The Diet Detective's Count Down: 7500 of Your Favorite Food Counts with Their Exercise Equivalents for Walking, Running, Biking, Swimming, Yoga, and D

This book had so many different types of food and places to eat food. The book was easy to use and fun!

What an eye-opener! This is perhaps the most helpful guide I have ever seen in understanding how calories add up, and how much energy and effort it takes to burn off those calories. Just a little nibble here, and a little nibble there, and suddenly you're faced with running two miles in order to compensate for the calorie overload. Even just "sharing a dessert" when eating out can add up to miles of walking and swimming! As a sober reminder of how much extra exercise I would have to do offset certain foods and snacks at home, I created a list using the information in the book of the exercise equivalent of things like cheese, dips, mayo, bread, ice cream, butter, etc. The author also offers excellent weight management advice and guidance. This book could easily have had another title: "The Calorie Saving Bible For People Who Hate To Exercise."

Have you ever caught yourself thinking about how long it would take you to burn off a meal you had just eaten, especially one that was not very healthy? Maybe you have, maybe not. I know I have after splurging on an Apple Cinnamon Fruit Filled Pancakes meal at Denny's. Those 1,080 calories and 106g carbohydrates I just consumed will take me over 4 1/2 hours on the treadmill to walk it off! Yikes! I think I'll skip that meal from now on. :) How did I know about this wonderful tidbit of nutritional knowledge? I owe it all to syndicated health columnist Charles Stuart Platkin and his new book The Diet Detective's Count Down. This handy-dandy little guide to 7500 different foods provides you with a quick-reference exercise equivalent to just about any food that will cross your lips. That's right! No more excuses that you didn't know a food was bad for you because you had absolutely no concept about the amount of calories you were putting in your mouth. That's why the idea of seeing what you eat in the amount of time it would take you to burn it off is a revolutionary one. Platkin says he would love to see this information appear on restaurant menus and on nutritional labels. What a concept! How many people would scarf down an entire cup of gumdrops if they knew they would have to do more than four hours of yoga just to burn them off?! Not too many people I would dare say. And that's what I love about The Diet Detective's Count Down because it makes people start thinking of calories in terms of exercise which is a lot more tangible and realistic. Calories can be mysterious, but exercise is very real! Before I lost over 180 pounds on the Atkins diet in 2004, I would regularly consume a whole box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls in one sitting! I know, I know, that was pretty stupid. But had I known at the time that I would have to shake my fat butt dancing for over 4 1/2 hours to keep those calories from turning into stored fat in my blubbery self, then I probably would have thought twice about doing that. Again, the Diet Detective as come to the rescue! Despite the unique concept of thinking about the calories of the foods you eat and their "exercise equivalent," you can also learn about the actual number of calories, carbs, and fat grams with The Diet Detective's Count Down. For those who are genuinely interested in the exercise they will need to do to burn off their desired morsel of caloric goodness, though, Platkin shows you very clearly how many minutes it will take you to move your body either walking, running, biking, swimming, yoga, or dancing. You choose the exercise you enjoy the most and start working off those calories. The bottom line is, as Olivia Newton-John sang about in the 1980s, let's get physical and start learning that exercise is an extremely important component not only in weight loss, but also in weight maintenance and health management. Thinking of food by how much time you will need to workout is one way to help you ma

This is an excellent resource for finding the caloric equivalents of virtually every type of food. It also gives the exercise equivalents to burn those calories. Makes you think before eating. It is easy to use and find what you are looking for.

Hi, Sharona. I bought the book as soon as it came out, too, and I LOVE it! I wanted to point out that there are detailed explanations of the calculations on page 363--it's at the very end of the book, after the tables end. It says the numbers are based on a 155 pound person, and that you have to adjust it if you weigh more or less than that.