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A review by kenna_ainjo
I Quit Sugar: Your Complete 8-Week Detox Program and Cookbook by Sarah Wilson
3.0
Things I Liked:
—A lot of the recipes look like they'll work for me and look yummy.
—The recipes use the same major ingredients, so you don't have to spend a fortune on random health-food ingredients you'll never use again.
—The book has lists of things to stock up on, etc., so you can more easily make shopping lists.
—The pictures are beautiful.
—The graphic design is nice.
—Wilson does a good job of stressing that a positive attitude, not a deprivation-focused one, is important.
—Wilson does a good job of talking about how each person is different and has to experiment to find out what works best for them.
—Despite the book description, the book doesn't focus on losing weight, etc. The focus is very much on sustainable, healthy eating.
—The author is up-front about the fact that she isn't perfect and sometimes does eat sugar.
—I loved the perspective about how cheating is an opportunity to observe how the sugar makes you feel, why you ate it, how you react, etc., not a reason to beat yourself up.
Things I Didn't Like:
—There wasn't a ton of source citation for the claims about the damaging effects of sugar.
—While the author criticizes past dietary crazes that demonized fat, statements like "sugar makes you fat," generalize so much that the book comes across as another fad and the author's legitimate points lose authority.
—The 8-week plan is kind of vague and won't work for everyone. For example, I know my food habits well enough to know that I need some time to prep new foods and stock up on ingredients, but after that I just need to cut out all the sugar I plan to cut out. Having a couple weeks to cut down on sugar won't work for me because I'll break down and go all Mardi Gras on that sugar.
—Additionally, while I agree that I may struggle more around Week X, I don't know that everyone will just coast along before that and not need the Week X information earlier. A lot of the steps kind of seemed thrown in so that the middle weeks between quitting and having quit for weeks would have labels.
—I haven't read the original IQS book, so maybe she goes into more detail about the whole fructose/glucose thing here, but I wasn't clear on why she says "quitting sugar means quitting fructose," rather than "quitting fructose and glucose that breaks down easily." The recipes are generally gluten-free and don't contain a lot of simple carbs, but there's not a clear focus on why that is or what makes fructose more concerning than easily digested glucose. I mean, I get that the world already has five million books about the glycemic index, so I'm not saying that focusing on fructose was a bad publishing decision, but I'm not clear on the dietary reasoning.
—A lot of the recipes look like they'll work for me and look yummy.
—The recipes use the same major ingredients, so you don't have to spend a fortune on random health-food ingredients you'll never use again.
—The book has lists of things to stock up on, etc., so you can more easily make shopping lists.
—The pictures are beautiful.
—The graphic design is nice.
—Wilson does a good job of stressing that a positive attitude, not a deprivation-focused one, is important.
—Wilson does a good job of talking about how each person is different and has to experiment to find out what works best for them.
—Despite the book description, the book doesn't focus on losing weight, etc. The focus is very much on sustainable, healthy eating.
—The author is up-front about the fact that she isn't perfect and sometimes does eat sugar.
—I loved the perspective about how cheating is an opportunity to observe how the sugar makes you feel, why you ate it, how you react, etc., not a reason to beat yourself up.
Things I Didn't Like:
—There wasn't a ton of source citation for the claims about the damaging effects of sugar.
—While the author criticizes past dietary crazes that demonized fat, statements like "sugar makes you fat," generalize so much that the book comes across as another fad and the author's legitimate points lose authority.
—The 8-week plan is kind of vague and won't work for everyone. For example, I know my food habits well enough to know that I need some time to prep new foods and stock up on ingredients, but after that I just need to cut out all the sugar I plan to cut out. Having a couple weeks to cut down on sugar won't work for me because I'll break down and go all Mardi Gras on that sugar.
—Additionally, while I agree that I may struggle more around Week X, I don't know that everyone will just coast along before that and not need the Week X information earlier. A lot of the steps kind of seemed thrown in so that the middle weeks between quitting and having quit for weeks would have labels.
—I haven't read the original IQS book, so maybe she goes into more detail about the whole fructose/glucose thing here, but I wasn't clear on why she says "quitting sugar means quitting fructose," rather than "quitting fructose and glucose that breaks down easily." The recipes are generally gluten-free and don't contain a lot of simple carbs, but there's not a clear focus on why that is or what makes fructose more concerning than easily digested glucose. I mean, I get that the world already has five million books about the glycemic index, so I'm not saying that focusing on fructose was a bad publishing decision, but I'm not clear on the dietary reasoning.