Feed Your Tiger: The Asian Diet Secret for Permanent Weight Loss and Vibrant Health

I gave this book as a gift to my sister who's been battling weight loss with "quick fixes" for the past 15 years. After her success with "Feed Your Tiger", I tried it myself. I was never overwieght or chubby really, but the book was excellent in unlocking my inner eating beast and helping me stay in control of my crazy cravings and urges to binge! Thanks to the recipes I can satisfy myself without the guilt. The recipes themselves are exotic and my boyfriend absolutely loves "my new cooking style". None of our family dinners are now complete without one of Letha's recipes. The trick is in confronting your wieght issues at the core issue and assessing what type of eater you are. After all, acknowledging your specific emotional or stress issues, for example, is half of the solution to managing your weight.

This is the only lifestyle book I have found that treats food addictions, including emotional bingeing, as an opportunity for weight loss. Using the Feed Your Tiger baseline diet recommended for everyone, I lost weight because it simplifies eating without counting calories. Following the author's recommendations for teas, spices, and simple dishes I finally lost weight after years of trying. No diet ever lasted longer than a week because they were boring. This one is not. I love the idea of being a dragon - instead of an overweight person!! Most weight loss books stress "don't" foods or push extreme foods. I have applied the Feed Your Tiger diet to my own Italian meals--a smaller portion of whole grain pasta, more salad, more hot spice, and lots of tea. Lots. This book has recipes for cooks - not my thing-- and easily available supplements for non-cooks. My favorite new snack food is spicy popped corn. Now I also devour toasted seaweed. I even ordered a reishi mushroom extract. WOW - It gives my day a charge!! I feel great and after eating like a Dragon for a month my friends have asked me: What happened to you? This book deserves at least 10 stars.

It is an early winter morning and I am reading Letha Hadady's FEED YOUR TIGER: The Asian Diet Secret for Permanent Weight Loss and Vibrant Health. This is obviously a different sort of diet book, a venerable but new (for some Americans) approach to weightloss. The aim, says the jacket copy, is "a slim physique, potent energy and stamina, optimal health," I could use all of that! The author, by her photo, is also new as diet books go: a very attractive blonde with a knowing look. Frankly, I am tired of being told how to live, let alone eat, by homely guys waving pages of statistics--whose hand I wouldn't want to shake. While TIGER's method of weightloss appears to be based on four animal types of Chinese martial arts--in combat, you not only assume a pose, you imagine yourself to be a tiger, dragon, bear, or soaring crane--the book is not all that Asian. The author is Hungarian, the endorsements come from a couple of French chefs, a Turkish researcher, and a French physician. Lessons learned from all those delicious cuisines permeate the book's style and approach to dieting. It is sophisticated in the best sense. As your appreciation of good foods increases, you will lose weight permanently. Taste more, eat less--the author, also the French, the Japanese and Thais have figured that out. As the author notes, "Good cooking enhances all areas of life." Basically, the book instructs you on how to determine your energy type and then which foods are dangerous for you and which are beneficial. For example, bears are gregarious, have broad facial features, tend toward weight in the middle (a paunch), are at home in the kitchen and love sweets. I and my Russian ancestors plead guilty! The remedies offered by TIGER, in addition to carefully tailored diets, include the herbal and the homeopathic, all easy to obtain in health food stores, supermarkets and pharmacies, and online. Easy exercises and massage techniques are explained. I particularly like the Korean hand massage to tone circulation for the entire body. My computer keyboard is my, and maybe your, best pal and worst enemy. Miss Hadady has realized--eureka!--that successful weightloss and health are about what you eat and enjoy your life long. Failed dieting is about those foods (carbs, red meat, sugar, salt, chocolate--is there anything left?) that you abstain from for a while, then go ahead and binge on. Back comes the weight and a loss of self-esteem. The author stresses that eating fat and being fat is essentially an addiction, and so is binge dieting. Her point is for the reader to lose weight as he/she gains energy and feels and looks better--once and for all. Gee, that might put the vast American weightloss industry out of business! But the TV pill pushers and hawkers of prepared meals needn't worry. There is a fifth animal type that will keep them in business forever--the crab. The crab is a bottom feeder with a hefty bottom. He/she will eat garbage, feel bad about it, go on a fad die

Last November I came home to find my husband glued to the television set, watching a DVD from our local library called "Asian Health Secrets". I watched the video three times and immediately googled Letha Hadady. I was pleased to find out that she was conducting a tour of Chinatown in NYC on November 18, 2006 through the NY Open Center. My husband and I immediately signed up, along with two other friends. In the meantime I purchased Letha's first book "Asian Health Secrets", which has become one of my treasured books on wellness. Letha's tour of Chinatown was highly educational and we are incorporating many of the herbs into our daily routine. I couldn't wait to purchase "Feed Your Tiger" and bought three copies, for friends and family. This book too is a wealth of information. By following the Crane plan I did not gain one pound over the holidays, and actually was down a few pounds. The resource list is invaluable and I have purchased seaweed, mushroom drops,mushroom tablets and various teas from Letha's sources. The recipes are good, particularly the Thai BBQ Sauce. Like any nutrition program, you must be open minded and glean from it what is doable for you personally. I cannot say enough about this wonderful book. Traditional Chinese Medicine is finally getting the acclaim it deserves, thanks to people like Letha.