Home > Media > Books > Cherie Calbom and John Calbom - The Coconut Diet: The Secret Ingredient That Helps You Lose Weight While You Eat Your Favorite Foods
Cherie Calbom and John Calbom - The Coconut Diet: The Secret Ingredient That Helps You Lose Weight While You Eat Your Favorite Foods
biscuitfarmer's Full Review: Cherie Calbom and John Calbom - The Coconut Diet: ...
While I have tried a great deal of diets in my search for the ultimate combination of ways to lose the weight from my wife's pregnancy... you know, my sympathy weight, the Coconut Diet just seemed rediculous. My wife bought this book for me, as I was looking for alternative diets, above and beyond the standard low carb or low calorie formulas. I wanted something that had further health advantages, than just the weight loss, and something that could be sustained for a longer period of time. So, my wife, decided to purchase this book for me, in hopes that maybe, it would be what I was looking for.
Concept
This book is totally focused around one central concept and that is the health benefit of Coconut Oil. The oil from coconuts has been shown to reduce cholesterol, increase metabolism, and thus increase your chances of losing weight. Other major benefits of coconut oil is it's use in treating symptoms of Diabetes, IBS, Crohns, and a large variety of digestive disorders.
The Coconut Oil is natural, comes in a capsules, gel, liquid form, powder form or you could just consume it through eating actual coconuts or coconut milk. The oil is sold generally through health food stores, and has been long tauted as a potential miracle ingredient that is virtually tasteless and easy to add to other foods.
The idea is that if you increase your intake of Coconut Oil over the long term, your body will have increased metabolism, which will in turn aid in the burning of calories. However, the key is to use it over a longer period of time.
Inside the book
Inside the book there are just about 100 recipes that you can use, that help you to consume the coconut oil, without having to directly ingest it. The recipes, I have found for the most part to be quite delicious. And if nothing else, you have yourself a lot of great recipes, if you don't use the diet itself.
The actual diet is a 21 day weight loss program, where coconut oil is introduced into your diet, along with other low calorie foods, and you should show weight loss over that period of time. Then obviously, the idea is to maintain those results.
The book goes into great detail as well on the different ingredients included in each of it's recipes, allowing you to better understand what you are consuming and why each item is in the recipe. This I feel is an excellent resource to help in truly gaining the knowledge required for the diet to work.
The book also focuses a great deal on whole body cleansing, a process by which you eliminate chemicals within your body, by forced methods. In other words, you are going to be instructed on what products to take in order to stimulate your bowels, and produce movements, to eliminate all excess waste.
My results
I didn't do this diet directly as is, I actually modified it in order to fit my dietary needs, lifestyle, and my current dieting plans. I decided that there was no negative drawback to using the coconut oil, so I decided to implement it into my daily nutrition. Rather than using all of the coconut recipes, I alternated with my Mediterranean diet recipes, to create the perfect mix. I also drink nothing but water in order to eliminate all calories through beverages, that essentially do nothing more than dehydrate you anyway. That and my exercise routine have given me definite, defined results over a period of a few months.
Final Thoughts
Personally, I feel that the recipes in the book are more the key to weight loss than the actual coconut oil itself. The coconut oil is just a marketing ploy, that was used in order to sell more books. Everyone is writing books about weight loss, and to see a book with low fat meals, would end up just getting buried in the mix. By adding the coconut oil diet, the writer was able to design a unique diet, that desperate consumers may go for.
All of the recipes in the book, are extremely low in fat, calories, and carbs. The end result obviously is a mix of weight loss philosophies, that are obviously are going to result in weight loss, especially in the short term. However, I don't see any real benefit to the Coconut Oil, except maybe in the reduction of cholesterol.
I think this book was more or less a desperate attempt at creating an income for the writer. If the coconut oil on it's own was sufficient enough for the diet, without utilizing other dieting lifestyles, then I would assume it was legit after trying it. However, as long as there is an obvious attempt at forcing meal plans upon the reader, the validity of this diet is sacrificed.
Another portion of the book strongly talks about full body cleansing, which has been shown to reduce weight, by eliminating chemicals and excess waste. By using this process alone, you are pretty sure to get on the first step to losing weight. By combining all of these together, it's pretty obvious, that something is going to happen in the way of weight loss if you are able to stick with it.
Overview
Great book that has some extremely good recipes. I would highly recommend it for anyone just for the recipes alone. However, even though I doubt the validity of the coconut oil, there are obvious weight loss results, and that's the overall objective of the book. I cannot rate this review poorly based upon my own personal assumption of whether or not coconut oil was just a marketing ploy. Instead, rather, I must rate it based upon results, and the results are obviously good. The book is extremely well written, and is very detailed on how the plan should work. If you follow the plan, you WILL lose weight, but you have to stay dedicated.
The diet itself is fairly easy to stick to, and the foods are more than delicious enough to keep you from desiring other less healthy foods. The ingredients used serve multiple purposes, and help with overall body nutrition. Anything that works on the body as a whole, I figure can't really be that bad of a thing, even if the diet seems stupid and made up.
This book provides the scientific information about why coconut oil works in weight loss programs, as well as how to use it.More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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