The Fat Smash Diet has everything one would expect to find in a diet designed for celebrities to lose weight. Detox, provocative hypothesis and elaborate recipes – are just a few tricks of the trade employed by this diet to help you lose weight. Yet, the question remains – does this diet work?
The author of this book is Dr. Ian Smith; he is a diet and exercise expert on a popular Celebrity Fit Club show. With The Fat Smash Diet firmly holding on Amazon bestsellers list, my curiosity finally picked enough to review it.
The Fat Smash Diet is a 90-day, four-tiered nutritional and exercise program. Your fat smashing experience starts with a “detox” phase. In this unnecessarily restrictive phase, you are only permitted to eat fruits and vegetables, while exercising for 30 minutes, five days a week.
The second phase increases your exercise time to around 40 minutes. It is not as restrictive as the first phase. You can now add lean protein and whole grains.
The food selection in the third phase is similar to the second one, but your exercise time increases to about an hour. The final phase of the program is maintenance, where you are expected to use your newly acquired eating habits and exercise knowledge.
According to Dr. Ian Smith, “diets do not fail people, rather people fail diets“. This is a puzzling hypothesis, because if fad diets such as The Cabbage Soup Diet, The Grapefruit Diet and others do not fail people, I do not know what does.
Dr. Ian Smith also says: “I have been shocked reading many diet books that say exercising is unnecessary or it’s optional based on a dieter’s preferences“. While I agree that a good exercise program is an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, a diet book should focus on providing an easy to follow and a nutritionally sound plan.
Many years of experience have taught me, that people can lose significant amount of weight just by making better food choices. The exercise is not going anywhere, but it is important not to overload a client with too much information and dietary restrictions.
In a situation where a person is not comfortable with a diet, the pressure to start an exercise program could be overwhelming.
When people are comfortable with a diet, and they see that their weight loss effort is paying off, they want to start exercising anyway. On another hand, when there are too many restrictions, and a diet is not working for them, they are more likely to quite.
I am afraid that without strict supervision, the “detox” phase of The Fat Smash Diet will have a high dropout rate.
Having said that, overall, this diet is nutritionally sound. It emphasizes importance of fiber, fruits, vegetables, good oils, lean protein, and portion control. The plan itself is to the point and easy to understand.
The Fat Smash Diet book is a quick and easy read. It also contains many useful recipes.