Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Dr. Peeke is an M.D. specializing in nutrition, stress andintegrative medicine who has worked at the National Institutes ofHealth and is currently Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Sadly, in spite of her impressive credentials, virtually none of the information presented in this book is new, though she does a decent job spelling out two commonly known, scientific contentions: (1) It is pointless to diet by briefly changing your eating habits, losing a few pounds, then immediately returning to your old ways. You will regain what you lost, and the new weight will be higher in fat due to losing muscle mass on the diet. (2) To lose weight, you need to exercise and stop overeating sugary and starchy carbs. After she reiterated all this, I was ready for her to jump into the "revolutionary" insights her book subtitle promised me. I figured it might be something about metabolism, since Dr. Peeke made a big point of discussing (more commonly known information) that one's metabolism slows 5% every decade from age 20 on. But there was nothing about raising metabolism, and, ironically, the doctor didn't notice that most of her clients, as described in this book, are, in fact, a metabolic miracle. These women are sedentary and routinely consume 3500 calories a day, heavy on the sugary and starchy carbs. This means they have been eating at least 1500-1700 calories daily above what they need to maintain normal weight, yet, somehow, they are only 40-80 pounds overweight! But rather than the doctor congratulating these lucky women on their metabolic good fortune, she tells them to reduce to only 1300 calories a day by giving up virtually all their sugar and starch and stick to the standard 6th-grade-health-class diet of 15-20% protein, 25-30% fat, and 55% of "high-quality" carbohydrates (e.g., fruits and fruit juices, vegetables that are not starchy, oatmeal, yogurt). The doctor, of course, fails to warn these poor women that after even a couple of weeks at this low level of calories, they are practically guaranteed to bring their present, high metabolism to a sluggish halt. And once they fall off Dr. Peeke's boring diet, as they are perhaps 90% likely to do, and go back to eating the 3500 calories a day they were previously enjoying, they will find themselves in the same unenviable position as the rest of us poor mortals--putting on several pounds a week from an extensive amount of overeating. As I read on, I continued to look for something new and helpful in this book, but all I noticed was the sad lack of a number of things that might have been useful, had they been included: (1) There is no mention of a personalized diet plan utilizing such elements as height, weight, current muscle mass, age, and level of physical activity. Instead, the doctor offers a simplistic, standardized pyramid which illustrates how one will put on weight eating a diet high in sugary and starchy carbs (particularly those consumed after 5pm) juxtaposed with a pyramid meagerly occupied by her suggested 1300 calories. (2) The author barely touches on the feminist issues involved in women and obesity, other than stating obliquely that women over 40 shouldn't lose weight for beauty reasons but to increase longevity. And even though she presents a stream of clients who are over-worked, under-appreciated, professional, working mothers--Baby Boomers stuck on the deadly treadmill of "you can have it all"--she never offers them any advice for abandoning the myth that is responsible for the lioness' share of the stress the doctor herself says is killing them. (3) While the author admits to a reality that every advertising agency working for a junk-food company revels in, that the eating choices of the average American are almost entirely whim-driven, she adds nothing new to the topic of compulsive eating. (4) As for the link between stress and overeating, a strongly psychological issue which is the professed main hook of this book and the sole source of the author's claim to "revolutionary" originality in the arena of nutrition, the author merely mentions lightly that in order to counteract the negative effects of chronic stress, including stress-stimulated binge eating, what is needed is "frequent nurturing." Here is her prescription for menopausal women to nurture themselves: (a) Make sure you have both a plan A and a backup plan B as to how you are going to eat 1/3 of the calories you used to eat from now on and limit the sugary treats, the mainstay of your current attempts to lower your stress levels, from a previous 28 or more servings a week to only two. (b) As a busy, professional woman, your eating is the one area in your life you have not carefully planned. If you will just plan that, too--voila!--your stress will go away and that nasty treat-eating habit of yours it stimulates will go away, too... To sum up: for those who already eat wisely and exercise regularly, Dr. Peeke is "preaching to the choir." For those who don't, I do not believe this book has what it takes to motivate them to change. In addition, women who are addicted to carbs (defined as not being able to stop yourself from regularly bingeing on sugary carbs), would be better off, if they aren't ready yet to give up food-bingeing, trying something like either the "carbohydrate addicts' diet" (controlled bingeing limited to one hour a day) or Dr. Atkins high-protein diet (bingeing on protein rather than carbs). If, on the other hand, a carb addict is truly, deeply ready to come out of addiction, it would be a good idea to seek out, instead of this book, one of the many excellent books addressing addictive eating. Such books will not tell her, as this book does, to use "planning" (another word for willpower) to overcome eating addiction.