Eating For Life
by Bill Phillips
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Book Reviews of Eating For Life
Book Review: The Icing on the Cake
Summary: 5 Stars
To begin with, I am not one to rush onto Amazon to throw around 5 stars here and 5 stars there. To be honest I usually couldn't be bothered, but based on my experience with Eating for Life I felt it my duty.
Put aside ANY negative comments you have read from previous raters. Fine, people are entitled to their own opinions, but I just can not pick a hole in Eating for Life. It truly bordered on me looking for the catch (I am one of those people who searches for the catch) but couldn't find one
In a sentence, Eating for Life is a book full of tasty recipies that you want to eat.
I did the South Beach Diet, and have a lot of good to say about the Glycemic Index, however, the recipie book always left you feeling slightly deprived. Yes I was feeling good on it, but with Eating for Life you don't have that gut feeling telling you that you are missing out. The meals are very simple, and I admire the way pictures of the different ingredients are printed on the bottom of each page. It's handy for people who are in a hurry and want to scoot around the shopping centre to grab whatever ingredients are required for a particular meal of choice. So you have the ingredient visually in your head rather than having to read the names of each ingredient in the hope that you'll know what it is by it's description.
There are no phases in the book like many other diet books. Why am I even using the word diet ? Eating for Life isn't even a diet book. Like many have said above, it is a book packed with recipies for meals you enjoy eating. It's not even a sacrifice.
When I started the Body for Life 12 week challenge I was running out of ideas for foods, and to be honest, I was thinking in a conditioned way regarding food. Yes I had read the book, but it's easy to forget, and you can often find yourself slipping back into old habits of restriction. When I took a brief look through the book I was surprised to see Potato on the list. It's all about portion sizes, and before I wrote this review I had just finished a lovely Chicken and Potato dish. I'm not stuffed, I'm just right.
So.....if you are starting Body for Life, or you are looking to loose bodyfat and eat right; while Eating for Life is not a matter of life and death, it is a MAJOR MAJOR help; and lets be honest, when you're starting out on a training plan, you can do with all the help and support you can get.
Go for it !
Book Review: Some good recipes BUT with one glaring shortcoming
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this 405-page book by Body For Life guru Bill Phillips, sight unseen via the internet, because I'm a fan of the BFL exercise/nutrition philosophy - although, sadly, not faithful follower - and I enjoy cooking. I've made quite a few of the recipes and can report they are easy to follow, reproduce good results and give budding BLF types some badly needed ideas for sticking to the nutrition part of their Challenge. Several recipes are outstanding; my personal favorites being Mom's Chicken Enchiladas and Turkey Sloppy Joes, while some are unappealing to my taste which is par for the course with any cookbook. One unique aspect for BFL buffs are 69 useful pages in the front that explain "Eating for Life Facts", and in the back are another 54 pages with a section of recipes and comments from typically inspiring BFL Challenge winners, two weeks of BFL meal plans using recipes from the book, and some useful basic cooking tips for neophyte chefs.
Now, three warnings: First, quite a few "recipes", perhaps 5%-10% of the total, are really BFL meal/snack suggestions that don't need a color page of instructions (e.g., half a cantaloupe and cottage cheese or two sliced hardboiled eggs with a sliced orange). More problematic is that there is absolutely NO nutritional data - e.g., calories, protein/carbohydrate/fat mix, etc. - for the recipes. This is particularly disappointing because even cookbooks that don't claim to support a physical transformation program often have this information. Yes, I realize BFL emphasizes controlling portion size rather than calorie counting, but I'm a little suspicious that many recipes are heavy on the carbo side of the protein/carbo equation because so many have bread, tortillas or pasta which Mr. Phillips normally discourages. Along this same line many recipes are "comfort-food" to most Americans that rely on some form of cheese, sauces or dressing; without taking GREAT care to use fat-free ingredients these will easily become comfortably negative component of one's physical transformation.
I recommend this book to people looking for recipes that combine the BFL protein/carbo philosophy with basic American-palate-friendly family type home cooking. But to avoid blowing your BFL Challenge you'll need to be VERY careful about ingredient choices and focus intensely on portion control, which is the ultimate key to BFL nutrition success.
Book Review: WOW! Solves my bland food problem!
Summary: 5 Stars
My fiance did the Body-for-Life challenge and lost 40 pounds in 12 weeks! Currently we are 2 weeks in to another Body-for-Life challenge and we've found the biggest problem for us is lack of interesting food to eat. We decided to pick up the Eating-for-Life book to hopefully get some better recipes and all I can say is WOW! Bill Phillips really outdid himself with this book.This book starts with 70 pages describing many of the ideas about food he covered in his bestselling book, Body-for-Life. As he explains, diets are BAD. They are impossible to maintain, so 95% of people who go on diets end up gaining back everything they lost (and often MORE than they lost). His philosophy is to eat balanced, nutrient-rich meals six times a day. This keeps you full, so you never feel like you're starving, and also signals to your body that its getting the nutrients it needs and can stop storing all the fat.
This is the first time I've seriously done the Body-for-Life challenge and I've already lost 8 pounds of fat! The biggest problem for me, as I said, was how BORING I thought healthy foods were. This book has shown me how wrong I was! The first day I got it, I flipped through it and salivated at all the delicious recipes! There are over a hundred GOOD recipes in here, including shrimp scampi, chicken noodle soup, filet mignon, chicken fajitas and SO much more. There are even several healthy dessert recipes, including fruit crepes, cheesecake and walnut brownies! The recipes are not only healthy, but extremely easy to prepare and very delicious!
A lot of people have said that Bill Phillips plan takes a lot of dedication and hard work, and that's true. But there is no "easy" diet out there. I've tried some of the "fad" diets, including low carb diets and diet pills. While they sometimes work, I found them impossible to stick to and maintain weightloss on. With Body-for-Life, and especially now with this AMAZING cookbook, I can eat healthy, delicious meals AND lose weight. Plus, with Body-for-Life, you have a free day every single week (usually Sunday) where you can eat whatever you want in whatever quantities you want.
I highly recommend checking this book out, even if you aren't interested in the Body-for-Life program. The recipes are better than I've seen in most diet books.
Book Review: Something that should have been published years ago
Summary: 4 Stars
First things first - Body for Life did work for me. I lost 50 pounds and over 10% body fat in 9 months on the plan. No, I did not use Myoplex! I also gave the Body for Life book a horrible review. I think that Bill Phillips is a jackass, and that bleeds through in his writing. The juvenille and unprofessional nature of the writing really turned me off in the first book. Knowing this, I pretty much skipped the first handful of pages where he outlined facts vs. myths. It's all great information, but I'm sorry to report that Bill's writing style is still pretty lousy. So I moved on to what I purchased this book for - the recipes. This is fantastic! Excellent recipes show more flexibility in the BFL diet than what was outlined in the first book. Pictures for every recipe. Some aren't even recipes as much as a "Duh, that's an obvious idea for a meal I never thought of on my own". An example would be a meal consisting of an apple and some skim string cheese. After being on BFL for awhile, you start to struggle with keeping your meal plans original and not over doing it on any one food (I can't even look at cottage cheese anymore!). This book really refreshes your idea list.What is really nice is that many of these recipes are for entire MEALS, not dishes. Carb, protein, and veggie are all in one recipe. Very convienent. They also list name brands of particular items to buy. It has helped me with my shopping. I may not go to the store with a particular recipe in mind, but I may pass something, such as Kraft reduced fat parmesean cheese, and recall seeing it in this book, so I can pick it up knowing that I can add it to my meals. It doesn't sound like much, but after 9 months, the "for Life" part is beginning to depress me. This gave me the lift I needed.
As for you anti-Myoplex and supplement readers out there, there really isn't much about it in the book. There is a chapter on nutrition drinks, which equates to about 10 or so recipes, with about half of them being Myoplex related. Nothing as bad as the first book. I too am anti-EAS and felt the first book did a bit of shilling. Not the case here.
I'd give it 5 stars, if it wasn't for Bill's ever obnoxious writing style.
Book Review: Enlightened People Have a Bright Flame
Summary: 4 Stars
Enlightened people dispel the darkness around them. They live more prosperously, with less stress, consider every difficulty an opportunity, and are open to new learning. This time of year is the perfect time to look over the past year and ask yourself the important questions: "Did I take time to grow spiritually, bettering myself with reading and stimulating conversations? Am I continuing to answer the questions that really matter? Did I share whatever good things I found with others, to encourage them in their quest?" We are all candles, and sometimes I have felt my flame only softly glowing, instead of brightly radiant. I am now house-bound and not able to get around. If it wasn't for reading and personal growth, and the ability to share and participate with others through the phone and internet about the things I am learning, I would go nuts! For me, books are a key to happiness. There are many people in my situation who feel life is not worth living anymore. I have seen that spiritual health, and being in service to others in some way (even if just by sharing good information) is the key to balancing whatever else is happening in your life. That's why I am sharing some of my personal favorites with you (I'll try to keep you updated as I read new ones), words that helped me heal and fan my flame bright again! I also placed this particular review under one of the books I have read and appreciated.
1. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (how even the little things we do can affect changes in people's lives, and by doing them, affects ours too)
2. Psychic Gifts in the Christian Life by Tiffany Snow (tools and training to access our God-Spots for supernatural gifts, has great stories about healing, afterlife, NDEs, helping FBI on 9-11, etc)
3. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp (helps to ease the fears of facing a blank beginning and opening the mind to new possibilities)
4. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (accessing the deepest self by living in the present time)
5. 500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender (actually good tasting recipes that will help you keep your physical balance, at least after the holidays!)