This book was on my wish list for over a year, mainly due to the intriguing title. But it is not your traditional diet book, with chapters of incomprehensible scientific research, complicated unappetizing recipes, and photos of dieters who lost tons of weight and went from death's door to fashion models in under a year. It is a very brief and mildly amusing account of an older woman's history of weight gain and motivation for losing weight, and her approach to the problem, which consisted of mainly giving up one unhealthy eating habit at a time. According to her, she achieved results like losing 10 pounds in a couple of weeks by leaving the sugar and cream out of her coffee. Just like a commercial touting totally unbelievable results for a new diet pill or exercise machine, each tiny change in her eating habits resulted in weight loss successes that I can only attain by following a strict low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diet and exercising for hours a week. If the author was able to achieve this kind of success, then more power to her, and I am happy for her, but I remain a skeptic. Reading the book did result in my resolve to try to improve my health by cutting back or cutting out unhealthy eating habits one at a time, which seems a more sensible and tolerable approach than hitting the boiled-eggs-and-cottage-cheese again and weeping when I see a co-worker eating a hamburger, but after decades of dieting, I certainly would not expect to get thin in a few months that way.

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