of sugar dates back to the 18th century where it was blamed for creating “fantastic desires and bad habits in which nature has no part”. Children were particularly susceptible to sugar’s detrimental effects, which also included “scurvy and weak nerves.” In 1974, William Crook wrote a letter to a medical journal blaming sugar for ADHD which persisted for decades but has now been discounted. Nor is it new to demonize sugar by associating it with drugs and alcohol and Levinowitz further states that in the 19th century that sugar was thought of as a gateway drug and a taste for sweets was thought to foreshadow deadlier habits. Why does the cult classic Reefer madness suddenly come to mind? Levinovitz believes that perhaps extremism, not sugar, is the real enemy. The best approach to fixing our culinary culture doesn’t involve demonizing or government regulation. He stated that strategies promoting dichotomous thinking – clean or unclean, toxic or safe –contributed to eating disorders like binge-eating and orthorexia while having marginal positive effects on overall public health.” Hear! Hear! Mr. Levinovitcz! I couldn’t have said it any better myself. I just wish people would listen. Speaking of extremism, SPT characterizes as extreme the 70,000 individuals in the US who get their limbs amputated due to type 2 diabetes because they can’t stop eating despite their doctor telling them it’s coming. As someone who actually worked on a diabetic floor for years, my baloney meter went off big time when I read this. I went to her citation to find out that it didn’t even support what she was saying! It didn’t come close. It addressed the fact that rates were DECLINING in hospitalization of nontraumatic amputations in those 40 years and older and the continued need to improve foot care was recommended of those at higher risk. The 70K number she cites comes from an article from the ADA that gives an overview of diabetes including type 1 and mentions that in 2010 73K amputations were performed. This has ZERO to do with the fact that these amputations occurred because people couldn’t stop eating with warnings given by their doctors. How ludicrous! A quick google search will easily demonstrate that better diabetes management and foot care has caused lower limb amputations to be reduced by half over the last 20 years. That’s great news! Poor management of blood sugars, higher risk for infections, PAD, neuropathy, circulation problems and other factors that diabetics are at higher risk for contribute to limb amputations but it's decreasing! Yeah! I guess when fear mongering, anything goes whether it is true or not. A quick check of Pubmed brought up the following: The plausibility of sugar addiction and its role in obesity and eating disorders by Benton D. (2010) states there is no support from the human literature for the hypothesis that sucrose may be physically addictive or that addiction to sugar plays a role in eating disorders Are restrictive guidelines for added sugars science based? Erickson J. (2015) states there is currently no evidence stating that added sugar is more harmful than excess calories from any other food source Sugar addiction: the state of the science by Margaret Westwater (2016) shows there is little evidence in the scientific literature to support sugar addiction in humans and that findings from the animal literature suggested that addictive-like behaviors likely arise from intermittent access to sweet tasting or highly palatable foods, not the neurochemical effects of sugar. Additionally, most of the evidence is limited to animal neuroscience literature which is far from convincing. Several key elements of drug addiction have not been evaluated in sugar addiction models. Food Addiction Beliefs Amongst the Lay Public: What are the consequences for eating behavior? Ruddock (2017) Food addiction beliefs may encourage individuals to avoid certain foods. However, attempts at restriction may eventually lead to increased cravings and disinhibition, thus reinforcing perceptions of oneself as a food addict. Eating dependence and weight gain: no human evidence for a sugar-addiction model of overweight by Markus (2017) concludes that sugary foods contribute MINIMALLY to food dependence and increased risk of weight gain. Instead, they are consistent with the current scientific notion that food energy density, and the unique individual experience of eating, plays an important role in determining the reward value of food and promoting excessive energy intake. These are just a few that I found. See I can cherry pick too. Yes, we eat way too much sugar. We take in too many calories period. I don’t think anyone would disagree that most people could cut down their sugar big time or processed food in general. However, to demonize it as if there are no other contributing factors makes little sense and is setting people up to fail once again because it isn’t lack of knowledge that is hurting us but compliance issues. Dr. Yoni Freedhoff states: “Maybe it's just my cynicism, but I do find it odd that despite our global and possibly total failings at inspiring intentional, because-it's-good-for-you, behavior change, both with food and fitness, that as a society we still seem to be clinging to the notion somehow, someone, somewhere, will figure out the golden message, app, or website that will set us all straight. At this point, and certainly, in the developed world, it's hard to imagine that the problem is a lack of education as to the benefits of exercise and/or a healthful diet.” Focusing her attention on flour, even she can’t really give us any good science so she decides to throw in a broccoli and cheese example to suffice asking her readers if any of them has ever driven in the pouring rain at 3 am to get it. May I answer that? I’ve never driven anywhere at 3 am even in exceptional weather to get any food, healthy or otherwise because I’m normally asleep at that time. Aren’t most people? When I worked nights for years, I didn’t even do that but I did drink a heck of a lot of coffee. I might have grabbed a pizza after a night of partying in my 20's. Even if I was a broccoli and cheese fanatic, is it really a surprise to anyone that you can’t exactly grab this at the drive through like you can pizza or a burger? Now we know that people are more likely to grab a piece of pizza that is readily available than some broccoli. Good to know. Her book is filled with meaningless examples like this. She actually said that people are addicted to pizza because of the flour. Opinions are not facts. Another unfounded accusation occurs when Susan states people give up sugar but they keep eating flour or they give up white flour but keep eating brown flour or they give up wheat flour but continued to eat oat flour so they stayed heavy. Where is your data Susan to make such a strange conclusion? I’m quite confident in saying that this is completely made up. Is she really trying to convince us that there are a large enough group of people out there to collect data on that give up white flour but oddly continue eating brown flour or oat flour and that is why they stay heavy? Nonsense! What about her claim that BLE is the most successful weight loss program out there? Really? Has she amassed enough data in only 3 years of starting this program to make that claim? Can I make a guess of what she is looking at? I bet it isn’t asking the numerous amount of people who can’t even last a few days on such a restrictive diet what they think. No, success isn’t I lost 15 lbs. by paying $497 for your boot camp for two whole months. Tada! Long-term compliance is the issue and her program hasn’t even been around long enough to make such a claim. Let's see how many of these glowing positive reviewers have lost all their weight and kept it off 3 years from now. I'm betting hardly any or definitely no more than you would find in any other weight loss program. A study conducted in 2015 by Kimberly A. Gudzune, et al. looked at the efficacy of commercial weight loss programs. Based on a list of criteria that had to be met, they chose 32 out of the 141 programs. The biggest takeaway from this study was that most programs failed, not because of efficacy but because they didn’t have the studies. As an example, Nutrisystem showed weight loss in the short term but couldn’t be evaluated due to lack of 12 month RCTs. Limitations were that trials were short (<12 months), had high attrition, and lacked blinding. Considering that most have not kept the required data for proper evaluation, her implication that the lack of peer-reviewed studies on successful weight loss is due to failure of the programs is off base, to say the least. I must wonder how Susan gets to make her bold statement that she is the most successful weight loss program out there? I would love to see her data. My baloney meter is sounding loud and clear. The cause of obesity is multifactorial similar to diseases of the body having more than one cause. She ignores this basic truth throughout her book, preferring to convince us with her weak arguments that it must be sugar and flour. This alone will cause the majority eventually to fail down the road. Past stats and human behavior simply bear this out. Does it truly surprise anyone if 20 ounces of vegetables are consumed on a consistent basis, that the chances of binging on highly palatable food will be decreased significantly? To eat consistent meals so you aren’t hungry will help? Deciding not to take that first bite of those chips or cookies would be a good idea? That it’s easy to stop and grab a burger with fries when you’ve been running around for hours without food? Skipping breakfast because you overslept and now can’t control yourself around the Krispy Kreme donuts that your coworker was nice enough to leave in the office must mean you are an addict? Seriously? Knowledge isn’t the issue. It’s figuring out how to make it happen and not overconsuming easily available food which hits you in the face everywhere you go. It’s when you get out of the meeting 2 hours later than expected and have to pick up 3 very hungry kids with no food at home because you haven’t been able to get to the store. Chanting NMF to yourself doesn’t quite cut it. I want 8 hours of sleep each night too because I know that I will overeat if I’m tired but sometimes it simply doesn’t happen. If only life went our way 100% of the time. Maybe I would binge on that broccoli and cheese if I was starving and it was readily available hot and steaming wherever I went. When I'm really hungry, broccoli and cheese sound really good to me along with roasted veggies and a nice mustard dip. If from day one, I had easy availability to food like that, who knows if I would have had a weight problem. However, that’s not the reality of the world in which we live. . A few more miscellaneous thoughts. Rats are not humans. I just wanted to throw that out there. There are also others that came well before SPT demonizing sugar. One of them is Dr. Lustig whom SPT cites a couple of times in her footnotes. Alan Aaragon’s critical analysis in 2010 might be of some interest to others. Dr. Lustig backed off when challenged citing his youtube hits as some type of confirmation he had something to say. It’s a different story when a very knowledgeable person who analyzes nutritional information for a living challenges the diet experts. Your typical desperate overweight individual may uncritically accept the latest nutritional information but come up against the big guns and it’s a different story. Since I’m not sure of outside links, I’ll leave it up to the reader to find. The article is by Alan Aragon called the bitter truth about fructose alarmism. Another alarmist similar to SPT is Dr. Taubes and I liked Dr. Hall’s response to him too. Again, a search for sciencebasedmedicine.org “Gary Taubes and the case against sugar” will bring you Dr. Hall’s article. All of these gurus that are against sugar and flour share similar views which is why I am citing them and as I said, she cites a couple of these in her footnotes. For those considering her 14-day challenge, it is simply a rehash of what she says in the book and she gives at least 3 videos for you to view that you can find on youtube for free. It reads like an infomercial for her boot camp which is a ridiculous $497 for two months of support. There are actually people that paid $1000 for it at one time!! The challenge goes poof after you’re done. She gives you one more week and then you don’t even have access to any of the videos that you paid for! I would suggest a pass. She also spends one video having you take the susceptibility scale again (!). I guess having to find a filler for a challenge was uh well a challenge. I do question the validity of this scale. She asks you to think back to a 3 month stretch of time in your life when eating was at its worst. Talk about leading the witness and appealing to all those 10’s out there. Yeah, let's not think about when you were eating your best and what you might have been doing differently that you aren't doing now. Wouldn't want to skew the biased results. She knows the typical person that would be looking at her program is overweight and in what universe is your typical overweight person during their WORST 3-month stretch going to answer that he or she had no cravings and is in complete control of their eating. It’s laughable. Also consider that there is ample anecdotal evidence out there of people that have lost huge amounts of weight, even in the 200+ range, that have kept it off and continue to eat moderate amounts of flour and sugar. Are we really going to infer that someone like this probably was low on the susceptibility scale? Someone who started at 500 lbs.? As far as her boot camp, if you insist on considering this, at least first try out the free support forums. There is no reason to pay for supporting another human being. If the usual rah, rah you can do it and don’t beat yourself up for not sticking to those bright lines helps you, do you really need to pay for this when you can get it for free? Is it more meaningful coming from Susan herself? There is a TON of information out there on how to navigate family gatherings, eating out in restaurants, cooking for a family, and maintenance. A general google search will give you a lot of ideas. Don't forget Pinterest and Instagram for food ideas. You don’t need to pay to hear the same stuff over and over. Yes, I do have a problem with someone who emphasizes in her book how important support is and then doesn’t bother providing it unless you pay money. For me, that’s a strong indication that money reigns supreme. Of course, you don’t have to pay for it but as I said earlier, SPT understands all too well the psychology of the overweight person. There is a ton of good information out there that is free from people who have lost larger amounts of weight than Susan (who somehow never shows us a pic at her heaviest) and who genuinely want to help people without charge. Eating like a normal person (do a search) is a website that I came across recently that I think has a lot of great information on it for FREE and appears to be updated on a regular basis. Lastly, let me address the sure to come lalalalala…….don't care what you say…………do you have your Ph.D...........lalala……….it’s working for me. If it is, by all means do continue. If this is something that is working for you, then I wish you well. For the rest, please don’t be discouraged if you can’t adhere to such a stringent diet. The odds that most people will go the rest of their lives never having a bite of food between meals, eating 3 meals per day, no sugar or flour on a consistent basis is slim to none in our fast-paced readily available food environment. That’s the sad reality. I do have a couple of friends who are bodybuilders who have been like this all their life. Not a tsp of sugar or flour will pass their lips and you can see it in their muscular, well-defined bodies but they are the EXCEPTIONS. The majority of people choose not to be this strict and most of us aren’t bodybuilders. We simply don’t have to do this and there is no definitive scientific literature that sugar and flour are the cause of our woes. Getting rid of sugar and flour and eating whole foods is nothing new either. You would have to be living under a rock not to know this. This will probably anger many of her devotees who will insist they are addicted to sugar regaling us with their anecdotal evidence but people will believe what they want to believe, sticking their head in the sand refusing to consider any other possibilities that might account for their past behavior. I’m not going to argue with those people because usually, it is a fruitless endeavor. It’s like arguing with the vegans and I don’t even eat meat. Every group has their ostriches. As an aside, you will see them come and rate reviews like this as unhelpful and elicit help from others because it bothers them to read differing opinions. Watch out for this. If you see it, you will know what is up. I want to end this book with a thought from Dr. Yoni Freedhoff who makes an excellent point which is this: People tend to view dieting as synonymous with suffering and people will do what is tolerable for just so long. The question he says to ask yourself is can I happily live this way the rest of my life because you will not simply tolerate food for the rest of your life. He is so right. The majority of people will not be able to tolerate this strict way of living and even if there is short-term weight loss (similar to all the other programs out there) or even a few that can manage it long term, this will be no different from anything else out there. ***Update 7/15/17***: To give you a good idea of how suspect you should be of this author's credibility, she has a youtube video out that talks about type 1 diabetes. As someone in the medical profession myself and the mother of a type 1 diabetic, I was dismayed to hear her say that she heard from one of her readers who is a type 1 diabetic that thanks to the BLE program, the type 1 diabetic was able to get off ALL her insulin. This is absolutely false and it should be a red flag to those of you who want to hang on her every word. She lacks credibility. Type 1 diabetes is a failure of the pancreas to produce insulin. There is NO cure. It is impossible to get off insulin if you are a type 1 diabetic because you will die without insulin. There is nothing that a person does to get type 1 diabetes. That is a 100% fact. For the sole purpose to get people to believe that BLE is effective, she preys on the public's ignorance which is why people like this can say whatever they wish and people just lap it up. It speaks to her credibility and prior to seeing this, I was suspicious of a few claims she made in the book. This just confirmed my suspicions that much of what she says isn't to be trusted.