The Inside-Out Diet: 4 Weeks to Natural Weight Loss, Total Body Health, and Radiance

"I ordered this book 4 days ago, and tracked my order yesterday. It said I was suppose to get it tomorrow, then I checked it again today and now it says I will be getting it in 9-13 days. I called Amazon and they are telling me I will be getting it on 9/10/08, that is 13 days excluding weekends and holidays.

I have ordered other products before and have gotten them on time or earlier on the date that they had on the tracking info. This is the first time they will take twice as long. Disappointed! I pray that it comes sooner.

The customer service people are from India and because I am hard-of-hearing, it was EXTREMELY difficult and frustrating for me to understand them. They started shouting and I cannot understand people shouting. I sense they were mocking me and I know they were not. They do not understand deaf or hard-of-hearing people because their comprehension and enunciation was very poor. It took twice as long to understand each other."
~ Written on 2008-08-27

"Extremely helpful and informative. I'm no only hoping to lose weight but I'm also hoping to help my problems with acid reflux. This is a wonderful book."
~ Written on 2008-05-19

"For those of us who have struggled with our weight for the majority of our lives, we know that simply cutting back on our calories and fat ain't gonna cut it. When most people get exacerbated by the continued failure of these kind of diets, they turn to weight loss pills or surgery instead. Not good!

That's where Dr. Cathy Wong's The Inside-Out Diet comes in. Instead of focusing on the weight loss (which will still happen, by the way!), this plan gets people to eat for the sake of their health instead by consuming a nutritional program that will allow your liver to function better than it ever has before. Yes, this is a detoxification diet, but it's so much more.

I especially enjoyed the step-by-step approach of this diet looking at every possibility for why you might not be losing weight, including food allergies and intolerances, stress, excessive insulin production, and more. It's as if Dr. Wong takes you by the hand to assure you that we WILL get to the bottom of your obesity problem and attack it from "the inside-out."

For fans of recipes, Dr. Wong includes 50 of her favorites in the back of the book. She earnestly believes in the slow, methodical approach to weight loss because it's about eating healthier first and foremost. If more people took on this philosophy of eating primarily for the sake of their health, then obesity rates would drop faster than they ever have before."
~ Written on 2008-01-06

"This book combines weight loss and detox into one diet plan. What I liked was that instead of just being told eat this, eat that, it's a very down-to-earth, informed approach with lots of information about sensible food consumption and understanding your body to help you lose weight and feel more energetic. It's good for you if you're dedicated to changing your eating habits and are willing to devote some time and energy on improving how you eat.

Step 1 - During the first week, you avoid certain foods. Even though it's a detox diet, Wong explains that it's better to avoid a severe or overly restrictive detox diet because of the overload of fat-soluble toxins that are released which impact the liver. You eat vegetables, fruit, lean protein (chicken, turkey, egg whites, etc), certain starches (brown rice, sweet potatoes, etc) and can have a coffee a day if you want. You're not having dairy, wheat, or foods with gluten during this week.

Step 2 - In the second week, you introduce one of the seven forbidden foods/food groups back into your diet each day. The goal is to help you discover whether you have a food sensitivity that might be affecting your weight or making you bloated etc. After you've figured this out, you can now include all the foods you didn't react to. The book says to eat like this for another two weeks before moving on to the next step, but also says that many people opt to stay here until they've reached their desired weight.

Step 3 - This is the maintenance plan - I find that a realistic maintenance plan like this one (where nothing is off-limits) is the only thing that works in the long run.

To do this diet, it helps greatly if you have access to organic fruit, vegetables, chicken, and meat and a health food store. Some of the optional foods like honeybush tea and shirataki noodles may be difficult to track down. You also have to be willing to eat cruciferous vegetables (e.g broccoli, cauliflower, arugula) plus a lot of other veggies, whole grains, low-fat yogurt (if you can't eat yogurt or certain grains there are alternatives), and other health foods.

Meat and eggs aren't required on the diet but protein is. In case you're a vegetarian, there are vegetarian protein sources in the allowed foods lists. That said, most if not all of the daily meal plans and many of the recipes have either eggs, chicken, lean beef, or fish, so if you're a vegetarian, you'll have to spend time figuring out your meal plan.

If you don't cook for whatever reason, you may find it difficult to get all the required foods (fruit and veggies, etc) and avoid all the unwanted foods. But if you can at least make smoothies in the morning, have salads with grilled chicken for lunch, and make dinner at home, you should be able to make it work. Making a large batch of vegetable soup on the weekend with all the required vegetables and having them at lunch and/or dinner during the week might help.

There are daily menu plans and recipes at the back of the book. Diet book menu plans in general usually require making a different recipe each meal with no repetition - who has time for that? A couple of hours spent at the beginning trying to figure out a regular meal plan for you would probably work better.

Overall, it's a sensible diet and a refreshing alternative to all the uncomfortable fad diets and detoxes. A fantastic book!"
~ Written on 2007-07-29