The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

I HATE reviews of diet books that start out, "This is a fantastic book! Common sense, delicious food! I haven't started this diet yet, but I can't wait to see what is going to happen!" Well, this isn't one of those. I have been on the Instict Diet for 8 weeks now and have lost 10 pounds. I have been trying to lose this weight for 15 years, since the birth of my older daughter, and I now I finally made significant progress. I still have a way to go, but feel confident I can do it with the Instinct Diet. Don't get me wrong, this is not a magic bullet, it is still a diet. But there are a couple of things about this diet that make it really different and make it work. First and foremost, if you eat what Dr. Roberts tells you to eat when you are supposed to eat it, YOU WILL NOT BE HUNGRY. That made all the difference to me. I started lots of diets but always failed because I was simply too hungry. That is not the case with the Instinct Diet. I definitely feel satisfied all day, even on fewer calories. The second important difference is that it really reduces crvings. I lost weight on one of the high-protein, no carb-diets, but I started craving bread so badly after the 2nd week, there was no way I could stick with it. While there is some restriction of variety on Phase I, there is still a little bit of something from all food groups (even dessert!), so I never feel deprived. Third, the food really is good. I love the Chicken Parm recipe from Phase 1 and eat it often. It's not only delicious, it's so easy that its the perfect food for a busy weeknight. The Instinct Ice Cream Sundae is a staple in our house. The Instinct Hamburger is great, too. I love the Spicy Chili Soup (super easy), the Tanzanian Chicken Kabobs, and the North African Stew. Much to my surprise, I think my favorite is the Vegetables and Tofu with Peanut Sauce. I'm not big tofu fan, but this is filling and delicious (I grill rather than steam the tofu). Try it, it really is different!

I've wanted to write this review for a while, but decided to wait until I had been on the Instinct Diet for a few weeks. I have been following the program very closely for one month, and have lost seven pounds. Previously, I had done the South Beach Diet and Weight Watchers. I initially lost weight on both, but found those plans very hard to sustain. The Instinct Diet is different. The information about our five innate, immutable food instincts was incredibly eye opening. Finally, I understood why all my previous attempts to lose weight had failed - I had mistakenly thought that I could overcome hunger (I'm talking about real hunger, not a purely emotional urge to eat) with willpower alone. The Instinct Diet is designed to work WITH those instincts, instead of against them. For me, the best part of the Instinct Diet is the menu. It is very structured, but still has room for flexibility (each day has meat or vegetarian menus, and within that, there are options for home cooking or prepared foods). The structure eliminates guesswork, making it much easier to stick with a plan. With Weight Watchers, I would start out strong on Mondays, tracking all my food, but run out of steam by Thursday and then eat whatever I wanted. With the Instinct Diet, everything is pre-planned, but again, you do have some choices within that structure. The recipes are all designed to be satisfying and to control your hunger. They are healthy, full of whole grains, lean proteins, and lots of fruit and vegetables. Although some low-fat versions of ingredients such as peanut butter, sour cream, and salad dressing are recommended, the recipes are centered around reasonable portions of whole foods, not artificial diet products. I consider myself to be a foodie, and would eat ALL the recipes I've tried so far (including West African Beef Stew, Mushroom Risotto, and Salmon with Lemon-Dill Sauce) even if I weren't trying to lose weight. If you do try this diet, keep in mind that it requires planning. Anything that is going to yield real results requires planning. Instead of eating on the run, I now do a weekly meal list and go shopping on Saturday, and reserve a few hours on Sunday to cook most of my meals for the week. The result is that not only do I weigh less, I am more productive. I can now spend my weeknights enjoying healthy food and getting other errands done or reading, instead of making a last minute stop at a crowded grocery store, picking up something that I don't really want to eat, and then feeling bad about it afterwards. There are plenty of options for quick meals (the Pita Bread Pizza recipe is the best and ready in 10 minutes!) or prepared foods as well, I have just chosen to opt for more home-cooked options because I love to cook. I do get hungry occasionally. It is completely unrealistic to expect to never, ever be hungry when you are transitioning to eating fewer calories. But it gets easier over time, and the planning helps - if

I've always been hesitant to try diets that claim to change your eating habits as I always thought that when I wanted to, I knew what to eat. I was so wrong! I'm finding that I had no clue about portion control or what kinds of foods I should be eating at each meal. Who knew I was so fiber deprived! As I'm dieting, I have felt fully satisfied and have had no hunger! Unlike other diets such as the South Beach diet, the Stage I menu does not feel at all restrictive as I'm eating fruits, cereal, bread along with a variety of foods from all of the food groups. And with morning and afternoon snacks between meals, I don't have a chance to feel hungry. Each meal I've experienced in Stage I has been very tasty. The meals have been very easily adaptive for my family. They especially love the chicken parm. My favorite so far is the bean and veggie burrito. I will never go back to meat burritos as the recipe in the book was so much more tasty! And chocolate covered strawberries does not seem like a diet food to me, but is part of the Stage I menu and certainly curbed my sweet tooth. I'm on day 5 and I'm already experiencing weight loss. Stage II looks too good to be true. I cannot wait to try out some of those recipes!

I'm generally wary of diet books. After all, if they really worked, people would all be thin, right? The Instinct Diet, however, is unique. It's more than a diet, it's a scientific explanation of the workings behind our eating habits, a plan of attack that includes working with nature rather than against it, and a good cookbook too. The recipes and menus are for food that I actually enjoyed eating. I particularly like the chicken dishes and the multigrain rolls. How well did the diet work? In short, it worked. It's still working. I didn't start off heavy, but I needed to lose some weight, somewhere in the ballpark of 15 pounds - a result of spending more time behind a computer at work. I lost the weight over the course of a month and some change, and without starving myself. The recipes and meal plans from the Instinct Diet helped me make changes in the way I eat. I still eat hearty meals, this book's recipes are tasty and filling. I think that's the key here - people need to enjoy what they are eating. This book finds the intersection between healthy and tasty, and gives you a plan for changing your eating habits to hit that intersection and stay there. I also appreciate the science behind this book. Most diets are absurd - they are written by celebrities, and what do celebrities know about nutrition? This book is written by a true nutritionist, Dr. Susan Roberts, who is recognized in the scientific community for understanding how this stuff actually works.

It works! I've tried other diets, and although I might lose weight for a while, it's always been incredibly hard work and they didn't stop my weight gradually creeping upwards over the years. I saw this book in the store and thought it looked interesting because it isn't just some fad diet that promises the world but doesn't actually work. Instead this is an intelligent book that is written by a scientist and tells you about strategies that have actually been shown to work by research. That makes it an interesting book to read - in fact I'd have been interested to read it even if I wasn't trying to lose weight. And using it for weight loss is not complicated or difficult. In the first half of the book, the authors walk you through five instincts that control what we eat, and you can figure out which of them challenges you personally. This part of the book gave me some tips that have really worked... in the last month I already lost 10 pounds! The second half of the book has menu plans and recipes. I actually haven't used that part of the book very much yet, but the recipes look interesting. I did try a couple of them, including 2 of the 3 chocolate pudding recipes (that's not a typo: 3 chocolate puddings) and they were great! This is a diet book that is easy to love - it's interesting to read, plus I'm losing weight, and enjoying the food all at the same time!