Living Low-Carb: The Complete Guide to Long-Term Low-Carb Dieting

This book is a MUST HAVE for anyone trying to live a low-carb lifestyle and hoping to stay on it longterm. The tips, insights and secrets alone are more than worth the price of the book....and then there are all those great recipes! Yes, some of the ideas & ingredients are not found in your average store, but she makes sure you know how & where to find everything you need. And the recipes are not the same recipes that are in her previous book, The Low-Carb Cookbook...also a must have. I keep this book on hand, ALL the time!

My husband and I love to cook and entertain, and both needed to lose weight. We are now living low-carb, thanks to Fran. Her recipes for mashed potatoes (made from cauliflower) and fettucine (made from zucchini) are SO good, we make them and serve them at dinner parties, without even telling people we are on a low-carb diet. And EVERYONE asks for these recipes! I have given up low-fat eating, dropped weight, watched my cholesterol drop, and am amazed! My husband never thought he'd be able to give up pasta or potatoes, but he says he prefers Fran's recipes using substitutes! I have e-mailed Fran with questions and have gotten answers quickly. She is a writer who truly believes in what she is writing about, and like so many Americans, struggles with her weight. This is a wonderful book. And she is a wonderful writer and an even better cook!

As a low carb dieter who has only successfully lost weight with this type of plan (13 pounds/8.5" since June of this year), I'd like to congratulate Fran for an absolutely great book. The best parts in it are the hints she gives for handling cravings, emergency techniques and supplementation advice from one who has been through it, I could not believe all the helpful tidbits she offers fellow low carbers!! Also the receipes!!!!!! I am personally proud of Fran for her weight loss to date, and her courage to write and share of her personal experiences, especially since she is still on her journey. She is a REAL person, like most of us, and willing to share things that might work with the rest of us! I am so glad to have this book to help me as I continue eating low carb, it will certainly make the road a lot less bumpy!

I really enjoyed reading and frequently refer to Fran McCullough's previous low-carb book, The Low-Carb Cookbook. This second book on the subject is already proving just as useful to me. The excellent information in it is completely accessible because the author's writing style is smooth, down-to-earth and as pleasant an experience as a chat with a good friend. Another major plus is that the layout of the book itself as a whole is extremely well organized. There is a clear table of contents, an extensive list of sources for low-carb living (many conveniently on the Web), a bibliography and an index. The first four of the book's six segments deal with living the low-carb lifestyle:(1) Why are we doing this anyway? (benefits of low-carb living); (2) Secret weapons (for maintaining the low-carb lifestyle); (3) Troubleshooting (blowing it, planned indulgences, snacks, eating out, holidays, on the road, hitting a plateau, thyroid troubles, etc.); (4) Special situations (vegetarianism, diabetes, pregnancy and nursing). The fifth section contains extensive information about what to have in your kitchen (spices, food labels, bread, soy, fake sugar). The final section is 240 pages of new recipes to add to the excellent ones in her first book.I agree with the other reviewers that one of the most refreshing things about Fran McCullough is that she is not posing as a diet guru. She is an "ordinary" person in that she is not a doctor or nutritionist who came up with a particular diet and is hawking it as the salvation of all. She has tried the diet herself over a long period of time and found it has conferred many benefits to her health. And as a writer and cookbook editor, she has read carefully and analyzed the latest books and studies on the subject of low-carb living. She reports on her findings and conclusions about these books and studies clearly, concisely, and extremely helpfully. I found her section on thyroid especially useful. It was one of the best and most accurate statements of thyroid information I have read in the recent past (it is a subject I read about extensively when a very near relative of my age developed a serious thyroid problem).I believe low-carbers, either new to this diet or old hands like me, will find this book well worth owning, a ready reference to which you will refer again and again. I have taken extensive notes from the book listing for myself suggestions she gave I found extremely pertinent to me for food, supplements and sources for both which I plan to follow up on in the very near future.

My book arrived yesterday & I was up half the night to finish it! I have quite a few Low carb books (including her previous cookbook) and this one is really great. There are tons of useful tips, stories of actual people succeeding with low carb, and a lot of interesting nutritional information. All of this is presented in an extremely readable and straight forward style. The recipes, for the most part, do not have huge ingredient lists which is really great and seem to be fairly simple to prepare! I can't wait to try them! McCullough's "this is not a one size fits all" approach is very refreshing when one finds each low carb diet book to be written in a "do it my way" sort of style. There is great info on stocking your kitchen, web resources and phone/mail sources for specialty products from foods to kitchen equipment. Great Book!