This exciting work by a nationally known fitness and health expert is a realistic and practical guide to a healthier and happier lifestyle. Dr. Bryant Stamford, author of the highly acclaimed Fitness Without Exercise and a syndicated health columnist, and co-author Becca Coffin, a registered nurse, show how making the right choices in diet can improve health and reduce fat while allowing people to enjoy a fuller and more varied diet than other weight-loss plans permit.

Americans are obsessed with diets and dieting, and yet we grow fatter every year. Traditional diets offer only temporary weight loss through loss of water and muscle and do not address the real problems of dietary fat and poor eating habits. Fat is sinister, wreaking havoc on every system of the body. Eating fat results in fat people, but it also clogs the arteries, raises blood pressure, overloads the bowels, and causes diabetes. To avoid the dangers of dietary fat, we need to change our eating habits. Happily, we don't have to eat less; we just need to make smarter choices about what we eat.

The Jack Sprat diet plan uses a guided day-by-day approach geared to gender, size, and physical activity level. Each of the four weeks in the plan starts with a complete grocery list, including daily menus that have been analyzed to show how many calories and grams of fat will be consumed. All menus have been analyzed also to assure fulfillment of RDA guidelines. Recipes are provided for all home-prepared items in the plan, and specially designed "On-Your-Own" tables help with substitutions in the daily menus. There are even sections for including fast foods and a system of "controlled cheating."

To help ensure success, Stamford and Coffin provide not only day-by-day and meal-by-meal details of what to eat but also insightful scientific background that explains why. These chapters include information on how much fat one should eat, how to make smart choices when choosing a menu, and the benefits of light exercise. The authors also present a wealth of more specific information on physiology and metabolism, hormones, antioxidants, and phytochemicals, as well as on frauds such as cellulite-reducing creams and diet pills.

Stamford and Coffin do not offer miracles or magic, but they do provide sound advice and practical guides that will be invaluable to anyone interested in losing weight and making positive lifestyle changes.