I bought this book after seeing an advertisement. I was really excited to start...I bought groceries for the recipes that are suggested along with the Glucomannan. I tried the glucomannan in my cottage cheese and had to throw it out. The smoothies were not very appealing and I threw out my lunch on the first day. The dieting part of the book was not helpful whatsoever! The exercise part seems to be ok.

If you have read The TNT Diet by Dr. Jeff Volek and Adam Campbell and wished there was a female version of that book, then this is it! In fact, the author Cassandra Forsythe works with Dr. Volek, a world-renowned low-carb diet researcher from The University of Connecticut, and has her name appearing on many of the latest low-carb research studies over the past few years. She believes in low-carb nutrition and was asked by Women's Health magazine to write a book about weight loss and fitness. Some have been critical of this book because they claim it focuses too much on low-fat and not enough on low-carb. But I think it does a good job of having people avoid the culprit carbs that pack on the pounds which is most important when you are looking for a diet plan that will actually work. The "secret weapon" behind this program is the glucomannan fiber that you sprinkle on your foods to make you fuller faster, take away your hunger, and to slow down the absorption of the food into your body. Again, critics say this is gimmicky, but it could be just what is needed to help someone struggling with their weight to get their body into shape. Forsythe is an avid weight trainer and provides specific exercises for women to get that "perfect body" they desire.

The good:

This book has a fast and easy way to determine what you should be weighing. The recipes are healthy (with a caveat), and the "Active-Dynamic" warm-up sequence is great either done once through as a warm-up, or several times for an exercise session.

The bad:

This book essentially promotes taking a "bulk-forming laxative" (i.e., the glucomannan) just about every time you eat. Its primary use is as a laxative, look it up for yourself. It is added to every recipe in the book (hence the caveat), and what's more, you're encouraged to add it to food every time you are eating out as well.

The book goes to great lengths telling you how much liquid the glucomannan absorbs and how it can make your portion sizes seem bigger because it expands up to 100 times its own water weight (as in, sit back and watch your food expand). You'd be much better off eating the recipes without it, or adding a healthful source of fiber such as flaxseed occasionally, instead. Slow down when eating, If you're not hungry, don't eat. If you think you're hungry, drink some water first.

Bottom line: the recipes, diet, and workout are fine--ignore the glucomannan part.

I've been impressed with the diet portion of the plan; if you follow the plan, you will feel full, without feeling sleepy. The diet is very nutritious, but it can be challenging to get the protein % high enough. I have actually lost some weight on this with less exercise than usual! I've been following my own exercise plan, so I can't comment on that portion of the plan. Some of the recipes in the book are very good (high fiber yogurt, turkey cauliflower casserole); others are not (pumpkin protein muffins, almond joy smoothie). There are also some errors in the recipes (i.e., amounts of particular ingredients in crab stuffed mushrooms and dijon chicken salad). The diet is tailored to your body type, which I find very helpful. This diet is great for anyone who doesn't do well with high carb/low fat diets, and wants to become leaner with a highly nutritious plan.

All women who struggle with their weight should read and follow this book. It just makes sense. The diet is easy to follow and the supplements are easy to incorporate. A lot of research and energy went into the writing of this book and the reader can tell. This book is well worth the purchase price as you are worth the effort to follow it. Go for it and enjoy!

One of the main keys to this diet is the use of Glucommanan powder to help you feel full. You will not feel full, but you will lose your appetite and thus eat less calories. The powder makes food chalky, grainy and disgusting. Don't count on it to help with weight loss. It is a horrible recommendation. Get your fiber from real foods like apples.

This is a great resource for women who have been bombarded with misinformation regarding diet and training. It features legitimate science, practical advice, and real world solutions in making it work. I hope to see more women lifting weights-heavy ones! After I read it, I bought 3 more copies to distribute to friends.

First of all this isn't a gimmick this is common sense, remember that? You need fiber to feel full and you need protein to achieve healthy results for your body. This book is full of great inforamtion and shows you how using glucomannan to help you reach your weight loss goals. In no way does this book or plan tell you this should be your only source of fiber. Unless you've actually tried the supplement can you really judge something? I feel using something as natural as glucomannan to help you feel full longer and help you make better food choices ,then that's not a bad thing. I've actually been using the supplement for sometime and have found no ill side effects or grainy issues with it's use. I've also found that following the food plan and using the glucomannan actually helps with feeling full and not overeating This book also guides you to other really great food choices and how adding more protein to your everyday intake will help you achieve weight loss goals. I found this very informative and have been using the information for the past 3 weeks with amazing results. The muffin top is disappearing and I'm feeling more energetic and alert daily. I find myself thinking about what I'm putting in my mouth and not feeling like I'm starving or going to pass out from lack of eating. I love the exercise program and anyone looking for a Great instructor and at home workout need only to purchase the accompany Perfect body workout. You get a great workout that also helps you achieve the weight loss goals we're all looking for. This is a well thoughtout book and doesn't lead anyone to believe this is an overnight miracle or that glucomannan is a food substitute but a supplement to help aid you. This is like any other publication it only works if you apply the information and follow the plan.

I read this book in a bookstore. The recommendation to get your fiber through a supplement is really beyond the pale. How about broccoli, bananas, yams, prunes, and other REAL food? Yet another book that does readers a huge disservice by steering readers away from good food. Steer clear.

As a long-time exerciser and dieter, I have been all over the spectrum, from underweight, to "just right," to overweight. This diet really gathers all the things that put me in that "just right" zone and makes it easy to see why those practices worked so well for me.

The Glucomannan, contrary to a previous post, is really not a "gimicky" thing. It's a suggested supplement that truly helps aid me in feeling more satisfied and, um, regular (if ya know what I mean). It does make your food thicker - the book is clear on this. It doesn't make food grainy, though - at least not in my experience. Again, you have to experiment and find out which foods you like with the Gluocomannan, and then try to work those foods into your diet as often as possible.

With the low-carb or moderate-carb plans available to choose from, I think there's something reasonable for every woman out there with this plan. And really...don't we all know how we react to carbohydrates already? Despite the establishment which repeats the silly "Food Triangle" plan which centers upon carbohydrates as a blanket policy, that 9-11 servings a day of grains/starch doesn't work for everyone. And many woman process carbs differently...I know I do. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome in 2007, and this diet has allowed me to lose about 3 lbs. already (and I've only been on it 2 weeks). And I haven't been hungry.

As for the workouts, I think they are great. I love to go in the gym and lift hard, and this plan (I'm a pear) allows me to satisfy that with my upper body workouts, while still giving me the right guidance on how to train my lower body and how to structure my cardio plan.

I am happy to give this book a great recommendation. Like with any plan...if you want it to work, you have to give it two things: 1) 100% of your effort, and 2) a little time.

After a holiday season of heavy eating I was looking for a book to get me back into healthy eating and living. To this end, the book actually did a good job. I did not end up following their specific plan, but did learn some new things to incorporate into my diet.

I like that is has different diet and exercise advice for different body types-apples and pears. It makes sense that your plan should be tailored to your body. Unfortunately, I have a avocado body type which falls into the middle and there was less information in the book about what to do if you are one.

In order to determine if you are carb-sensitive you have to do a 4 day breakfast test that another commenter has described. Like her, I didn't have the patience for it. You're not supposed to do it after you work-out. But I only have time to work-out in the mornings. I wasn't going to give up 4 work-outs to do the test. I was already pretty sure I was carb sensitive anyway.

The information about glucomannan was new to me and quite interesting. I tried stirring it into my meals and it doesn't change the taste really, just makes it thicker. I think it makes food a little more satisfying, especially smoothies, but not dramatically. But every little thing counts.

The meals plans are helpful but like many meal plans, a lot of the suggestions are not things that appeal to me. There are a few good recipes, but also some real clunkers with names that absolutely do not match the ingredients. For example the "Chocolate Cake Smoothie" involves mixing together cottage cheese, water, chocolate protein powder, flaxseed, and glucomannan. I haven't tried it, but I am pretty sure it tastes nothing like chocolate cake.

Overall, it is a solid diet book. It is not faddish or gimmicky and does have some new things to say which is rare for a diet book.

I'll start by saying that it's in many ways my own fault that I ended up with a book I'm not that thrilled about. I bought it sight unseen after stumbling on a promo segment that aired on the Today show. I was on vacation for the holidays, eating too much and not feeling healthy, and after watching the segment on my computer, I felt very fired up that this book would help me meet my resolution to spend the first few months of the new year getting back on track with healthful eating and exercising. Hopped over to Amazon and ordered the book even though the "Search Inside This Book" feature wasn't available (and I was out of the country, so I couldn't mosey to a bookstore to check it out in person before plunking down my cash).

So, with that said... this book is fairly gimmicky, with two main hooks.

The first is the glucomannan fiber, which the authors promote as the Holy Grail of staying full while you diet. This book sings its wonders and offers a few dozen recipes incorporating glucomannan powder (many of which are frankly unappetizing -- "Eggs with Gluco-Salsa"? "Gluco-Berry Protein Sorbet"??? Blech).

Because I already have a large collection of reliable and healthy recipes that I enjoy, I'm trying to figure out how to work this glucomannan into other things that I make. Truth be told, though I was at first pretty excited about this aspect of the plan, it's now less than one week after the capsules arrived in the mail and I've basically given up on using them at all. I stirred the stuff into some cottage cheese, which not only did not make the cottage cheese more satisfying, but also made it grainy, blander than usual and unpleasant to eat. I added it to part-skim ricotta for a longtime favorite Weight Watchers recipe -- this is the first time I didn't enjoy the finished product.

Onto the second gimmick, to wit: attaining your perfect body requires you to choose from one of two plans, higher- or lower-carb, depending on your carb tolerance. To determine which plan is right for you, you're supposed to alternate a high- or low-carb breakfast for four days, then each day assiduously log your fullness and general mood in a 10-point "Carb Tolerance Questionnaire," on the hour, for three hours. Seriously? I'm sure some people have the patience for this sort of thing, but... It's just *so* not something I'm going to do, especially when it means I have to hijack my excitement at a new year/new plan by eating a "large" (their word) plain bagel with jelly for breakfast two days in a week (which has zero fiber, is not particularly healthy, and is just something I would basically never do, whether I'm dieting or not). Not to mention that I am super busy at work and cannot quite picture explaining to my boss why I am pulling out a questionnaire and logging my satiety every hour until lunch instead of, you know, getting my job done.

So right off the bat they're asking me to go above and beyond in order to get anything at all out of the book. And since I just frankly am not going to do what they want me to do, I can't know which of their two diets is supposedly best for me, and I have that sinking feeling already because I'm essentially not following a plan at all, but combining the two plans and choosing the recipes that appeal to me. (Not "eggs with gluco-salsa").

The workout plan is divided into two sections, one for "Apples" and one for "Pears" (pick the fruit whose shape matches your body). I'm still thinking I may get some use out of this section, as I'm always looking for good new strength training moves to add to my routine, but here I think the book could have benefited from larger photographs and color. Honestly, it does get dreary staring at tiny little b&w photos of models doing the moves, trying to match their form or figure out how you're supposed to be moving. (I hate it when the photos are super small in magazines, too, and always wonder why the fitness editors haven't learned the art of "styling" their shots to be as appealing as every food editor seemingly has.)

So to wrap up, not a great purchase or a very practical or inspiring plan for me (or for the $$$)... I guess it could work for someone just fanatically inspired to follow complicated advice to the letter. Needless to say, your mileage may vary.

Every year when we make the resolution to lose weight and stick to sensible eating plans and do more exercise, we face the hard reality that it isn't always easy. This book is yet another way to help you out. We know diets don't work, but what this book is here for is to customising and setting realistic goals that work for you personally. It's written by the editors at Womens Health, so they have quite an extensive knowledge about what's fact and fiction.
In the book they help you to figure out certain things about yourself and from there you know where to go with things such as exercise and things like whether or not you are a carb sensitive person (ie. after eating a bagel, some people are fine while other peoples energy levels drag). Working out where you fall on these kinds of scales will help you proceed with certain things to eat and things to avoid and what types of exercise are going to be right for you when maybe they aren't as good for other people.
They talk about a soluble fibre called glucomannan which will make you feel full and include recipes in here that have that fibre in them. It helps control hunger by slowing your digestion to keep you full.
Overall this is an interesting book with some new information here and some info that we've read over and over again. Ultimately, the book is helpful if you are going to give it a good try. I usually read these kinds of books and then forget them, but I think this one makes great sense and is helpful when you are really ready to try something that's easy to stick with. Some of the recipes I've tried so far are tasty and yes, filling and if you make these recipes and do the exercise and really stick to it, then that's where the results will kick in.