Once you've determined which trigger is yours, you can easily modify the eating plans and shopping lists to maximize the effect. You still cut calories on each version of the diet—but fat calories are not equal to carbohydrate calories. All the diet plans start with a low-calorie week (to get you into the swing of dieting, I suspect), followed by careful tracking of your weight loss week-by-week, as you add calories to the six meals a day.
Yes, that's six meals per day. A key concept in set-point modification is side-tracking the body's hunger-signaling mechanism. Smaller portions, better food, fewer "junk" calories, and less obsessing about what to eat next, all makes for sound advice for women—in fact, for all of us—to achieve weight control.
I liked the recipes, too. The seasoning for Spicy Chili Pork Chops, for example, is useful for spicing up scrambled eggs, ground turkey, and grilled eggplant. I took a suggestion for Tuna Salad—add mustard to reduce mayonnaise—to extremes once I discovered that the mustard was enough. And I particularly liked the "Free Foods" concept, in which certain foods (spinach, onion, zucchini, and mushrooms, to name a few) don't enter into the calorie calculation.
Heavin uses other known-successful techniques for habit modification. One is goal-setting (and goal evaluation), another is record-keeping. He includes solid information for women, who are usually the household cooks, to help them feed their families while keeping to their own diets. And he tells them how to hold to the diet even while eating out—tips which I found very useful, myself.
Arguably the most useful thing in the book, however, is the clever chart, "Seven Ways to Size Up Your Portions"—did you realize that a cup of cooked vegetables is about the size of your fist, while a teaspoon of butter is about the size of the tip of your thumb? One ounce of nuts or small candies fits in the flat palm of your opened hand, and 3 ounces of meat is about the size and thickness of a deck of playing cards.
Less useful is the constant drumbeat of Curves merchandising throughout the book. A dietary shake, vitamins, and other supplements are described as if they are essential to the plan, and the author lays out the menus with the assumption that you will buy into this requirement. If you can ignore this, though, what's left is still a solid plan with plenty of good information, tasty food, and helpful guidance for anyone who desires to be fitter and lighter.
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
Six meals a day! At last, a diet plan for Hobbits!
2 - DrPat
Yeah -- you know you're in trouble if your spouse's gym manager is offering you diet advice...
3 - Barrett Miley
This reminds me of another Fitness hydraulic workout. By Fit Express. I was reading a lot about dieting, meal plans, exercise and circuit training at their blog, too. www.FitExpressBLOG.com
4 - Cerulean
Heavin? Isn't that the Paris Hilton Diet Plan.
5 - tash
its really good
6 - Jackie Bushell
Any healthy eating plan that recognises that carbs rather than (or as well as) calories are a problem for many people gets my vote. I'm also a great fan of the Curves exercise concept - I've only recently joined my local Curves but am already enjoying it far more than the 'traditional' gyms and other forms of exercising I've tried.
Those who would seek to force Curves to admit men perhaps overlook the fact that the equipment is designed with the smaller physical proportions of the female of the species in mind. Equipment designed to cater right up to the tallest man is absolutely hopeless for shorties like me!
7 - GymGuy
Curves doesnt need to admit men. Silly idea in my view. The equipment is designed for 40 year old, out of shape women. I cant imagine a guy getting a good workout there. Besides there is a few options now available for men. Cuts, Blitz, and Nitro Fitness.